Should I buy this? Lenovo Y480

[joeman99]

Hey guys, I've been doing lots of research in the past 2 months for a laptop for college, and I am deciding on buying the Lenovo Y480. Here's a list of advantages/disadvantages I've found out:

Advantages:
3rd gen i7 3610QM
8 GB of fast 1600 MHz RAM
Backlit keyboard and the trackpad seem to have good reviews - I'd buy the HP dv6t-7000 if the arrow keys weren't squished
Online deals have it at $800 - I don't want to go over $900

Meh:
1366x768 screen
4-5 hour battery
a bit heavy at 4.9 pounds - I would have gotten the Y580 but the weight was too much of a disadvantage

Disadvantage:
GT640M LE graphics card (reportedly, the bad driver makes it suck even more)

I'm not much of a gamer, and if I do play games it's usually online flash games. However, I am a designer and do work with Adobe After Effects and Photoshop, and will be connecting this laptop to higher resolution monitors to work. Do you guys think I'm going to regret the graphics card? Or is that fine for what I'm doing? I think the CPU matters the most with video/image/sound editing.

 

[jaguarskx]

College is still a few months away. If there's no need to buy a laptop now, then the best thing to do is wait for more laptops to be released during the summer.

The 14" GIGABYTE U2442 ultrabook might be something to consider depending on the price. Supposedly there's going to be a GT 640m and GT 650m version, but I think getting the GT 650m version will definitely be over $1,000. It will have a 1600x900 resolution screen. No release date yet though.

http://www.gigabyte.com/press-center/news-page.aspx?nid=1127

As an owner of the Lenovo IdeaPad Y470, I would say it is a good laptop for games. The GT 640LE in the Y480 would actually be slightly slower than the GT 550m in the Y470. The main problem I have with the Y470 is that it gets hot when playing games; like 92C. Based on user comments and partially disassembled pictures of the Y470, the overheating is due to an excessive amount of thermal paste, so much that it actually acts like a heat insulator. People who have cleaned out the thermal paste and applied the correct amount stated that their temps immediate dropped to either high 60C's or low 70C's when playing games.

I'm debating whether or not to replace the thermal paste myself or complain a lot to Lenovo and have them do it for me. The problem is I bought a 2 year extended warranty. If I replace the thermal paste myself I will be voiding my warranty which still has 27 or 28 month left on it. Of course if I send it to Lenovo for warranty service I'll have to pay shipping.

The other issue I have is the limited 1366x768 resolution. A bit too low to do any serious multi-tasking since I have to constantly flip between a few windows or constantly re-arrange their position to get to the info I want. If I decide to buy a new laptop next year, it will definitely have a higher resolution than 1366x768.

 

[joeman99]

Thanks jaguarskx, I actually just sold my desktop, so I may need one a bit sooner than college.. or just deal with a 5 year old AMD laptop for now. I guess that's fine if I don't game.

I would get the ultrabooks, especially Lenovo's U410 series, except they generally all come with the Ivy Bridge iX-XXXXU processors, which benchmark way lower than the i7-XXXXQM processors - for more battery life, I guess. Seeing as my old laptop was 6.6 pounds, I guess getting the Lenovo Y580 wouldn't be that bad as it would be 6.2 pounds, though I'm really looking for a i7 Ivy Bridge non-U series 14" laptop. Maybe I'll create a new posting asking about that, and then wait till mid-July before making a decision.

Do you or anyone know about how good the HP dv6t-7000 series is? I really like it, and for 1080p I may pay a bit more, but the design of the arrow keys on the keyboard seem really annoying to me.