Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 (59359559) Notebook Intel Core i7 3630QM(2.40GHz) 15.6" 16GB Memory DDR3 1600 16GB SSD 1TB HDD 5400rpm Dual NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M SLI

Pros: All specs indicate to be a well crafted machine. Light, solid responsive keyboard, fast boot up and good over all design. Aesthetics and underlit keyboard is a nice touch.

Cons: Had it for less than three days with probably less than 10 hours of actual use. While operating a basic text editor in a well ventilated clean environment, I got a disc read error. After trying to restart, the computer no longer booted back up.


Other than that, the bottom lip (below the track pad) protruded a little bit which made it uncomfortable on my wrists.

Other Thoughts: I requested an RMA, it took one full week for the item to be shipped to its destination(NY to CA). Also, you should expect to wait up to 2 weeks (10 business days) without any update on your RMA. I can only assume that it will take another week for the item to be shipped back to me. So that's a full month without the item. But that is more of an issue with New Egg than it is with the item. I'll update this review once I receive the item back and can have more time with it.

Pros: Haven't turned it on yet. I will update once I have received my replacement.

Cons: Laptop came with a dent in it. Waiting to hear back from Newegg on how to get it replaced.

Other Thoughts: Just got the box in the mail, and after I opened the Newegg box, I took a look at the Lenovo box and noticed a gauge in the cardboard. Upon opening the Lenovo box I notice that the laptop itself is dented...Waiting to hear back on how to get one replaced

Pros: Slim, high performance, great design.

Cons: too many bloatware.

Other Thoughts: the laptop came in my possession for 20 mins. after that, and initializing first set up, windows 8 crashed leaving the unit not booting. search for solutions and it looked like a common thing for this series of laptops. another search pointed out that Lenovo's dual graphics cards integration is not top notch when it comes to quality.

with these in mind, I'd had good experience dealing with both the manufacturer and reseller to refund the unit.

Pros: I purchased this to supplement my regular gaming rig when the wife needs it to edit her photos and I feel like playing outside on the deck after dinner.

So far this laptop has not disappointed. The display is bright and the overall graphics on gaming is great. Once the drivers are updated and SLI is enabled gaming is quite fun. I just ran the benchmark utility for Bioshock Infinite and the overall FPS on DX11 Ultimate in full resolution was 31.87. Not as high on my regular rig with the 680 but very nice considering that this is A LAPTOP. Other games seem to run flawlessly. I seem to play a lot of TF2 and the FPS (using Chris' max qual. configs) for that game typically runs between 60 to 300 on full 32p servers.

The overall fit and feel of the machine is nice. I have no idea what the problem with the touch pad was when this unit first came out but the touch pad works just fine. Not as nice as one on a MacBook Pro, but much better than the ones I have found on other Lenovos that I have owned and fixed in the past. Boot and wake times are quick and aside from the Lenovo logo at the startup, they are difficult to tell which is which. For the money, I'm very happy with this purchase.

Cons: Power supply is as big as a brick. Seriously. Go out and find a standard masonry brick. Paint it black and set it next to you. That big. But at 170 watts it has to be big to power the graphics cards. I should have assumed this but the power of the graphics cards are significantly reduced when on battery power. No big deal but just be aware of this.

Other Thoughts: I was disappointed with the choice for hard drives. I will be purchasing a SSD when the prices come down a bit and they get bigger.

Pros: first off i have only had this thing one day and i am blown away by the speakers and the design is simple yet elegant the sheer delivery of simplicity and power is very appealing the only downside is the hdd so of course you will get an ssd for this to be a truly amazing product for the price.

Cons: as others will find out without a mouse good luck with this machine as the left and right click were not isolated on the touch pad. and i don't know if it is just me but when i have a controller and other peripherals plugged in the volume lessens.

Other Thoughts: love this machine so far and am glad i chose it over the asus g75vx and msi g70 :)

Pros: *Dual Graphic Cards
*SSD Cache (yes it does work at making windows faster)
*Huge amount of ram
*Runs high end games with minimal heat increase
*Low price point for the machine you get

Cons: *Some might say the lack of an optical drive, and while it does hinder the ease of loading games that I own on dvd/cd it is worth it because the space is being used by the second drive which you can pull out place a drive in that Lenovo sells for 70$. So for me not a con but had to note it just the same for other users.

Other Thoughts: No regrets whatsoever in this purchase unlike other laptops and the such that I have bought in the past and two days later was kicking myself. If you aren't rich or just don't like throwing money around for gaming rigs you will end up dumping a year later anyway this is the system to get.

Pros: Extremely powerful machine.
Decent battery life (given the power it has).
Screen is amazing.
Speakers are beyond anything I've ever head in a laptop.
Runs very cool even under heavy load (63C on each GPU when running the Unigine Heaven demo on max settings for about 10 minutes)

Cons: Overclocking of the GPU's is locked out in the BIOS.
Really needs to come with an SSD main drive.
Bloatware (not really that much).
I'm not a fan of Windows 8.

Other Thoughts: For the money you pay for it, this machine is very powerful, without being able to overclock it I'm scoring just shy of 4k 3dmarks in Performance mode.
In games its really awesome (at least for the ones I play). In Skryim I run 40+ fps constant, usually up near 60 with settings on Ultra and at the native panel resolution of 1920x1080.
Fallout:New Vegas runs at 60fps on Ultra while I'm recording FRAPS videos.
Sadly, Fallout 3 is apparently not compatible with Windows 8.. not the laptops fault, I blame Microsoft. On the whole this is an excellent machine, I bought it to use for work, school and play and it seems to be capable of fulfilling all those needs without breaking a sweat.
Eve-Online at 40ish FPS in heavy firefights with all settings maxed out.

Could this machine be better? Yeah sure it could, but would you want to pay for it? If so, go with one of the machines with an Nvidia GTX 675MX or GTX680MX (or even duals of those). personally I'm not made of money and this machine is exactly what I needed and the price didn't require me to auction any organs or extremities to be able to pay for it.

Pros: The screen, although not touchscreen, is bright and sharp. The CPU, Memory, and SLI GT 650m provide excellent performance during gaming on titles like WOW, Civ V, Skyrim, and most other current/recent titles. The SSD caching works well and after the initial load of an application or game, the load times are nearly SSD fast. I bought this to be my mobile gaming machine and it does not disappoint. Nice design, good hinges, high-end aluminum feel, nicely laid out keyboard, and excellent sound for a laptop. For the price, definite 5 star item.

Cons: There are few.

The overall dimensions and physical characteristics. By todays standards with ultrabooks, this thing is a monster. If you are looking for thin, light, and long battery life - look elsewhere. If you are looking at mid-range priced laptops with good specs and solid gaming performance - this is a nice product.

Battery life is a bit short - but who cares? If you are gaming on this laptop I would expect to have it plugged in the wall.

There is NO optical disc drive. To me, I don't care. Most of what I do is on iso anyway, but don't say you weren't warned.

All these Cons were expected on my part going into the purchase so they were a non-issue for me.

Other Thoughts: Experience - I am a network engineer and systems consultant for small businesses in CT. I would highly recommend this system to one of my clients if they were looking for a 15" laptop with good specs for gaming on current titles and general use.

My work laptop is a 3 year old Lenovo T500. I have owned many Lenovo/IBM laptops in the past, and I have always been a satisfied customer.

Pros: Intel i7 Processor, SLI capability, plenty of ram, 1 terabyte drive, 2 usb 3.0 ports, Bluetooth

Photoshop CS5 runs great. Games @ 1920 resolution have not hit below the 40fps (BF3, GW2, RE5, Bio Infinite, ....) Sli worked fine on those. I could see diff in frame rates when I just ran one card vs two.

**i7 integrated graphics(hd4000) is disabled. Most likely due to the SLI configuration capabilities of the system from Lenovo. If they could of worked a way for the SLI and hd4000 to work together. Could of expected much longer battery life.

Cons: Touchpad:(flimsy)
If using the buttons i.e Right/Left. Feels like you shall put your finger through the pad itself (lots of flex).

Speakers:
They are louder than the normal standard laptop/notebook speakers. Loud & clear enough for the netflix, youtube, etc. Speakers might be JBL, but do not expect to be blown away with rich deep sounds.

SSD - This is used for nothing more than Cache to run things faster.

Operating system? - Isn't part of the price paying associated with it having an operating system? If so. Where is my back up/Windows Operating System?

Other Thoughts: No Windows Product key? Looked all over and there is none. However, a simple 3rd party freeware app can gather that information for you. *just uninstall after done and remove the additional stuff that comes with "freeware" from programs(check the date).

The machine is just fine.

Knocked off 1 star for the cons. I do not really need the touchpad. I'll use a mouse or wacom tablet for my purposes. Besides, its not hard to just double tap on the touchpad or hold down alt and tap for properties if need be.

I have ran with 1 video card in the system. Was able to get over 4 hours before it ran low (surfing/netflix 2 monitor setup). Should be more than enough for college student that does not have immediate access to an outlet. Sure with just note taking and dim settings it could possibly last longer.

Blu-ray hot swap drive still is not posted on Lenovo website as of 2013 05 April. Fortunately, I have an old USB Blu-ray drive i purchased from Newegg.

Sound is awesome coming from the headphone jack or via the HDMI connection to my television.

System should last me two+ years easily.

**One last thing. The Lenovo Screen information that pops up(inactivity) has misinformation/false. Ignore the Dual Coloured Keyboard part. There is only ONE colour. Might of meant brightness modes or maybe they scrapped that part in development.

Pros: This unit has impressive specs, with an over-all solid build quality.

Cons: Unit ships with Windows 8 which just doesn't make sense on non-touch devices. That said, Lenovo has posted Windows 7 drivers, if the buyer wants to downgrade.

Touch pad is mediocre at best, and Lenovo cut some corners (see "Other thoughts").

Other Thoughts: Unbeknownst to me when I ordered this, the Y500 series does not support SATA RAID mode in BIOS, a requirement to enable Intel RST SSD caching. Lenovo pre-installs "ExpressCache" software to address this, but you don't have nearly as much control as you would if it had native RST support. I will be removing the SSD cache and HDD, and installing a dedicated SSD to address this.

OEM accessory support is lacking - Lenovo makes a Blu Ray drive for the Ultrabay (it is available in other pre-built configurations on their store), but I've been unable to locate a part number, let alone a place to purchase it.

Unlike other Lenovo units I've used, there is no built-in Lenovo Update for BIOS, firmware, driver, and other software updates.

Either the SSD and HDD are only SATA II, or Lenovo opted to install them on the SATA II bus, as the Intel RST software is only reporting them operating at SATA II speeds (3 Gbps), not the SATA III (6 Gbps) supported by the HM76 chipset.

All that said, if you understand all of this when purchasing, and don't set yourself up to be disappointed, the amount of laptop you are getting for the price is pretty incredible.