Lenovo IdeaPad y580 gaming laptop review

Intro

I recently purchased two Lenovo IdeaPad y580s for the household. This review is primarily focused on the main questions I still had after researching but before purchasing: build quality, temperature and noise.

Additionally I recorded benchmarks and gaming performance for both laptops before and after replacing their HDDs with SSDs and reinstalling Windows 7. On one machine (Computer 2) I re-installed the Lenovo supported nvidia 295.93 drivers on the other (Computer 1) I used the nvidia beta 304.79 drivers.
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System Specs

I purchased both laptops directly from Lenovo with the Barnes and Noble discount.

Model#209945U - Dawn Gray
Intel Core i7-3610QM Processor (Ivy Bridge)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX660M 2GB
8.0GB DDR3 SDRAM
15.6" FHD LED Glare Wedge 1920x1080
500GB 7200 rpm
Blu-ray/DVD-RW

$949
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Overall Impressions

I am a big fan of the brushed aluminum finish as far as understated looks and keeping casual fingerprints away.


Sweaty/greasy fingerprints can still show up -- generally as darker spots or smudges like:


I could do without the shiny bezel around the screen, and it feels slightly wider and bulkier than it needs to be but I was expecting this as I had already compared it's size and weight to the Dell Studio XPS 16 being replaced.

Size comparisons of a Lenovo y580 (top) vs Dell Studio XPS 16 (bottom)

Spoiler

I am very happy with nvidia and optimus. I haven't had any driver issues yet other then the games/demos that nvidia incorrectly chooses to use the Intel integrated card on. This identification got better with the beta driver.

One big drawback for me is the lack of a disk drive activity indicator. Probably not a big deal for most but for me it’s part of understanding the machine. Something running slower then expected? First step - look to see if the hard drive is on. This can be replaced by utilities but I sure hope this isn’t something other manufacturers latch on to in the future!

Additional Pictures

External

Spoiler

Internal

Spoiler

Internal pic with access panel removed. Easy access to HDD slot (sata III), msata slot (sata III), RAM, and WIFI card only. No easy access to clean vents, re-paste, etc.


HDD caddy removed


Keyboard removed. Single system fan is visible.


System fan

Screen
The screen was a pleasant surprise. I was expecting less brightness, less color depth, and worse viewing angles.

My wife is a graphic designer. This laptop is replacing a Dell Studio XPS 16 with an RGBLED screen for her design-needs-away-from-the-desk. She doesn't have any big complaints so far. The y580 screen isn't as good as the XPS RGBLED but it's really quite good. Its default color profile is a bit saturated but nothing that can't be fixed if you are so inclined (you may be able to see this saturation when comparing to the XPS (which had been calibrated) in the pictures below)

Lenovo y580 (right) vs Dell Studio XPS RGBLED (left) screens.

Spoiler

These pics aren’t great. I’ll try to update these with higher rez pics by and by.

I don't mind the glossy screen in the environment the laptops are being used in.

Sound
The sound also is a pleasant surprise. I would say the jbl speakers are very good for a gaming laptop and above average for one of the ‘multimedia laptops. Decent mid and highs, nothing too tinny, and very little distortion at the upper volumes.
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Build Quality

Neither laptop is as study as I would prefer (especially in a house with kids)

This lack of sturdiness manifests itself as a bit of flex it the keyboard rest (nothing to worrisome) a bit more flex in the keyboard itself, a pretty wimpy feeling blue-ray tray and a bit too much play in the power cord. (more on one machine then the other)

Mostly those are non-issues... my biggest concern here is the LCD screen. The lid is thin (design-wise a nice looking choice) but under any amount of pressure the screen flexes various undesirable ways. Moderate pressure from the back ripples the screen. Reading other reviews I found it pretty surprising that no one else mentions it. We'll see how it holds up, I might be worried over nothing but in our house the laptops get moved around a lot, jostled, opened and closed frequently, etc.

Personally, if I was buying it with the intention of tossing it in my backpack everyday with books and what not I would see this as a strike against the y580 and consider something like a nice Clevo p150em

Keyboard
Overall the keyboard is acceptable and most people should get used to it quickly. I haven't run into any issues with keys ghosting on the keyboard yet. (but read the touchpad section below if you care about ghosting)

Pros:
No missed keys
Bright consistent white backlight
Windows key is in the same place it has been for for a decade **cough MSI steelseries** **cough clevo p150em**

Cons:
Moderate keyboard flex as mentioned
Many of the keys are somewhat, uh, slappy. Not noisy exactly but not quite 'tight' so when they are pretty they make a bit of noise or clack. (especially the spacebar)

Touchpad
Bad. Quite bad.

Pros:
Looks nice with the silver edging.

Cons:
Too smooth
Higher levels of twitchiness and skippiness then it should have
Located bit too far to the left on the palm rest (preference)
Really, and I mean really, bad buttons. The left/right buttons have to be pressed very hard to activate. This really slows things down and can cause cursor shifting where the cursor shifts (usually upwards) since you are pushing so hard that your finger slides a bit on the ultra-smooth trackpad.

I'll probably get used to it but everyone else in the house has switched to external mice after less then a week.

Additionally there are some issues using the touchpad while pressing keys. (like say for instance you are playing skyrim with a touchpad not a mouse *gasp* or maybe when flash gaming) This may just be a touch pad setting like 'Disable touchpad when typing' but it seemed a bit too inconsistent for that. I didn't get a chance to look into this one yet I would be interesting in seeing if other owners are affected by this.
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Fan Noise

Low fan noise is one of the best things about this laptop.

Low fan noise was very important for us. The laptop needed to be near-silent when doing light browsing and only moderately loud when under load.

Once the SSDs replaced the HDDs the noise levels were far better than I had hoped. The combination of optimus and the silent/low power/low heat SSD makes the laptop so quiet under non-gaming situations that I literally have to put my ear within an inch of the laptop to hear the fans (which are spinning at these times, but in a very low airflow/low noise level)

The fans do spin up a level when doing a full screen netflix, or flash gaming, but it's still very quiet compared to other gaming laptops that I am used to.

Under load (like while gaming) the laptop is also much quieter then I was expecting. Sitting in a room a few feet from both laptops under high fan load at the same time doesn’t cause any issues at all in talking, playing games, watching movies on the laptops using built in speakers, etc.

Before swapping out the HDDs the laptops were still quiet but not silent, and the HDD noise (Seagate Momentus 500gb 7200rpm) was clearly audible.
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Temperatures

I see two issues.
1) The laptop gets hotter then ideal. This heat affects the keyboard, palm rest, and keyboard bezel making it quite a bit hotter than ambient and body temps. It is easily noticeable although I would call it ‘very warm’ and stop short of calling it ‘hot'

I really dislike a warm keyboard but it doesn't bother anyone else using the laptop as much as me, so YMMV.

I’ve tried a couple of different coolers and haven’t had good luck getting consistent results so far. Sometimes I see a temps go down a degree or three here or there and some times I am seeing temps actually up a few degrees. I am going to do more testing on this but for now none of the temperatures were taken with a cooler.

I also think the mesh on the hdd/memory/fan vents may be too dense for the laptops own good. See pics

Spoiler

Bottom of laptop showing vents


Sorta better shot of the mesh


Bottom of access panel showing dense mesh over vents

Internal components (except for the hard drive - see below) are mostly fine although they could be better. We know the 660m is a fairly cool card so I think there are several thing contributing:

• Lenovo trades less fan noise for more heat. Lenovo may have leaned too much in the 'low noise' direction but I can't fault them since the low fan noise was a important factor for us.
• The shared copper heat assembly of the CPU/GPU causes one to impact the other
• Most likely a bad paste job. I've seen several pics of sloppy y580 paste jobs but unfortunately it isn't a quick task to pop off the heat pipe assembly to check!

2) Hard drive temperatures. There have been a lot of conversations about this.

The disk drive bay is positioned such that it is very close to both the CPU and the GPU. This means (for some y580s, including both of mine) that certain games like Skyrim push the hard drives several degrees over their maximum operating temperatures and they can stay there for as many hours as you play such games! This may not cause hard drives to melt/fail catastrophically short term but long term it's not acceptable.

This laptop was not designed correctly in this regard.

I wouldn't buy this laptop nor recommend it to anyone I know unless I had plans to:

• swap the HDD with a SSD (SSDs I've checked are rated to 70c)
• remove the HDD and put in an msata drive
• put in a smaller msata/ssd and move the hdd to the optical bay

Below are some temperature charts. Unfortunately they are missing the decoder ring: fan speed. I didn't think about trying to measure fan speed until most of the way through the tests and I bagged the idea of going back to re-do them to get the fan speeds. Anyway keep that in mind - it explains why idle temps with an SSD may be higher than while on the HDD - since the fan is in a lower/quieter level.

Also to the best my research the Crucial M4 256Gb SSDs I bought don't have temperature probes. This really bummed me out so if my understanding on that is wrong let me know.

Idle and benchmark temperatures


Gaming Temperatures

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Performance]

Benchmarks
I am not much of a benchmark guy. In fact installing the 3Dmarks kinda make me feel dirty. In this day and age why aren't we on an open source benchmarking platform??

Anyway, here are a couple of benchmarks.

3dmark scores/links using non-licensed 1280x1024 settings


Gaming FPS
I am happy with the performance of the nvidia 660m in the y580. All games I tested were playable and could be further improved by bumping down a few settings if needed.

Games were maxed out by either clicking the 'Ultra' or 'Exteme' slider or manually turning all settings to their highest setting. The one exception was Batman: Arkham City since I was seeing some graphic issues (likely driver) with highest settings. I left Batman on their defaults of 'High'

Other info
All tests were done at 1920x1080
vsync off
I skipped cut scenes wherever possible and
I didn't start recording FPS until intro cut scenes were over.

Gaming Performance (fps)


Disk Drive performance
I love SSDs. Everything is so much snappier, the computer is quieter (you can feel and hear the 7200rpm drive vibrate) and overall I think replacing HDD with SDDs is one of the single biggest overall increases to performance you can make to a PC in this class.

CrystalDiskMark Scores Laptop 1

Spoiler

HDD

SDD

CrytstalDiskMarkScores Laptop 2

Spoiler

HDD

SDD

Boot times

Computer 1 SSD has games, benchmarks, monitoring tools et.
Computer 2 SSD has the same stuff plus Microsoft Office, many of the Adobe Creative Suite applications (big and bloated) and tons of graphic designer-y stuff like gobs of fonts and what-not.
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Last thoughts

Overall, for the price, I am pleased with the IdeaPad y580 and would recommend this laptop for casual to mid gamers with the HDD temperature caveat I mentioned earlier.

There are some minor concerns about long term durability and temperatures of the laptop but it's hard to know how that will play out after a couple of years and, at the time of writing, in my opinion the value to price of the y580 couldn't be beat.

Drafted: August 19th 2012

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reserved for future updates

 

Nice review . I'm on the fence between the N56VZ and the Y580 - this is very informative and useful information to have. I like the extra power you get with this laptop and it can even be a little cheaper here than the N56 - but the heat, especially on the HDD as you mentioned and the keyboard as I've read elsewhere is troubling. Will keep reading, but thank you for much for all those details

Peter

 

The Asus keyboard does get up to similar temps as the Y580 when under load when looking at the WASD and palm rest areas ( Review Asus N56VZ-S4044V Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews), see here for Y580 temps ( Lenovo IdeaPad Y580-20994BU Laptop Review - Notebookcheck.net Reviews). You are right that the Y580 HDD gets hot but one could simply move it to the ODD bay and replace it with either an mSATA SSD or SSD which will improve performance of the Y580 tremendously. Face it, gaming laptops <6.5 lbs are all going to experience heat issues. It is a matter whether the internal components are going to overheat. I was impressed with the Y580's ability to keep the CPU and GPU relatively cool compared to its competitors out there. Yes, the HDD gets hot, but there are easy ways to fix the problem.

 

I looked at the N56VZ as well and I think it's a fine choice as well.

Yup, it's all about the tradeoffs between price, weight, and performance, isn't it?

 

Yes it is. Still, the graphic performance of the Asus may be a little compromised with the use of a variant of GT 650 that sports DDR3 VRAM rather than faster DDR5.

I couldn't have said it better. Great review of the Y580 BTW

 

Certainly true - the N56 may be a little slower because of the DDR3 vs 5 - and the battery life on the Y580 is much better thanks to a much larger battery from what I've read (larger in terms of Wh specifically).

I was pretty much set on getting the N56 - but then I read a reference to the Y580 in a reply to one of its reviews and I've been scouring the net for whatever info I can get to help make my choice.

I was the ATI/AMD customer rep for Lenovo at one point so I know they try their best to get issues resolved (especially anything at all business related). But I have had ASUS laptops since 2006 and every one is still in service and going strong.

This laptop is a little heavier in terms of the actual unit - but the power adapter is heavier on the ASUS N56 so it ends up being about 100 grams heavier when added together. The price is similar, but this can be cheaper. The N56VZ has the Matte display by default so no need to switch out a glossy as most people are.

One thing I would like to be able to do is use my laptop to show BluRay on my HDTV (and on the laptop screen) since I don't have a PS3 or other BluRay player myself - so having to take the ODD out to use for the HDD/SSD is not desirable for me. If you didn't have that option and remembering what it says in the review above:

can this still be recommended for me?

I don't need more external 2.5" drives (I have more than enough from previous laptop upgrades ). And I don't want to have to spend on a huge SSD or lose the BR drive to have some storage. Reading the review literally it sounds like this would eliminate this laptop for me.

Thanks,
Peter

 

@ OP
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How did you remove the keyboard? Was prying at mine and it wouldn't budge (yes i removed the 2 screws). I have the same issue with a few keys having the slapping sound from keyboard flex.. figured theres something I can do to fix it.

 

Well it is just the opinion of one guy. I personally wouldn't stick with a hdd in these machines (nor buy such a machine for any friend or family member) but I am pretty paranoid about moving parts, I've had several drives die over the the years at home and I've seen quite a number of failed drives at work.

That being said, I am sure the majority of people buying y580s aren't swapping in msata/sdds (or heck even monitoring their temperatures at all) and it's not like the drive dies the second it hits maximum operating temperature or anything like that...

 

There are small tabs along the top of the keyboard you need to push while gently lifting the laptop.

finalturismo describes his technique in the interesting-thread-about-new-thermal-paste-thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ide...x4-much-better-cpu-hdd-temps.html#post8699357

Also the manual only mentions the two screws but there is a third in the center with a keyboard icon (iirc) that I did remove but didn't test to see whether it's necessary to remove or not.

Let us know how your fixes go!

 

Thanks for the reply. Not sure what tabs you are talking about.. but Ill check that thread you reference.

 

I don't have this laptop yet

but is there a way to shield the hard drive from the heat? like taping aluminum foil over thin cardboard, and making a shield ?

 

I haven't seen anyone else attempt that yet so I can't vouch for it. It seems like you may be protection the HDD from heat from the CPU/CPU but trapping heat generated by the HDD inside the insulation.

 

i guess it all comes down to airflow then.

my y580 should arrive on wednesday, so i will test out airflow by plugging the exhaust fan intake if possible.

 

Just to add my experience. I have the y580 I7 UK spec. I have played bf3 @ 1080 on ultra for 3 hours (with a few disconnects!) No cooler stand and although the fan is pushing out warms air the keyboard and touch pad only get slightly warmer than normal. Very pleased.

 

@link626 and @seafoodmix: Did you test your hard drive temperatures?
@Seranis: TYVM for this awesome review! :thumbsup:

Can anyone else report hard drive temperatures for the y580, or other notebooks as a comparison?

I'm very interested in the y580. Great specs and price, and I almost bought it until I read this review. I'm actually surprised that more laptop reviews don't include hard drive temps, since this is so important.

Honestly, I wouldn't feel good unless my hard drive was 50C or less. Is that unreasonable to expect? I have a MacBook Pro and its usually 40C, and 44C when busy, granted it has a very basic GPU(GeForce 9400M) and is a Core 2 Duo 2.26. I'm running a test right now copying 64GB from one folder to another and watching free Hulu at highest quality and the hard drive just hit 46C but the ambient temp in my room is 80F, so I need to turn the AC on! lol I did some continuous music transcoding and a lot of it the other night, FLACs to ALACs, and the temp stayed around 40-42C while my CPU was maxed out. I was amazed the hard drive temp stayed low while my CPU hit 90C.

Thanks again to Seranis for taking the time to do such a thorough review.

 

Thanks for the thorough review!!!
I did a review on my Clevo W370ET, seems like its temps are godlike compared to the Lenovo Y580.
But then again, the W370ET is a 17.3" lappy.

But really, all this heat coming at the HDD slot just aint right.
Lenovo should go back on the drawing board with that laptop.

 

Wow, thanks for the great review!

I am coming a Dell Studio XPS 16 with the RGBLED screen and the direct comparison was really helpful. After using that gorgeous screen on the XPS i was afraid that the differences would me too much but this has helped settle my fears.

I am really looking forward to when i get mine.

 

What a great review!

I was just wondering if you have any recommendations for a new HDD or SSD for the Y580?

 

Nice review man!

Thumbs up!

This laptop resembles the Y410p in so many ways