The winds of change are blowing through the laptop world at the
moment, and this on the back of a fundamental shift in what we perceive
laptops to be - from netbooks to ultrabooks, from convertible tablets to
the current fad of trying to get Chromebooks to actually work and make
them worth buying.
Into this melange of competing ideologies we have the release of Haswell,
Intel's fourth-generation Core processors refresh. This chip family is
looking to redefine Ultrabooks once again. Where does this leave normal
laptops, though? Is there still room for a machine that focuses on
actually getting a job done? Enter, if you please, the Lenovo IdeaPad
Z500 Touch.
Lenovo has made something of a name for itself lately
by producing affordable, if somewhat mundane, laptops that people
actually want to buy - systems such as the Lenovo IdeaPad S405.
Take a look at any of the recent laptop sales charts and you'll find
Lenovo doing very well indeed. In fact the company has just posted
record profits, which isn't bad given the state of the global market.
This
Lenovo IdeaPad Z500 Touch isn't just any old machine though, because as
the name suggests, it packs the added kudos of accepting your prodding
finger as another form of input, thanks to the inclusion of a
touchscreen panel. And because the laptop is rocking Windows 8, this isn't something that is immediately undermined by the operating system... well not totally anyway.
That's
not all either. The Lenovo IdeaPad Z500 Touch has another ace up its
sleeve - discrete graphics. This means that it's vying for market share
against the likes of the Gigabyte U2442F as well as more gaming-dedicated machines, such as the PC Specialist Vortex III 680.
There
is one important differentiating factor when it comes to Lenovo's
latest machine though, and that is that the Lenovo IdeaPad Z500 Touch
doesn't come with the sort of price tag that you'd normally associate
with these kinds of features. Indeed
with prices starting at £699.99 / US$899 (around AU$1,165) for the Core
i5 model, and this Core i7 model we reviewed only costing £799.99 /
US$1,099 (around AU$1,330), we could well be looking at a game changer.
Or at least we could if it lives up to the promise laid down by its
specification.
Specifications
As first impressions go,
the Lenovo IdeaPad Z500 Touch won't exactly set your heart aflame. The
combination of a large form factor and a shoulder-straining weight put
it at odds with a world that is currently defined by portability.
However, there are a number of tricks up this laptop's sleeve that make
it far more interesting and versatile a system than you might initially
expect.
First up, it's worth noting that this isn't an outing for
Intel's recently released new processor family, namely Intel
fourth-generation core architecture. The Core i7-3632QM may be from the
third-generation family, also known as the Ivy Bridge family, but it
still packs an impressive punch into its tiny footprint.
This
quad-core chip has a core frequency of 2.2GHz but has a thermal
envelope of just 35W. It's a good chip, despite being last-gen, in other
words.
The big surprise here though, especially given the
IdeaPad's rather sober-looking styling, is the fact that it packs a
discrete graphics unit inside its sizeable chassis. This isn't a
half-hearted inclusion on Lenovo's part either, with the GeForce GT 740M
hailing from the most recent Nvidia family. This GPU has 2GB of DDR3
RAM to call its own, houses 384 unified shaders and has a core operating
frequency of 980MHz.
Lenovo has paired this graphics core with a
1366 x 768 pixel screen, which you may think is a little coarse given
the prominence of 1080p displays these days, but actually for gamers
it's a wise move, as we'll see shortly. The
vertical viewing angles on this screen aren't brilliant, but it's fine
when viewed normally, and the horizontal angles are just fine. And
you'll want to get a good viewing angle when you are using this machine,
because the other big news on the screen front is the fact that this is
a touch-panel display. It is responsive and works really well too.
The
rest of the specification is fairly straightforward, with a sizeable
1TB 5,400rpm hard drive as standard and the added space offered up by
the chassis enabling Lenovo to squeeze an optical drive in there as
well. The keyboard is roomy and responsive, although it does feel a
little spongy on the right-hand side. The touchpad is sizeable and
comfortable to use as well.
On the connectivity front you'll find
support for wired and wireless networking, three USB ports, a memory
card slot alongside VGA and HDMI outputs. In other words, there's pretty
much everything you could want from a modern laptop.
Despite
the modest price tag, the performance offered by the Lenovo IdeaPad
Z500 Touch is impressive. The main driving force behind this performance
is the Intel Core i7-3632QM processor at the heart of the machine. This
may add an extra £100/US$200 to the price of the machine over the base
Core i5-3230M version, but in light of the performance garnered from the
system, seems like money well spent.
Because this is a four-core
chip running at 2.2GHz that boasts multi-threading it offers up a total
of eight threads - which means it is especially great if the software
you're using supports multi-threading. Thankfully more and more software
developers are doing just that, so it should help keep this machine at
the top of the performance pile moving forward. Benchmarks3DMark06: 10,914 3DMark11: P1998 Heaven 3.0: 12.6fps Heaven 4.0: 10fps Sleeping Dogs (high): 10.2fps Sleeping Dogs (medium): 50.1fps Bioshock Infinite (high): 16.3fps Bioshock Infinite (Medium): 36fps
Cinebench 10 (1 CPU): 5582 Cinebench 10 (x CPU): 18,063 Cinebench 10 OpenGL: 6585 Cinebench 11.5 (CPU): 4.67pts Cinebench 11.5 (OpenGL): 39.21fps Battery Eater: 2 hours and 59 minutes When
it comes to gaming performance, there's a lot to like here as well.
Admittedly you won't be playing all of the latest games at the very
highest settings, because the GeForce GT 740M doesn't quite have enough
silicon to do that, but knock down those settings only a little and you
can easily hit smooth frame rates.
This is ably highlighted by both Sleeping Dogs and Bioshock Infinite,
which are pretty if a little sluggish at the very highest settings, but
are transformed by simply dropping down to medium presets. Indeed when
it comes to Sleepings Dogs you could easily up the settings a lot more to enjoy better visuals while still maintaining smooth performance.
This is a good mainstream graphics subsystem in other words, and well paired to the relatively low-resolution screen. There
are a couple of areas that aren't so impressive though, and the first
has to be the battery life. Three hours of battery life while playing
back HD video may have been acceptable a couple of years ago, but we
expect a lot from our machines in these post-Ultrabook times. Not that
this machine is particularly portable, weighing in as it does at 2.7kg
(5.95lbs).
The other area for concern is the drive performance.
Admittedly we wouldn't expect to see an SSD included in the
specification for this much cash, but that doesn't stop us missing it
when it's not there.
This is compounded by the fact that Lenovo
has used a 5,400rpm hard drive, and by Windows 8's propensity to feel
sluggish when you first start using it - it does speed up a little
later, but the initial impression is never amazing.
Despite
our initial impressions, which are bound to throw anyone looking at the
machine without knowing who or what it is actually aimed at, a lot of
careful thought has gone into piecing the Lenovo IdeaPad Z500 Touch
together.
It may not make all that much sense on paper, but in
practice you'll find yourself seamlessly playing games, tabbing out to
prod your way through Windows and then turning the system to more
mundane tasks without stopping for breath.
That's not to say that
it's the perfect machine for everyone, since there are a few annoyances
here and there, but it's definitely worth considering if you're in the
market for a 15.6-inch laptop and you fancy playing games from time to
time.
We liked
The core specification of this machine is
to be commended. The marriage of the Core i7 processor - even if it is a
last-generation model - alongside the discrete GeForce GT 740M graphics
from Nvidia make for a strong core that should see you through any
normal task and game you can think of. The fact that Lenovo has kitted
the machine out with 8GB of RAM and a healthy terabyte of storage helps
ensure that this machine will last.
Add in the versatility
afforded by the touchscreen panel, and the overall package is one that
we can easily see being used in many different ways throughout the home.
Even the optical drive, which is generally an inclusion barely worth
mentioning, makes sense here, enabling you to watch DVDs on the bright,
vivid non-Full HD screen.
There
are a few problems with the specification though, and not least of
these is the fairly awful battery life. Three hours when playing back
720p videos isn't anything to shout about in this day and age, and
neither is the sheer weight of the system. In other words, if you're
looking for a machine that you can take with you when you go through the
front door, then you should definitely look elsewhere.
An SSD
would have been a nice inclusion too, even if it was just a small one to
act as a cache drive and help offset some of the sluggishness of
Windows.
Final verdict
Overall, the Lenovo IdeaPad Z500
Touch is an interesting mainstream addition to the market place.
Admittedly there are better pure-gaming machines out there, but they
tend to cost a good deal more than this, especially if you want real
performance.
This is a well-thought out system that can play the
latest games with a few compromises here and there, and for the money,
that's hard to scoff at.
