Lenovo Y700 Gaming Laptop | Geek Node Archive

Manufacturer Lenovo
Where we got our copy Lenovo South Africa

plut

Published May 31, 2017

It may just be me – but a gaming laptop looks purposeful, like its had a dash of hot rod paint. The fans almost look like they’ve been coated with some kind of heat resistant material. Hell, even the fancy lights appear like they mean something. Its almost as if the manufacturer decided that these kinds of laptops needed a go-faster kit to appeal to a more hardcore and demanding demographic. Uhm, I think they had the 12-year old me in mind during the design phase and it’s also the reason I’m partly in love with the way it looks. Dang .

So, Lenovo sells its 15″ Y700 laptop as a gaming laptop. By all accounts it appears as one, and functions as a gamer’s machine. While it does run most games at high frame rates, it functions better as a workstation, which I’ll elaborate on a little later. It sports an Intel Core i7 6700HQ CPU, NVIDIA Geforce GTX 960m graphics chipset and 16GB of DDR4 memory. The Y700 also comes with an ALPS touchpad, gaming mouse and mouse pad. The screen displays at 1920×1080 resolution. There’s also a 720p webcam at the front, 2 USB 3.0 ports and a single USB 2.0 port. Lenovo provided a HDMI port for screen output and Ethernet port for networking. The Intel wireless card you get support 802.11ac and Bluetooth. The Y700 uses Lenovo’s standard “flat” charger connector, and the keyboard lights up. Lenovo claims that the screen has a 170-degree viewing angle. Essentialy they’ve covered the enthusiast crown pretty well. Unlike most laptops which throw in 2 USB 3.0c ports, this is a more complete configuration with more connectivity options built in. To me anyway, this is a great way to replace to offer a device as a desktop replacement.

The Y700 sports a black and red colour scheme, replicated with the bundled M800 gaming mouse and mouse mat. While the outside of the laptop is metal for the most part, the area around keyboard and touchpad are soft to the touch. The WASD key combination is accentuated with a brighter red than the other keys. The black-red motif remains apparent, though Lenovo have chosen to use a more minimal design than the Alienware 15. Lenovo clearly want us to know what’s inside their mini-monster. The NVIDIA and Intel logos are instant eye catchers, so is the large Ideapad Y700 sticker on the right of the touchpad. Here’s what sets it apart from other “gaming” laptops though: The Y700’s design is far more minimal than say, Dell’s XPS 15 or the Alienware 15. I appreciated that Lenovo opted for a more uniform look, keeping the fancy lighting to its keyboard, and choosing function over form.

There was a definite weightiness about the Y700. The brushed aluminium outer shell felt solid, and the fact that there was barely any bezel to be seen on the display impressed me. The screen also used a single piece swivel, which I could adjust with ease and had very little shake on rapid movement. Most laptops would’ve had a simpler mechanism for the sake of cost cutting.

Since Lenovo markets the Y700 as a gamer’s machine it makes sense to give it decent storage space – given that so many new games take up in excess of 50Gb. You’ll get a 100gb solid state drive (SSD) and a 5400RPM 1TB mechanical hard disk. While the combined 1100GB of space is generous, loading games from the 1TB hard disk is much slower than the SSD. Anyone who has the fortune of working from a SSD will know what difference one of these drives makes to overall responsiveness. That said though, I installed a few games on the primary solid state drive and loading times were great. Unfortunately I couldn’t say the same about the secondary mechanical disk. Perhaps Lenovo would’ve done better by giving more space on a single SSD, as opposed to the mixed configuration on the unit I was provided with.

Let’s talk about performance. It’s no secret that computers designed around gaming work well as workstations. To test this I used the Y700 as a work computer during the day. Performance was strong with the processor scaling its frequency down to around 2GHZ while on battery. Response time diminished slightly as compared to when on power, and I achieved just under four hours of time on battery before I had to plug in the power again. I was a little disappointed by the time on battery since many other laptops, including the HP Omen and Dell Inspiron 15 achieve over 5 hours of battery life while on AC power.

It was a bit of an expectation from my side that the Y700 lasted a bit longer – not just because this is a mobile unit, but because I used it for working too. Knowing that a computer I was using could run the games I wanted while being efficient enough to last while mobile was a big requirement for me as a professional. It’s the side of me that wanted a Porsche over a Ferrari, even if the latter were sexier and far more desirable, even with age. My hopes are that Lenovo can address this with their next hardware revision. Still, when the power was plugged in I couldn’t fault the unit’s performance in anyway.

It’s no surprise, though, that the Y700’s peak performance comes out with the charger plugged in. Lenovo’s standard 90-watt power adapter seemed to provide enough juice for the laptop, even under load. I didn’t notice any reduction in CPU or GPU speeds. The Core i7 6700HQ kept its clock speed above 2.6Ghz, and the Geforce GTX 960m registered a speed of 1050-1090Mhz. This meant that more demanding games could run at the display’s native 1920×1080 resolution without major issues. For the less techy types it meant that the Y700 could just about anything I threw at it with barely any impact to performance. The first test I did was to run Lego Worlds, a game with exceptional scalability. Although it ran at a perfect 60 framers per second – the game did slow down in the same places most other configurations did: the lava island. Either the optimisation work on the game was lacking or the mobile GPU wasn’t up to snuff in keeping up with the graphical demands of this particular level. I need to note that the GTX 960m is a mid-range GPU though – and it’d be unfair to expect higher graphics performance levels from it.

A game like Far Cry 4, The Witcher 3 or Battlefield 1 won’t run at 60 frames per second on high and above detail at 1080p. Lower detail levels at this resolution are definitely possible. Whereas, games like Far Cry 3 or Metro: Last Light will run at faster frame rates and with anti-aliasing enabled due to less demands on the graphics hardware. I maxed out Far Cry 3’s and Metro: Last Light’s settings and the Y700 took both games in its stride, running above 60 frames per second, which was great. For the games that did suffer, the performance deficit came from the fact the Y700 came with an older generation graphics chipset. The HP Omen, priced at around R1000 less, for example, comes with a NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060m, which trounces the older 960m in every way.

I saw this in particular with 3DMark 11 – where a mid-range benchmark, Sky Diver stayed within the 50-70 frames per second range . The more demanding benchmark, Fire Strike ran at a low 5-7 frames per second . The same happened with Time Spy – Futuremark’s DirectX 12 benchmark . The GTX 960m graphics just couldn’t keep up with the demands of the higher-end tests. I also noticed that the Y700’s scores were 200 or so points short of the average.

Don’t get me wrong, – the Y700 is still a strong performer. I ran PCMark 8 on both accelerated and conventional benchmarks and its performance ratings stood somewhat below minimum VR specifications. We’re talking about machines with at least NVIDIA 1060m or 1070m graphics chipsets. I maintain that the Y700 makes a great workstation – and one I’d use every day at that.

The keyboard is soft and responsive – as is my preference. Lenovo opted to use an ALPS touchpad, and sadly this is one of the machine’s biggest weaknesses. It’s too sensitive. Where most well-implemented trackpads allow a click and drag without letting go of an icon, this one does exactly the opposite and no matter how much tweaking I did, there was no suitable balance I could find. It was frustrating – and having used better touchpads on the Lenovo T540p, or T520 – I was left disappointed. One situation had me moving some files between folders. The touchpad kept looking track of my inputs, resulting in a file that either didn’t move or moved to the wrong place. Another was when I wanted to browse through some online articles. A great touchpad, like the one on the Asus X550LC (my work machine) has a tactile but soft click. The click on the Y700’s was far too stiff, and it was made worse when tapping to access hyperlinks when inputs simply didn’t register. Yes, the buttons worked and it was mostly functional but it wasn’t enough to be a viable alternative to an external mouse. That leads me to outputs, speakers specifically.

The Y700 uses Dolby technology for its JBL speakers and the result is great – for a laptop speaker. I wasn’t expecting dedicated speaker performance levels in game, but was pleasantly surprised at how well the mid, high and low frequencies were represented. It helped that the Dolby Speaker technology created a sound field around me, imitating surround sound. Cranking the volume up to maximum levels did produce noticeable distortion, though. Not being a fan of using laptop speakers, impressed by the fact that audio was so well represented with this unit. If I wasn’t gaming I used the speakers to stream Youtube links, or Amazon Prime and the result was great. Dolby’s speaker technology really does create a big stereo field around the listener. I heard it best when playing games like Far Cry which make good use of environmental noise. The fact that there was an actual bass response out of these speakers was telling in itself.

Lenovo tried to include minimal software with the base operating system, most of which has a real purpose. The Lenovo Solution Center, for example, served as an in-OS hardware tester. OneKey Recovery was provided as an alternative to Windows Backup. Others gave me the ability to put the fans into overdrive in order to clear out dust. The only piece of software I had an issue with was the pre-installed McAfee LiveSafe, where I chose to install my own antivirus instead. This was more a matter of preference on my part. I must note that all of these could be removed quite easily. That said, though, I was pleasantly surprised how clean the operating system was, having tested a few Acer models before – which came with far more crapware than the Y700.

The M800 mouse that the Y700 came with attachable weights via a removable tray. It reminded me a little of the R.A.T. series of mouses, and felt comfortable enough, even with hours of use. The mouse pad felt quite similar to Zowie’s, complete with outer stitching on its borders and black colouring. While I still found myself reverting my well-worn Logitech G100s, the M800 was quite a great mouse with plenty of little customisations for those wanting to tinker. For example – I found that I wanted to increase the weight of the mouse. The change was effortless, all I had to do was remove a hatch at the bottom of the mouse and add in the weights. While the mouse was a little large it fit quite snugly into my hand (which incidentally fits into the “small to medium” range), and I had no issue lifting it while playing. My kudos to Lenovo for providing one with the unit too.

The looks did it for me, so did the use of premium materials like brushed aluminium around the outer shell. I even had a work colleague come to me asking how she could get a Y700, and what it could do compared to her own work laptop. You know a device is desirable when people find it fascinating just by looking at it. The screen was pleasantly bright and every task I asked the laptop to do, it did well, even the basic tasks like word processing. The speakers surprised me with their quality and the keyboard’s keys were well-spaced. Typing out a document or email was a pleasure on the soft keyboard. As a sitting workstation the Y700 does its job with ease. I particularly liked the fact that there was an Ethernet port too, a rarity in the days of wireless networking being the only connectivity option available on so many models.

The Y700 sells for around R21000-R26000. For most this is too high a premium to pay for a desktop replacement and I do feel that that it should be selling for around R2000 cheaper, since HP offers a 15″ model with higher specifications. Perhaps with newer models coming out in the next few months, we should see a decrease in price fairly soon. This is one of the major snags I found with the Y700. Asking for such a high price on older components seems like a bad idea when your competition sells stronger units for a better cost.

To conclude, the Y700 is a well-built laptop with premium performance that not only serves as a decent gaming machine, but also a strong workstation. If Lenovo refreshes the Y700 with a 7th generation Core i7 and 10-series NVIDIA GPU, the performance potential in the next iteration of this unit could be massive. The touchpad was a pain to use. but one could argue that Lenovo did provide a premium mouse and mousepad with the laptop, which is basically what I used the laptop with throughout this test. I would argue that the workstation function of the Y700 is better than its gaming side, and it’s down to the older graphics hardware. I would say that if you’re getting the Y700 as a workstation more than a gaming rig, then you’re making a great choice. While it does both, a power user who’ll be working more than playing will appreciate the overall processing power more than its underwhelming graphics performance. Still, by buying a Y700 as a gamer you wouldn’t be making a bad choice. All we need now is the expected hardware refresh and this laptop’s performance and efficiency potential will be realised.

It may just be me - but a gaming laptop looks purposeful, like its had a dash of hot rod paint. The fans almost look like they've been coated with some kind of heat resistant material. Hell, even the fancy lights appear like they mean something. Its almost as if the manufacturer decided that these kinds of laptops needed a go-faster kit to appeal to a more hardcore and demanding demographic. Uhm, I think they had the 12-year old me in mind during the design phase and it's also the reason I'm partly in love with the way it looks. Dang. So, Lenovo sells its 15" Y700 laptop as a gaming laptop. By all accounts it appears as one, and functions as a gamer's machine. While it does run most games at high frame rates, it functions better as a workstation, which I'll elaborate on a little later. It sports an Intel Core i7 6700HQ CPU, NVIDIA Geforce GTX 960m graphics chipset and 16GB of DDR4 memory. The Y700 also comes with an ALPS touchpad, gaming mouse and mouse pad. The screen displays at 1920x1080 resolution. There's also a 720p webcam at the front, 2 USB 3.0 ports and a single USB 2.0 port. Lenovo provided a HDMI port for screen output and Ethernet port for networking. The Intel wireless card you get support 802.11ac and Bluetooth. The Y700 uses Lenovo's standard "flat" charger connector, and the keyboard lights up. Lenovo claims that the screen has a 170-degree viewing angle. Essentialy they've covered the enthusiast crown pretty well. Unlike most laptops which throw in 2 USB 3.0c ports, this is a more complete configuration with more connectivity options built in. To me anyway, this is a great way to replace to offer a device as a desktop replacement. The Y700 sports a black and red colour scheme, replicated with the bundled M800 gaming mouse and mouse mat. While the outside of the laptop is metal for the most part, the area around keyboard and touchpad are soft to the touch. The WASD key combination is accentuated with a brighter red than the other keys. The black-red motif remains apparent, though Lenovo have chosen to use a more minimal design than the Alienware 15. Lenovo clearly want us to know what's inside their mini-monster. The NVIDIA and Intel logos are instant eye catchers, so is the large Ideapad Y700 sticker on the right of the touchpad. Here's what sets it apart from other "gaming" laptops though: The Y700's design is far more minimal than say, Dell's XPS 15 or the Alienware 15. I appreciated that Lenovo opted for a more uniform look, keeping the fancy lighting to its keyboard, and choosing function over form. There was a definite weightiness about the Y700. The brushed aluminium outer shell felt solid, and the fact that there was barely any bezel to be seen on the display impressed me. The screen also used a single piece swivel, which I could adjust with ease and had…

Tech Review: Lenovo Y700 Gaming Laptop

2017-05-31

plut

Lenovo Y700

Total - 7.5

75 7.5

A well built and sturdy unit with strong performance in most areas. There's a serious need for a hardware refresh, though.

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Zubayr could be defined as any one of these traits: Grizzled, optimistic, jaded, blunt, opinionated, irreverent and reserved. His experience was once carbon dated to the glory days of Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. It still amazes him how irrelevant those have become these days.Some say his tears generate DLC unlock codes, and that the WASD combination was discovered by his typo while on Yahoo Chat.