Y500 vs Y580

Hi All,

I am planning to take a laptop.

I came to three models :

(1) Lenovo Y580 (2) Lenovo Y500 (3) Alienware M14X (4) Asus G46VW

Asus : I am not taking this one because it don't have a DVD drive

Can anyone help me to finalize between the above 3 models.

Various pros, cons , value for money. etc.

Owners of these models can share your views.

 

Hi I currently own a Y580.I bought it a few days ago and so I'd done some comparisons between the Y500 and the Y580 before purchase.

Firstly,the looks of Y500 are great. The red backlit keyboard is nice and it has some great design.
But the Y580 has a sober ordinary look and the white backlit light often produces a glare when the keys are viewed from different angles.

On the basis of Graphic Card,the Y580 has a better GPU(GTX660M) compared to GT650 of y500 which is one version lower in the NVidia Geforce line of graphic cards. But, the Y580 has some overheating issues while gaming according to reviews.They claim Y500 to have a better cooling system. But I haven't played any games yet , so I cannot give my opinion on that.

The Y500 has an ultrabay technology where the opical drive can be replaced by an additional Hard Disk or a cooling fan or additional graphics. The ultrabay tech cannot be availed in the y580.

Coming to touchpad,there are a lot of complaints in the Y500 about the cursor moving on its own.But there are some users reviews where it hasn't been mentioned. But those who mentioned it are really frustrated and plan to return the laptop.My Y580 is doing fine with the touchpad.

The battery backup in y500 is claimed to be 3hrs whereas in y580,its 5hrs though both have the same Lithium 6 cell ion battery but I really don't know why the difference.

An important point here is that Lenovo and some RAM selling sites have quoted that Y580's memory is not expandable.8gb is the max.But there are some people in Lenovo forums who claim that it supports 16gb. Whereas, Lenovo has certified the Y500 to support 16gb RAM.I didn't know this this before,so I repented quite a bit after buying this one.

Apart from these major differences,there are very small ones such as Y580 having Veriface technology(Face Verifying
Security) or the Y500 having an always On Usb port.
And you should know that both y580 and y500 are not good portable laptops.They are quite heavy having 6.2 pounds.

Hope you found this useful!

 

I would like to see the review of the overheating issues of Y580. Never experienced it so far.

 

yea guys.. i see no overheating issues in my y580.. i even overclock the graphics card from 850 to 1150ish and the memory up to 2750 and no overheating issues

 

Hi, how do you overclock the ram to 2750 and which ram do you use? Thanks!

 

How the hell did you get those overclocks? Even with Boost my GPU's core tops out at 1080 MHZ.

Do you have a screenshot?

 

I have a Y580 and I overclock it too. Though it gets hot I've never had overheating issues. Just use common sense and don't keep it on overnight in blankets or in a humid room for long periods of time.

Also I read about the Y500. The graphics is weaker and I like better graphics though potentiall the 650m SLI is more powerful. Then again that costs even more money and at low fps's the SLI is terrible (you see stuttering at 30 fps).

 

Any heating issues with the Y580 has been solely due to location of the HDD, which sits between the CPU and GPU. If you don't have a SSD there, then yes the HDD gets hotter than what is typically seen out there but that is it. I don't care since my SSD runs 30-40C, which is well within its specs. Also, the GPU and CPU runs quite cool during prolonged gaming (70-80C). As for the ultrabay, I don't really care as SLi support/performance varies by games.

For the lack of an ultrabay on the Y580, I am able to swap out my ODD for a HDD just fine using a $10 caddy off of ebay, which is well cheaper than the ~$200 ultrabay solution for the Y500. Then again, us Y580 owners do not have the ability to add in another GPU in SLi.

As for memory, I'm running my Y580 with 16GB with no problems so far (tested with memtest86+, two passes).

 

I am in the same situation as you are, deciding between the y500 and the y580.
The clear winner for me is the Y500 at $100 cheaper when both being selected with 1920x1080.

The Y500's GTX650M can be overclocked to GTX660M speeds, so performance-wise, they should be equal.

The only advantage the Y580 has over the Y500 is a longer advertised battery life, but I can't find any solid review/comparison for this.

 

I'm planning to upgrade the memory to 16GB. Which company RAM are you using? Is it a 1.5V or a 1.35 V one?

 

I'm planning to upgrade the memory to 16GB. Which company RAM are you using? Is it a 1.5V or a 1.35 V one?

 

G.Skill, 1.5V