Lenovo Ideapad Y550 15.6-Inch Laptop Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)First of all, I didn't purchase the laptop through Amazon. I got it
from Lenovo's website. Having heard good things about the company and
read some good reviews of their laptops, I decided to check them out
when I needed a new laptop. I've had my Y550 for 4 days and will post
updates if things change for the worse but so far so good.

The specs:
Intel Duo P8700 (2.53 GHz)
4GB of DDR3 memory
500 GB HDD
Standard integrated graphics card
Blu-ray optical drive

The price was very good. I couldn't find a better deal (about 900
bucks after the ecoupon) for such a powerful machine with a blu-ray
option.

The first thing I noticed after setting up everything was the
beautiful, bright, and crisp screen. It is a full HD screen and
it is wide/squat (1366 x 768), great for watching movies. The screen
is bright, crisp and glossy but has very little glare. It really does
live up to the hype I've heard about it though I do wish that Lenovo
offered a higher resolution screen option (like a 1920 x 1080). After
seeing a blu-ray movie on it, I came away not disappointed that I paid
the extra 150 bucks for the blu-ray option.

The setup was easy and the software gives you the option of deleting
all the bloatware that it comes standard with. (It took me about 15
minutes to deselect all the bloatware) I only selected two of them to
run on my computer as the rest was useless junk that will slow
everything down and I suspect useless to most people too.

Performance: The computer is quite fast so for my needs (email, net
surfing, word processing, etc), it is more than sufficient. The
computer has the newer DDR3 memory making it even a little more
impressive performance wise.

Looks: It has a beautiful design with black carbon-fiber shell and
white palm-rest. The idea is to make the laptop light (it is just over
6 lbs, and only 1 inch thick(!) which for a laptop this size, it
really is among the lightest and thinnest.

Sound: The speakers are pretty good. It has a subwoofer and two JBL
speakers that, for a laptop, gets decent sounds.

Cool factor: The Veriface security software works very well in
allowing one to use one's own face to log in (the computer's camera
scans your face and logs you in when there's a match to saved images
of you) and only takes a few seconds to set up. No problems yet with
it and it works like a charm. The carbon-fiber shell, though not
fingerprint proof, will make cleaning them off easier; just wipe once
with non abrasive cloth and they're gone. The Touch Inductive Panel
above the keyboard is pretty cool but only a little better than being
useless as far as I can see. The touchpad allows for expanding/shrinking
text size by sliding two fingers apart or together.

Batteries: There are several energy settings. Since this is a powerful
laptop and has a relatively large screen, it doesn't do well at all on
the highest setting unplugged as to be expected. But on the lowest
energy-saver setting (Super Energy Saver), you could probably get a
little over 3 hrs of internet surfing, email, etc. and about 2- 2.5
hrs of watching movies. But who wants to watch a movie on such a low
setting? The bright LED screen makes viewing a pleasure but on the
lowest settings, you will not get nearly as much image quality. So
this laptop is more like a desktop replacement in that area but get's
OK battery mileage for simpler functions.

Negatives:
-The thing only has two USB ports (Plus one eSATA port). For
a laptop with almost a 16 inch display, it should have more.

-Like I mentioned, Lenovo doesn't offer a 1920 x 1080 display
option. Watching blu-ray on a system like that with this type of
screen would have been incredible I'd wager.

-Like some other customers have mentioned Lenovo's customer support blows. I emailed them with some simple questions about my order and could not get a satisfactory answer. The answer they did give me was wrong as I later found out doing my own research. But since this has nothing to do with the product, I didn't deduct my rating on this account but the customer should be warned. Also, if you are buying from Lenovo's site, make sure you look into all the offers they have on sale such as the ecoupons they have scattered (hidden from view?) about on their site. You need to enter the code on the order page for the coupon when you order to get the discount. I got a 12% "employee discount" that cut the price of my laptop by 120 bucks but I had to dig through the site to find it. They sometimes also offer free shipping but search/hunt down and read the disclaimers (they don't offer this for several states). The Lenovo website was pretty disorganized and confusing.

-There's a lot of bloatware that comes installed on this laptop. Like I
said, remove as soon as possible because they are mostly crap and will
slow your computer down.

-The laptop doesn't come with backup software. Instead, it has a "One
Key Restore" function. I've had to use this function when I
accidentally uninstalled some good software that I wanted. I'd like to
have backup software, still.

-The touchpad takes little to get use to but that's not too much of a problem.

Overall, the computer has lived up to my high expectations and surpassed
them a little too!

[EDIT] It's been about 7 months since I got the computer and its harddrive has died. Lenovo's basic warranty took care of the problem in about a week's time. I hope it's just a problem with the manufacturer of the harddrive or that I was unlucky enough to get a crappy harddrive and not with Lenovo's fault. That's what I suspect but I have to update my rating from a 5 Star to a 2 Star since I don't really know what resulted in it.

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Product Description:
INTRODUCING THE LENOVO® IDEAPAD™ Y550 NOTEBOOK.Have your own private movie hall and hear your music concert style—wherever you like. Use the new Lenovo IdeaPad Y550 notebook with OneKey Theater function—a single button that optimizes your audio and video settings for high-definition entertainment. Go on, let the show begin.Best of all, it's from Lenovo, makers of the award-winning ThinkPad business notebook. Rich multimedia featuresIntel® Centrino® 2 processor technologyOneKey™ Theater enhanced audio-visual settings15.6" HD LED backlight display, 16:9 formatDolby® Home Theater™Latest graphics technology & DDR3 memoryHDMI outputeSATA port for high-speed external storageIntuitive user enhancementsLenovo Desktop NavigatorAmbient Light Sensor for automatic screen brightnessOneKey™ Rescue SystemVeriFace™ facial recognition technology

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