The ‘Y’ series introduces Lenovo to the entertainment hemisphere, a realm where looks, performance, and functionality are of utmost importance, although—not in that order.
The Y510 is a well-built notebook. The hinge system looks neat and when opened reveals five LEDs, which are battery indicators. The piano black finish is well done, but at no point comes across as loud. If anything we’d complain about, it would be an entertainment / multimedia geared notebook being so boxy. The backlit, touch multimedia controls work well, and we like the tasteful orange lighting, which goes well with the black and grey body color scheme.
The screen, while crisp and bright, is a glossy panel, and reflections will cause havoc with multimedia content in particular. What we would like to see, is more memory for one thing (1 GB is so slow with Windows Vista), and a decent graphics solution (X3100 is strictly for non-multimedia work). Lenovo provides heaps of software on their notebooks and the Y510 was no exception. With MS Office 2007, Adobe Elements, Norton Antivirus, and a host of other multimedia and utilitarian software, the Y510 is a fully loaded solution (if only on the software side).
Another nifty utility is the face recognition software that allows you to login on the basis of your face. While not as fast as a fingerprint reader, any kind of biometrics device on a notebook is just cool. In terms of performance, the T5450 on the Y510 is no slouch, but gets left behind by the T7xxx series and latest T8xxx series. In multimedia tests, the lack of dedicated graphics also pinches, and you will face problems viewing HD content on this one, and don’t even dream about the odd game.
At Rs 48,490, the Y510 is reasonably priced for a notebook and is a solid solution for office users, but we’d like to see better hardware under the hood next time.
The ‘Y’ series introduces Lenovo to the entertainment hemisphere, a realm where looks, performance, and functionality are of utmost importance, although—not in that order.
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