Lenovo IdeaPad Y650 Review

by Jerry Jackson

The IdeaPad Y650 is a multimedia notebook from Lenovo with a beautiful 16-inch screen, HDMI out, a giant touchpad with multi-touch controls, and enough power and storage to serve as your primary family PC. With a thin (almost MacBook-like) appearance and a starting price of $1,299, how does the Lenovo IdeaPad Y650 stand up against the competition? Keep reading and we'll let you know.

Click here to compare prices for the Lenovo IdeaPad Y650

Lenovo IdeaPad Y650 Specifications:

• Windows Vista Home Premium (SP1, 64-bit)
• Intel Core 2 Duo processor P8700 (2.53GHz, 3MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
• 16.0 " TFT Widescreen display with LED backlighting (1366x768)
• 4GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz System Memory
• NVIDIA GeForce G 105M graphics with 256MB discrete memory
• 320GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• Dual Layer CD/DVD Recordable
• 1.3 megapixel integrated camera
• JBL stereo speakers (Dolby Home Theater)
• Intel Wireless Wi-Fi Link 5100 and Bluetooth Version 2.0 + EDR
• Weight: 5.8 lb. including battery
• Dimensions: 390 X 260 X 26.1 mm
• Warranty: 1 year system and 1 year battery
• 6-cell 2000mAh 42Wh battery
• Retail Price as configured: $1,399

Build and Design

The IdeaPad Y650 has an all-new look compared to previous IdeaPad notebooks. As part of the new IdeaPad refresh earlier this year, the Y650 distinguishes itself as being one of the thinnest and lightest laptops in its class. In fact, the Y650 weighs less than the old Y530 15-inch laptop (5.8 pounds vs. 6.65 pounds as tested). Making use of thin metal, solid plastics, and even carbon fiber, Lenovo engineered this 16-inch laptop to be as thin and light as possible. The matte black exterior looks extremely classy. Inside the notebook the black exterior changes to a glossy white surface that surrounds the keyboard and touchpad. The massive palmrests (more on that later) provide excellent support with minimal flex. Overall, the design is very clean and gives the Apple MacBook a run for the money at first glance.

Build quality is excellent with a very rugged feel for a consumer multimedia notebook. When closed the Y650 feels almost as sturdy as the business-class ThinkPad notebooks with very little flex in the screen cover under strong pressure. On closer inspection of the lid, the matte black surface has a honeycomb pattern for subtle styling and easy gripping thanks to the rubberized paint. The body gives the notebook a great deal of support and the combination of metal and plastics used feel rugged enough to withstand regular day-to-day abuse without showing much wear. The only area that could see some mild improvement is the keyboard which shows some flex under heavy typing pressure.

The bottom of the notebook features the battery and an all-in-one bottom plate that must be removed in order to upgrade the RAM, hard drive, or replace any additional components. On one hand, this makes it easy to access the entire motherboard to make upgrades or repairs, but it also means Y650 owners have to remove 20 screws if they want to upgrade their notebook.

Unlike most notebooks that feature an optical drive (DVD/CD drive) located on the side of the notebook, Lenovo decided to move the optical drive to the front of the Y650. On the bright side, this means right-handed mouse users won't have to worry about the drive getting in the way. However, if you often use your notebook as a "laptop" this means the drive pops out into your crotch.

Display

The 16-inch panel on the Lenovo Y650 rates above average with vibrant colors and excellent contrast. The LED backlighting in our review unit is slightly uneven in the upper right corner, but that's not entirely uncommon for larger notebook screens. Horizontal viewing angles are extremely good, so you won't have any trouble sharing a movie with a friend or two. Upper vertical viewing angles are above average since the colors don't wash out when viewed from above, but colors do begin to distort and invert as you move the screen back.

If there is any potential negative about this screen it's that the 16:9 ratio means you lose some vertical resolution. Most 15-inch laptop screens with a 16:10 ratio have a resolution of 1280x800 compared to the screen on the Y650 which has a resolution of 1366x768. This means you can fit more on the screen from left to right, but the screen is actually smaller from top to bottom.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard on the Y650 is quite unusual compared to the keyboards on most large multimedia notebooks. As notebooks get larger they usually end up using progressively larger keyboards, some that even include dedicated number pads like a traditional desktop keyboard. Lenovo decided to take a distinctly different approach and use a smaller keyboard in order to make more room available for a massive multi-touch touchpad.

As a result, the keyboard on the Y650 is roughly the same size as the keyboard you expect to find on a 14-inch or 13-inch laptop. This provides much more room for the touchpad, but it has the unfortunate side effect of turning the palmrests into armrests. The position of the keyboard is so far back that your forearms end up resting where your palms normally would. These "armrests" are so large I almost expected to find a built-in cup holder.

Despite the size of the keyboard relative to the rest of the notebook, the keyboard is quite comfortable to type on with reasonable key size and spacing. There is some flex when heavy typing pressure is applied, but overall this is a fine keyboard.

The touch sensitive media bar located above the keyboard gives quick access to EasyCapture (webcam controls), ReadyComm (wireless connectivity manager), VeriFace (facial recognition software), and OneKey (back up and recovery software).

The Synaptics-based touchpad is very large--much bigger than those found on previous IdeaPads--and very comfortable to use. Sensitivity is good, accurately tracking finger movement with little pressure on the surface. The matte white touchpad surface is easy to move your finger across while still providing a small amount of traction. The multi-touch gestures (such as zoom in and zoom out) are easy to use, but these multi-touch gesture controls have limited use until more software (including Windows) recognizes the gestures. The touchpad buttons have excellent feedback with a deep throw but they do produce a rather loud "click" when pressed.

Ports and Features

The port selection proved to be a little underwhelming with this laptop. Lenovo's engineers had to make some sacrifices in order to make the Y650 as thin and light as possible. This means the Y650 only has two USB ports, a smaller ExpressCard/34 slot rather than a larger ExpressCard/54 expansion slot, and no FireWire. Lenovo was kind enough to put an eSATA port on this notebook, but it would have been more impressive if they used an eSATA/USB combo port so that users could have a third USB port if they needed it.

Front: Wireless On/Off, optical drive

Rear: Screen hinge

Left: AC-Power, HDMI, VGA, and USB

Right: 6-in-1 card reader, USB, Headphone/Mic, eSATA, ExpressCard/34, Ethernet, Kensington lock slot

Speakers and Audio

The IdeaPad Y650 offers a pair of JBL-branded speakers that produce some extremely nice sound. The 2-watt stereo speakers have plenty of range and are free from any distortions until you increase the volume levels to near the maximum limit. The speaker don't have the chest thumping bass you expect from notebooks equipped with a subwoofer, but it's hard to complain about the quality of these speakers considering how light and thin this notebook is compared to most 16-inch and 17-inch notebooks.

Performance

The performance of the Lenovo IdeaPad Y650 with an Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 processor and NVIDIA GeForce G 105M discrete graphics card was slightly less impressive than multimedia oriented notebooks like the Dell Studio XPS 16 which offered a better graphics card. On the other hand, the Y650 performed much better than the previous generation IdeaPad.

For day-to-day use or enjoying high definition video content the Y650 has more than enough power inside the chassis. For the average user this machine's performance will exceed expectations for web browsing, watching movies, typing documents, and fast startups or shutdowns. Gaming is where the Y650 falls behind the competition, delivering frame rates and producing benchmark scores that are only about half as good as some larger multimedia notebooks. Still, the key thing to keep in mind here is that the alternative notebooks in this class are heavier and thicker than the Y650.

WPrime is a benchmark similar to Super Pi in that it forces the processor to do intense mathematical calculations, but the difference is this application is multi-threaded and represents dual core processors better. Lower numbers indicate better performance.

Notebook / CPU	wPrime 32M time
Lenovo IdeaPad Y650 (Core 2 Duo P8700 @ 2.53GHz)	30.126s
Dell Studio XPS 16 (Core 2 Duo P8600 @ 2.4GHz)	31.827s
Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 (Core 2 Duo P7350 @ 2.0GHz)	38.455s
Dell Studio 15 (Core 2 Duo T5750 @ 2.0GHz)	41.246s
HP Pavilion dv5z (Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80 @ 2.1GHz)	39.745s
Dell Vostro 1510 (Core 2 Duo T5670 @ 1.8GHz)	51.875s
Dell Inspiron 1525 (Core 2 Duo T7250 @ 2.0GHz)	43.569s
Dell XPS M1530 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz)	37.485s

PCMark05 measures overall notebook performance based on processor, hard drive, operating system, RAM, and graphics (higher scores are better):

Notebook	PCMark05 Score
Lenovo IdeaPad Y650 (2.53GHz Intel P8700, NVIDIA GeForce G 105M 256MB)	5,575 PCMarks
Dell Studio XPS 16 (2.4GHz Intel P8600, ATI Mobility RADEON HD 3670 512MB)	6,303 PCMarks
Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 (2.0GHz Intel P7350, Nvidia 9300M 256MB)	4,844 PCMarks
Dell Studio 15 (2.0GHz Intel T5750, Intel X3100)	3,998 PCMarks
HP Pavilion dv5z (2.1GHz Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80, ATI Radeon HD 3200)	3,994 PCMarks
Dell Vostro 1510 (1.8GHz Intel T5670, Intel X3100)	3,568 PCMarks
Dell Inspiron 1525 (2.0GHz Intel T7250, Intel X3100)	4,149 PCMarks
Dell XPS M1530 (2.20GHz Intel T7500, Nvidia 8600M GT 256MB)	5,412 PCMarks

3DMark06 comparison results for graphics performance (higher scores are better):

Notebook	3DMark06 Score
Lenovo IdeaPad Y650 (2.53GHz Intel P8700, NVIDIA GeForce G 105M 256MB)	2,472 3DMarks
Dell Studio XPS 16 (2.4GHz Intel P8600, ATI Mobility RADEON HD 3670 512MB)	4,855 3DMarks
Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 (2.0GHz Intel P7350, Nvidia 9300M 256MB)	1,833 3DMarks
Dell Studio 15 (2.0GHz Intel T5750, Intel X3100)	493 3DMarks
HP Pavilion dv5z (2.1GHz Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80, ATI Radeon HD 3200)	1,599 3DMarks
Dell Vostro 1510 (1.8GHz Intel T5670, Intel X3100)	519 3DMarks
Dell Inspiron 1525 (2.0GHz Intel T7250, Intel X3100)	545 3DMarks
Dell XPS M1530 (2.20GHz Intel T7500, Nvidia 8600M GT 256MB)	4,332 3DMarks

All of the 3DMark06 scores for all of the systems listed above were run at 1280 x 800 resolution. However, due to the screen resolution limit on the Y650 we benchmarked the Y650 at 1280x720 ... which was the closest resolution available in 3DMark06 for use with the built-in screen.

HDTune storage drive performance results:

Battery

With the screen brightness set to 50%, wireless active, and the Vista power profile set to "Balanced" the Y530 stayed on for 3 hours and 12 minutes. For use in the classroom or on your lap in front of the TV this amount of battery life was fine, but it may be cutting it close for traveling. The 6-cell 2000mAh 42Wh battery seems almost a little too small for this notebook, but that's a price you have to pay for such a thin 16-inch laptop.

Heat and Noise

The cooling system worked very well, keeping the outside temperatures of the Y650 down to the high 80s, even after extended periods of use. The left palmrest (or armrest) felt a little warmer due to the fact that the battery is located directly below this area, but all things considered the Y650 kept its cool.

Noise levels were kept to a minimum when running on battery, but when the laptop was set to the "high performance" power profile under Microsoft Vista and was plugged into the AC adapter the fan became quite loud. The fan noise was loud enough to be a minor distraction in a quite classroom or office, but this wasn't a problem when running on battery power. The hard drive in our review unit produced some moderate clicking noise while accessing data, but this was rarely loud enough to be distracting.

Conclusion

The Lenovo IdeaPad Y650 has a durable chassis, good overall performance, great sounding speakers, and a nice design with a great multi-touch touchpad. The keyboard was a little disappointing and having only two USB ports might be a problem for some people, but overall the design is quite impressive. While we are glad to see the graphics performance of the Y650 exceeds the performance of the old Y530, the new NVIDIA GeForce G 105M dedicated graphics card just didn't perform as well in games compared to other 16-inch notebooks we've tested.

That said, the Y650 is thinner and lighter than any other 16-inch notebook we've seen ... and the discrete graphics card in this machine is perfectly capable of handling HD video decoding and digital audio out over HDMI for watching movies on your HDTV. If you're looking for an attractive entertainment notebook for your family the Y650 makes a great choice, but if you need a high-end gaming notebook this isn't it.

Pros:

• Excellent build quality
• Solid performance
• Fantastic touchpad
• Good speakers

Cons:

• Limited selection of ports for a 16-inch multimedia notebook
• Keyboard is a little small considering the size of the notebook
• All-in-one bottom plate means you have to remove too many screws for upgrades
• Who needs palmrests when you can have armrests?

 

Nice review, having the optical drive coming out of the front is a little different and your point about having it coming to the crotch is the same reason why think headphone jacks should be on the side of a laptop and also with that you break fewer cables.

But I think most people who would use this computer as a media computer would not move it around that much so I dont see that market for thin and light 16 or 18 inch laptops.

 

Nice design, especially coming from Lenovo. But, I think they are losing the IBM touch in keyboards. I used to have a R52 and the new R400 keyboard is simply horrid compared to it.

 

nice review! but screen's res is pathetic for multimedia notebook!

 

Great review, but I am so surprised how small the keyboard seems to be! It looks like what a 12.1" notebook would have. hahah XD

 

It really is tiny... maybe it has something to do with wrist ergonomy.

 

im shocked at the 3dmark in a good way im surprised that a lower end card scored so high that's great.

This is a solid notebook its good to hear that a notebook maker finally put good speakers in there notebook. Toshiba has been doing it for years no other brand seemed to really care.

 

That sounds like fun, or a possible prank. The keyboard and screen resolution are a bit of a disappointment.

 

Only 2 USB ports? No Firewire? That small of a keyboard? That low of a resolution (1366x768)?

I really hope this doesn't outright replace the Y530, because this is a serious step down from that model. Pass!

 

WOW i just noticed you are right there is only 2 usb's? Something isnt right when 13" Asus and HP notebooks have 3usb's and a 16" only has two.....

 

Yes, it was probably not the wisest decision to put only two USB ports on this laptop ... particularly since there is enough room for at least one other port.

Also, since most laptop manufacturers are using combo USB/eSATA ports it was a little strange to see an eSATA-only port on this notebook.

That being said, I have a 14-inch notebook at home with two USB ports and a USB/eSATA port and I've never used all three USB ports at the same time.

 

I think the same too. Too much sacrifices. Its 2009, there's so much competetion from other manufacturers and even though this laptop is good, i think there are alot of better alternatives.

 

Definitely my favorite looking notebook chassis although I would have designed it with a backlit chiclet keyboard and a slot-load optical drive. I like the over-sized palmrest because it allows for the over-sized touchpad (which I'd like to replace with a secondary touchscreen display).


Something I noticed a couple of weeks ago is that Lenovo's Ideapad product page lists the Y650 specs as having up to a Intel Core 2 Extreme processor clocked at 2.53Ghz...this could mean a possible QX9300 as a future spec option. Hopefully it also offers a better resolution screen like the one in Dell's Studio XPS 16.

 

haha my 10" Ultraportable has 3 USB ports...

 

I don't see why a ton of USB ports is really that necessary, although 2 is cutting it rather close. At home, I use a 4-port USB hub (as I think many of you do) to hook up a mouse, keyboard, and in the future, possibly speakers. On the go (when you probably would not want to bringa USB hub), one USB could be used for a mouse (although you could use Bluetooth and save here as well), while the other one would be free for whatever use. I would actually have preferred that the T500 lost a USB and gained an eSATA.

Firewire is being replaced by USB, so no big surprises there - even Apple dropped it.

I would have to agree that the keyboard is rather small - it looks even smaller in a 16" frame.

The biggest downer, I would say, is probably the screen resolution. Lenovo should offer a 1600x900 display at least.

Also, I didn't see mention of the little touchpad on/off button in between the two mouse buttons - this would be a very useful addition for those who use an external mouse.

All in all, great review, Jerry - was waiting for a review of this laptop

 

Thats true but you gotta think about it like this if you are buying an entertainment notebook you probably are gonna be using all the USB ports thats why its so weird to hear that they only put 2 but yes an esata usb combo would have been great

 

Nice laptop!

- how is the junkware/trialware on these ideapad?

- do lenovo install the norton by default or only provide installer for it?

- i like the screen quality, although (as you said) the resolution is very limited, i usually already complained on normal 1280x800 screen res. now this is even worse.

- i like the jbl speaker, i usually has good experience with jbl/harman kardon speaker.. never tried altec lansing though.

- but my biggest gripe is 2 USB port!

they are becoming like apple! look at the design! large touchpad, and the 2 usb port!

 

Lenovo installs a 90-day trial of Norton Internet Security (along with annoying pop-up windows asking you to activate your trail) ... which most computer-savvy people hate but many average consumers want. Whether we like it or not most average consumers freak out if there isn't at least some kind of free anti-virus software that comes with a new notebook.

The severity of bloatware or trialware on this notebook depends on the user's technical skills and personal "comfort zone" ... in my opinion at least. What I mean by that is skilled PC users are capable of connecting to the internet without needing step-by-step assistance. On the other hand, there are plenty of people out there who benefit from the bloatware that many manufacturers put on notebooks to help you setup a connection. The same thing can be said for bloatware applications that control things like power management or data backup and recovery.

The bottom line is that Lenovo installs plenty of applications that can be considered "bloatware" on this IdeaPad ... but experienced users can easily uninstall such software.

 

a "sexy model" notebook without all the necessities

 

its ok Asus will serve your needs

 

i like how the optical drive is in the front, i wish more laptops were like that or even like the Dell Studio 15's where u just put the cd in without ejecting like MACs.

 

it's a good laptop for the average user with good build quality and sexy appearance!

 

Thanks for the review! How do you find the resolution on the laptop? Does it work out ok? Do you have any gaming results that you can share with us? Thanks again.

 

Keyboard=XPSish Nice to see a new layout compared to the older Lenovo series

 

Retail Price as configured:

Thanks for mentioning this!

I'd really like to see this line in every review . . .

 

for anyone who likes this "simple is more" design (and who doesn't need as much cpu and is not a heavy gamer) i highly recommend the hp g60 series.

chasis/dimensions/weight/battery/warranty are very similar, excellent 16" screen, full sized-keyboard with numeric keypad, 3usb (no hdmi out), nvidia 8200m graphics.

easily half the price (easy to find under 600 usd).

 

The resolution is fine for most people. You get more horizontal resolution at the expense of some vertical resolution. In practical terms, it's not the end of the world. That said, it still sucks that you end up getting LESS standard resolution from top to bottom.

However, at the end of the day blame belongs with the LCD panel OEMs rather than the notebook manufacturers such as Lenovo, Dell, or HP. The LCD manufacturers realized they could cut more display panels out of a single sheet of glass if they switched from 16:10 to 16:9 as a standard screen ratio. Unfortunately, they were more concerned about profit than the fact this meant lower vertical resolutions on screens.

The laptop manufacturers have to buy the panels that the LCD manufacturers supply.

We try to put this information in all of our reviews, but sometimes manufacturers make it VERY difficult. For example, some manufacturers will send us pre-production laptops (so that we can publish a review as soon as the notebook is released) but often the pre-production units have a hardware configuration that won't be available when final production units ship. That makes it next to impossible to provide an accurate price as configured for consumers.

Still, we go out of our way to try and provide the starting price and price as configured/tested in all our in-house reviews.

 

Agreed.....you take all those cons + the 'armrests' and put it up against the 'thin & light factor'. For those who favor style over over substance this might work, but it lacks so much substance vis-a-vis the competition, it's credibility takes a big hit IMO

 

Have any games been tested on it? Something like CoD or TF2, L4D, ect.

 

When lenovo run some promotion and the price drops below 999, it will be competitive.

 

Agreed. Nice review, thanks.

 

I'll stick with my T500. if I wanted a computer with only two USB I wouldn't pay more than 800 for it.

what is with the whole 'lets see how big a touchpad can we get on the thing trend'? I'd much rather have a numberpad(in fact I'd really like it).

 

Big touchpads are actually pretty nice but small keyboards arent 0_o

At least the speakers that use up that space sound good.

 

anything on fps in a game like CoD? How long does the laptop last with DVD playback?

 

The closest thing to a macbook, but the price needs to be about $800 to sell. Macbook is already a bit expensive, but you can't offer the same bare bones package, less stylized and streamlined, and without the standard software Apple has... for the same money.

 

I think that that the screen is 1366x768 resolution because it matches the res found on most HDTV`s, which is *sigh* 1366x768 Pretty easy to set up a screen clone over HDMI...

 

I saw several pictures elsewhere. There are white Leds under the power button, multimedia touch bazel and the ideapad logo (right hand palm rest). And the eSATA port is a eSATA/USB combo one.

 

It doesnt look like a combo port to me...
http://www.notebookreview.com/shared/picture.asp?f=41454

 

How about battery for dvd playback?

Anyone have any info? Thanks.

 

It was a good try by lenovo.

 

Thank you for nice review.
I have heard that this laptop has something called MaxxAudio in side, does anyone know what this is about?

 

Hi,

I purchased my laptop 5 months ago and in general I'm satisfied with its performance. However, I've experienced one problem which is particularly disappointing and I've decided to share it with the rest of the world.

Some time after the purchase, I've noticed several cracks on the surface of the panel surrounding the keyboard (not on the keyboard itself). It surprised me, in a negative way, of course, because I haven't dropped it or anything. As time flew by, the cracks got bigger and now my panel looks really terrible.

I have no idea where these cracks came from and I'm sure that they are not the result of bad usage and/or maintenance.

For all potential buyers out there - I'm not saying that these cracks appear on all Lenovo Ideapad Y650 laptops or that they result from poor quality. But make sure that you know how to handle this issue in case something like this happens to you.

Anyway, have fun doing your research,
ciao