Disclosure: This review unit is provided by Lenovo.
Gaming Notebooks- then Vs. now…
Its been a very long time since I reviewed a gaming notebook. It was the good times. RGB lighting was not a thing, though many manufacturers worked on lighting effects- logo, laptop’s edges, keys, etc. Some manufacturers had one-touch auto overclock option where the CPU and GPU’s clock speed jumps up with the fan speed increased to push out heat quickly for the overclock to be stable. Irrespective of the manufacturer, those fans were loud once the on-the-fly OC button was pressed.
Lenovo has their own gaming notebook lineup. I’ll not be surprised if the company didn’t have overclocking options even in the previous models. But a lot of people picked up on such models it was practical. There were no overwhelming design, no out-of-the-box redundant lighting, very broad and heavy form-factor enough to call it as a desktop replacement unit rather than a laptop. Lenovo Y700 has the same way of doing things so let’s take a good look.
Once upon a time, many PC desktop users felt notebooks are ‘limited’ and because of that, an impression was made. Gaming PCs were considered nothing more than a desktop replacement unit. Now, many types of users have a different point of view. Many gaming notebooks, irrespective of the style, reinvigorate a confidence that gaming notebooks are just as good for non-gaming usage. Many enthusiasts and casual users believe that gaming notebooks are more durable (with an exception to notebooks like ThinkPad). A part of the credit goes to the CPU and GPU manufacturers that roll out power efficient products as every generation passes by. Followed by storage, RAM, chipset, etc. Gaming notebooks were the first to have backlit keyboards which trickled down to certain makes of non-gaming notebooks and ultrabooks. Gaming notebooks, though it commands a premium, always sets a standard. Or at least that’s how I see it. At the time of preparing this review, news about gaming notebooks using desktop GPU cores just came in. M.2 and 7mm SSD drives are available in certain notebook configurations by default. Things are looking good for portable PC computing now compared to before because manufacturers pushed themselves and its competitions to where it is now.
Introduction
The Lenovo Y700 that I am testing is the one is with the GTX 960M so we’ll see how good Lenovo gaming notebooks can be, starting with the Y700. The Y700-15ISK is a 15.6″ display size version. The Lenovo Y700-17ISK is a 17.3″ display size version. Both are full HD display variants. This is the 15-inch variant.
The Lenovo Y700 uses a four-core-eight-thread Intel Core i7 6700HQ Skylake processor which has an Intel HD graphics 530 and CPU base/turbo clock speed at 2.6/ up to 3.5 GHz. Its TDP is 45w. The discrete graphics is an Nvidia GTX 960M, a 4GB 28nm Maxwell architecture solution. It uses a 1080p display panel, has a 128GB M.2 primary SSD and a 1TB mechanical drive as a secondary storage.
You could buy this from Amazon India. But the sellers got the specifications wrong and despite being corrected by interested individuals, they are not bothering to correct it. Strange!
If you are interested in the Lenovo Y700, it is better to buy from its official website that listed two variants. The 99,990/- INR has 16GB memory while the Rs. 91,990/- INR variant is just 8GB. At first, it looked strange that Lenovo is charging Rs. 8,000/- just for an extra 8gig 2133MHz DDR4. The tech specs tab shows Lenovo Y700 has two display resolution variants and also three storage variants. One is the frameless FHD and the second is the UHD resolution with anti-glare. The speakers are made by JBL. The notebook uses 2x 2w speakers plus a 3.0w subwoofer in its base. The ones sold in India for the price difference is only for the extra 8gig DDR4.
The Lenovo Y700 notebook has three years onsite warranty and three years damage protection at the time of writing.
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