Asus N56VJ-DH71 quality and performance vs. Lenovo Y500

I've been seeing a lot of negative reviews on Lenovo's Y500s including the Y510p as well.. In terms of quality, just how good is the N56-DH71 compared to the Lenovo Y series?

 

I've only heard positive things about the Y500s (so far). Asus has good construction quality, and in my experience, so do Lenovo systems.

 

Difficult to be very categorical about how they match up, to be honest. The lenovos with the slotted carbon chassis, the "business class" versions, are really, really solid. These are always good purchases, and they'll last you practically forever. Parts of that design carry over to the other laptops, including the y500 chassis. But the y500 chassis is shaped plastic with clip-attachments. And there are very often problems with the first generation new plastic chassis from manufacturers like that, because the construction on the more expensive model (that this plastic design inherits from) has been made with metal screws, metal plates, etc.

What this tends to result in is: misaligned mainboards and contacts, and sometimes broken clips/screw attachment plates, because the weight has been designed to be carried by a metal screw on a metal attachment in a carbon surface.

That has not actually been a huge problem with the y500 chassis, from what I've seen and from what I've heard. But since the plastic chassis is so bendy and flimsy compared to the other lenovos, the laptop will get a bad mark on quality. Because it's compared to the other more expensive lenovos. ..of course, it's still plastic, and it's still got typical plastic chassis problems, which are possible to avoid.

Which brings us to a design such as the nx6 series, where the model is built as a plastic chassis from the start. This chassis doesn't suddenly lead heat into the bottom of the plates, it doesn't bend backwards, the weight isn't distributed unevenly, the fan doesn't sound like a buzz-saw, there are no edges that gather dirt and fat, you don't end up with a ton of nail pieces and skin cells coating an infinite amount of tiny, tiny grooves all around the piano black chassis -- that instantly turns into the industry standard colour: "fingerprint grey". The ports will not move, the chassis is going to be fitted in such a way that the cooling block won't slide down and eventually tear off that one screw on the edge. Etc.

On the other hand, it's still plastic. And it will break or get permanently damaged all the same if you crack it open over your knee, etc.

I'll say this, though.. that if you don't specifically value the sli option on the y500, and are willing to put up with the not entirely amazing cooling. Then the nx6 chassis is a good pick. It's pretty, it's very well put together. And it will easily cool an i7 + a gt650m/740m nvidia card. The amd variant (n56dp.. n46dp probably doesn't exist) is even easier in that sense. Actually, pick either of those over the n56vj with the old fermi cards. Avoid those - get the newer ones with 1080 screens, and if you want to save money, go for the amd/apu version.

On the other hand, you can get a lot of gaming value on the y500 with the sli option. And also be able to fairly easily switch out the existing card for a potentially better one at the same watt drain some time in the future (depending on whether lenovo will ever package such a card in their proprietary ultrabay format..). And you really can't beat the performance for the amount of money you spend.

Still.. personally, found that I was happy with a 650m/740m class card.. approximately 2500 3dmarks in 3dmark11. When that computer was silent, cool, and otherwise functional as a laptop. Thickness also is appr. half. So, I mean, decide on that first. What you want to focus on. Because the two laptops you mention aren't really direct competitors in that sense.

I guess if you started to compare the g75 chassis on one hand (with one gk107 card, with potential overclock going very far) against a y500 sli -- then it would be a more difficult choice.