- AMD A10-7300
- 8GB Memory 1TB HDD
- AMD Radeon R6 Series
- 1366 x 768
- Windows 8.1
- DVDRW
Lenovo Z50-75 with A10-7300APU
08/13/2014
This review is from: Lenovo Laptop AMD A10-7300 8GB Memory 1TB HDD AMD Radeon R6 Series 15.6" Windows 8.1 Z50 (80EC000TUS)
Pros:
The Lenovo Model Z50-75 with an A10-7300 APU is a very nicely balanced machine. The x86 quad core is very lively and responsive. The R6 GPU and display are also quite nice. The machine is simple and lean, and very quiet. The speakers sound small, but they can get plenty loud.
Drivers for Windows 7 are available online, but there's no need -- Windows 8.1 with an external mouse is just fine on this laptop.
Laptop internals are easily accessible and an SSD upgrade would be huge. Lenovo's Hardware Maintenance Manual is refreshingly good.
Cons:
The drivers are "early" but stable.
No HDD activity indicator. The HDD is a primary bottleneck for this laptop, and an indicator would be very useful. A task manager "summary view" is a good work around for this.
The only updated Lenovo download that I needed was BIOS v. 1.07 -- the machine shipped with v. 1.03. However, Lenovo's automatic updater application said "Your computer is up to date." Uh huh. I guess a new BIOS doesn't qualify. I had to manually update it.
I tried AMD Catalyst 14.6 rc and saw some improvement. However it introduced an intermittent problem with a "frozen screen" type system lockup when on battery power. Backing out to Lenovo release drivers required a Windows 8.1 "Refresh" type recovery of Windows.
Overall Review:
Nephew bought this from NewEgg. This is a good value, excellent student machine that will allow some casual gaming.
Benchmark Unigen Heaven 4.0, with Balanced power plan and Catalyst 14.4 @ DX11, medium quality, moderate tessellation, no AA, 1366 x 768 full screen: scores 378 and 15.0 fps (scores 321 and 12.8 fps on battery). This 19 W TDP student machine has some game!
Per CPU-Z: the 8 GB RAM is 2 x SODIMM Samsung M471B5173DB0-YK0 running at DDR3L 1600, and the 1 TB HDD is ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB. The battery is L12M4A02. The 45 W charger is Lite-on ADLX45NLC3A. The Wi-Fi adapter is Qualcomm Atheros AR956x operating at 2.4 GHz 802.11n.
There was no recovery media provided. A 16 GB flash drive is required to create a "USB Recovery Drive." There is a small partition D: with 2.1 GB of factory applications and drivers on it. A single DVD-R on the internal DVD burner will handle that. Recovery media: check.
Addition of a "Microsoft Sculpt Comfort Mouse bluetooth" operates beautifully. It feels like a wired mouse. The track-pad can be enabled and disabled automatically, or manually with a hot-key. This mouse is a great combination with this laptop.
Parts used:
Silicon Power USB 3.0 16 GB: N82E16820301043
Microsoft Bluetooth mouse: N82E16826105646
ex ovo omnia
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