Home > Laptop Reviews > Lenovo Y700 (15 and 17 inch)

Lenovo IdeaPad Y700

Editor's rating (1-5):

Tweet

What's Hot: Nice price for a powerful gaming and multimedia laptop. Fast quad core CPU, NVIDIA GTX 960M graphics.

What's Not: Heavy for students on the go, so-so trackpad. Port selection is basic.

Reviewed January 5, 2016 by Lisa Gade, Editor in Chief (twitter: @lisagade)

The Lenovo Y series of gaming and multimedia laptops are relatively affordable yet powerful machines that are an alternative to the slimmer, more stylish and significantly more expensive Dell XPS 15, Asus ZenBook Pro UX 501 and the 15" Retina MacBook Pro. At times they've been innovative with features like a bay for a second dedicated graphics card in SLI, but this year's Y700 models pay more attention to slimming and price than innovation or compelling new features. Granted, there's only so much you can ask from a quad core i7 powerhouse with NVIDIA GTX 960M graphics and readily serviceable internals that sells for $1,100 nicely configured. There are precious few similarly spec-d laptops that sell for this little, with MSI's Apache Pro series being among them. Lenovo also makes a 14" Y700 that's available at a lower price point with your choice of AMD or Intel inside (we didn't receive the 14" for review).

Design and Build

The Y700 15.6 (5.7 lbs.) and 17 inch (7.7 lbs.) models we have in for review are hardly lightweights, but that might be too much to ask for the price. They're comparable to the Dell Inspiron and MSI Apache Pro line in terms of weight and footprint. If you're buying a Y700 to tote around campus, keep in mind that these are fairly hefty machines. Though MSI manages to fit a DVD drive in a similar size and weight chassis, the Y700 foregoes the optical drive (it was one an option that slid into a multipurpose bay on old Y series models). Port selection is a bit anemic and not exactly cutting edge: 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 USB 2.0 port (why are we still seeing old fashioned 2.0 here?), HDMI 1.4, an SD card slot, Ethernet and a 3.5mm combo mic-headphone jack (no separate audio jacks with a fancy audio DAC like the MSI Apache Pro). The port selection is competent, but for those of you who want to drive a 4k external monitor at 60Hz, there's no DisplayPort, nor is there a USB-C port.

Styling is relatively understated for a notebook that appeals to gamers. There are red accents and cutouts at the rear sides for a little gamer flair, while the top and bottom are matte black brushed aluminum-- a mainstay of the Y series. The lid and bottom panel are metal, though they might look like plastic. Both machines share the same styling and port selection and internal slots for RAM, M.2 SSD, 2.5" HDD and wireless card. They're nice enough looking and casing rigidity is good; again fair stuff for the price.

The 2 watt JBL speakers with 3 watt subwoofer that fires from the bottom are really good: loud, full, rich and clear. Lenovo uses Dolby audio software for EQ settings, and the default out of the box settings sounded equally good for movies, games and music. We're always pleased to hear quality sound from a multimedia and gaming oriented laptop.

You'll be able to hear the speakers even when gaming thanks to an efficient dual fan system and good cooling. The Y700s weren't hot to the touch when gaming except near the Enter key and the corresponding spot on the underside. The hotspot hit 99F, which isn't really terribly hot. The rest of the keyboard area and the undersides measured 80F (this review was done in winter). We didn't see excessive thermal throttling and CPU and GPU temperatures were ideal when gaming (75C).

Display

Both our 15 and 17 inch models have full HD 1920 x 1080 IPS displays. There's no touch option for the 17" Y700, and there's no 4K option for the 15" (it is available for the 17"). The resolution suits gaming well since the laptop has the horsepower to game at high settings at 1080p but not at 4K (few laptops are strong enough for 4K gaming). Display quality has sometimes been a sore point with the Y series over the years; after all Lenovo had to cut corners somewhere to bring these in at just over $1,000. The Y700 15 and 17 inch have some of the best displays yet on a Y machine, with a few caveats. Though they look fairly pleasing, color gamut isn't a high point for the 15.6" full HD touch screen model. It represents a paltry 66% of sRGB and 50% of Adobe RGB, where other similarly priced laptops manage 95% of sRGB and 75% of Adobe RGB. If you're looking for a serious photo editing laptop, this display isn't a top pick. It has reasonable brightness at 249 nits. It's not among the super-bright laptops but it's more than adequate for indoor use, and Lenovo's anti-glare layer helps combat reflections. It produces an OK contrast ratio of 560:1 and a black level of 0.44 at max brightness. The non-touch 17.3" full HD display is brighter at 349 nits and it thus has a higher contrast ratio of 700:1 despite slightly worse 0.5 black levels. It too has an anti-glare film to combat reflections. It has a higher color gamut than our 15.6" 1920 x 1080 model, and it represents 92% of sRGB and 71% of Adobe RGB.

Lenovo IdeaPad Y700 Video Review - 15 & 17 Inch Models

Performance and Horsepower

Like the Dell XPS 15, MSI Apache Pro, MSI Ghost Pro and the updated Asus ZenBook Pro UX501, the 15 and 17 inch Lenovo Y700 models are available with the 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ. That's a quad core, 45 watt, 6th generation Intel Skylake CPU with Intel 530 graphics. It has NVIDIA GTX 960M dedicated graphics (again like the Dell, several MSI lower end models and the ZenBook Pro), with most configurations having 4 GB DDR5 VRAM. That's more generous than the more common 2 GB DDR5 VRAM available in pro apps oriented laptops like the XPS 15, though the added RAM is more useful for resolutions above 1920 x 1080 for today's tier 1 3D games. As you might guess, the Lenovo doesn't cut corners when it comes to performance and it has the computational power for speedy software compiles, number crunching and turn calculation in RTS games. The GTX 960M is a respectable GPU that's at the lower end of NVIDIA's top graphics card tier, and it's powerful enough to play any game at 1080p resolution at high or a mix or medium and high settings.

For those who are budget conscious, there is a Core i5-6300HQ option, and that's still a quad core CPU running at 45 watts, and it's nearly twice as fast as the average Core i5 Ultrabook running on Intel 15 watt CPUs. The machine has two RAM slots that are accessible once you remove the bottom cover (beware the bottom cover wraps around the back and has tenacious plastic clips). There'a an M.2 SSD slot fitted with a SATA interface SSD and a 2.5" HDD bay as well as a socketed wireless card (fitted with an Intel dual band WiFi 802.11AC + Bluetooth card). Once you remove the bottom cover, the battery is readily accessible should it require replacement in a few years. The laptop has two fans, one for the CPU and another for the NVIDIA GPU, and these work efficiently and fairly quietly for both the 15 and 17 inch Y700 models.

Benchmarks:

PCMark 8 Home : 3303

Geekbench 3: 3768 / 13,475

wPrime: 11.6 seconds

Unigine Heaven 4 (1920 x 1080, high, no tessellation) : fps: 44.8, score 1128.  Max GPU temp: 69C

3DMark 11:   P5561, X1823

3DMark Cloud Gate: 17,492

3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited: 118,768

3DMark Fire Strike Extreme: 2006

Advertisement