Lenovo Y550P Review and Laptop Specs
January 4, 2010
Lenovo’s new Y550P is the first laptop from the manufacturer to feature Intel’s beastly new Quad Core i7 processor with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology that automatically speeds up the processor when the PC needs extra juice. The laptop also boasts a sleek design with integrated subwoofer and Lenovo Enhanced Experience features like SlideNav and OneKey. It’s actually Microsoft Windows 7 Enhanced Experience certified, whatever that means. We recently picked up two of these bad boys as our new daily machines and we’ve been purty happy ever since. The biggest change for us was just the switch from Vista to Windows 7 — much improved, still not perfect… obviously. We debated on making the switch to Mac but decided against it (see controversial image above).
(Full disclosure, these are affiliate links above but we do in fact own and like these laptops.)
The Good:
- Looks: thin, sleek, the copper border around the top with the black textured lid looks great. The white keyboard lights are a nice touch.
- Performance: the processor is a monster, comes with 4GB of DDR3 (expandable to 8GB). It boots/shuts down quickly, rarely any slow down.
- Keyboard feels good, the trackpad’s great after you adjust the sensitivity settings (the Palm detector and pinch multi-touch zoom in particular need to be less sensitive)
- Great wifi card (Intel 5300 instead of Intel 5100)
- Has Bluetooth
- Built in Webcam
- Speakers are great for a laptop and it even has a mini-mini-mini subwoofer on the underside
- Has HDMI out
- Good battery life for such a powerful machine (~3 hours)
- Lightweight/portable
- 1GB of dedicated graphics, nice.
- Big 500GB hard drive
The Bad:
- Screen is only 16:9, not 16:10 so it’s not true HD.
- No Bluray player (see #1)
- Comes preinstalled with a lot of junk… pretty standard these days, unfortunately.
- SlideNav is pretty useless, I just disabled it. The pinch zoom is pretty useless too, be sure to lower the sensitivity.
- Hard drive is only 5400 RPM, this is the performance bottle neck of the system.
The Summary:
We looked at other laptops (from HP, Dell, etc..) featuring the i7 processor but nobody could match the looks, price, and features of the Lenovo Y550P. It has to be the best or one of the best laptops you can buy for ~$1,000. If you spend some extra coin and put in a solid state drive and 8GB of RAM it would be an absolute monster laptop that is still cool looking and portable.
(Full disclosure, these are affiliate links above but we do in fact own and like these laptops.)
Specs from Newegg’s website:
| Model | |
| Brand | lenovo |
| Series | IdeaPad |
| Model | Y550P(324156U) |
| Part# | 324156U |
| General | |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit |
| CPU Type | Intel Core i7 720QM(1.6GHz) |
| Screen | 15.6″ |
| Memory Size | 4GB DDR3 |
| Hard Disk | 500GB |
| Optical Drive | DVD±R/RW |
| Graphics Card | NVIDIA GeForce GT 240M |
| Video Memory | 1GB GDDR3 |
| Communication | Gigabit LAN and WLAN |
| Card slot | 1 x Express Card |
| Dimensions | 15.20″ x 10.00″ x 1.02″ – 1.50″ |
| Weight | 6.06 lbs. |
| CPU | |
| CPU Type | Intel Core i7 |
| CPU Speed | 720QM(1.60GHz) |
| Display | |
| Screen Size | 15.6″ |
| Wide Screen Support | Yes |
| Resolution | 1366 x 768 |
| Operating Systems | |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit |
| Graphics | |
| GPU/VPU | NVIDIA GeForce GT 240M |
| Video Memory | 1GB GDDR3 |
| Graphic Type | Dedicated Card |
| Hard Drive | |
| HDD | 500GB |
| HDD RPM | 5400rpm |
| Memory | |
| Memory | 4GB |
| Memory Spec | 2GB x 2 |
| Memory Type | 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM |
| Memory Slot (Total) | 2 |
| Memory Slot (Available) | 0 |
| Optical Drive | |
| Optical Drive Type | DVD±R/RW |
| Optical Drive Interface | Integrated |
| Communications | |
| LAN | 10/100/1000Mbps |
| WLAN | 802.11n Wireless LAN |
| Ports | |
| Card Slot | 1 x Express Card |
| USB | Two USB 2.0 and one eSATA/USB combo port |
| Video Port | 1 x VGA, 1 x HDMI |
| Audio Ports | 1 x Microphone jack; 1 x Headphone jack |
| Audio | |
| Audio | Integrated Sound card |
| Speaker | Internal Speakers |
| Input Device | |
| Touchpad | Yes |
| Keyboard | Standard |
| Supplemental Drive | |
| Card Reader | 6-in-1 |
| Webcam | Yes |
| Power | |
| Battery | 6-cell lithium ion |
| Physical spec | |
| Dimensions | 15.20″ x 10.00″ x 1.02″ – 1.50″ |
| Weight | 6.06 lbs. |
| Manufacturer Warranty | |
| Parts | 1 year limited |
| Labor | 1 year limited |
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