Lenovo IdeaPad Y650

Lenovo divides its laptops up into two ranges, ThinkPads and IdeaPads.  While the former is aimed at business users, the latter collection, which includes this Y650, has the consumer market in its sights.  It has powerful multimedia capabilities thanks to its 16'' HD Ready (1366 x 768) screen.

Handling
The Y650 is nice to look to at: the outside is thin, with some restrained coloured trim with a sobre feel overall.  The areas around the outside of the keyboard and the monitor are in glossy plastic, but the rest is matte black.

 
In the Y650, we've finally got a non-Apple laptop with a large multi-touch trackpad that's big enough to use comfortably.  Above the keyboard is a row of touch-sensitive hotkeys for launching applications via a special Lenovo interface that pops up on screen.  Volume controls are off to the right-hand side of the keyboard.

Typical webcam shot

The keys on the regular keyboard are light to the touch and relatively quiet.  There's no numeric keypad, so if that's a deal-breaker for you, you might want to look at the MSI EX620 instead. 

We were disappointed by the quality of the webcam, which stretches the frame into a strange aspect ratio and leaves face tones looking pale.  The microphone does a little better, as long as you're careful not to type while you're using it because of how close it is to the keys.

Around the sides of the laptop, Lenovo has made room for plenty of connectivity options, including two USB ports (three would have been better), an e-SATA link, VGA and HDMI video outputs, an RJ45 network port, an input for an external TV aerial, a pair of mini-jacks and a memory card reader.  The Y650 isn't missing much, but a FireWire port and a few extra USB connections would certainly be useful.

Turning the laptop over, there isn't any easy access to the component parts.  You'll need to remove more than 20 screws to get inside.

e-SATA, Express Card slot, RJ45 and the TV input	Memory Card reader, USB and audio ports
HDMI, VGA, USB	Lenovo's custom application launcher

Processing Power
Windows Experience Index: 4.3. CPU: 5.3 - Memory: 5.9 - Graphics: 4.3 - Gaming Graphics: 5.0 - Hard Drive: 5.3.

The Y650 performs very well in this section and gives our current reference, the Fujitsu-Siemens Xi3650, a run for its money when it comes to getting the most out of the CPU.  Overall, though, it was 14% slower than its rival because it struggled with 3D graphics, which is something we'll look at in a moment.  More disappointing was the Y650's performance at compressing files, where it was 20% slower than the Xi3650.

When watching Blu-ray quality video, the CPU load is 50% and the computer needs 48 W; turning on graphics acceleration allows a fall to 15% CPU load and a power consumption of 38 W.

Gaming
This really isn't the Y650's strong point.  Taking our test games for a spin, Crysis was very jerky at its native resolution and we could only get Race Driver: Grid to run at a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels.  World in Conflict did a little bit better by turning down the quality, but even in 'normal' mode you'll need to compromise with slower gameplay.

Sound
Lenovo has fitted the Y650 with JBL speakers connected to a Realtek chipset, which seems like a safe bet.  Well ... yes and no: the speakers themselves perform well, but they cause the plastic case of the laptop to vibrate producing irritating background noise.  Three conflicting pieces of software are at play, from Microsoft, Dolby and Maxx. 

Portability & Battery Life
2.55 kg for a 16'' screen is very impressive.  In general, 13'' laptops generally weigh in closer to 2 kg, so adding an extra 500 g in exchange for 3'' of screen real estate seems very reasonable.  That said, 2.55 kg is quite a lot to carry around on your back all day.
 
The battery life is pretty average, and the Y650 lasted for just 1 hour 53 minutes of video playback (with the screen at 100 cd/m², headphones plugged in and the WiFi turned off).  Putting it up against the 13'' form factor again, plenty of the smaller laptops can last for 3 hours or more, or even 4 hours 15 minutes, like the exceptional Samsung X360 XIOV.