5/28/2013

Lenovo Z500 review (chaep, elegant and... Very good!)


Lenovo Z500 is a great looking laptop with a fairly powerful graphics card. It's offered at a surprisingly low price. Is everything that beautiful? Is this model perfect? Of course no. Lenovo made it difficult to integrate into Z500's hardware. In this test you will see that Lenovo Z500 'battery opinion' is just a myth.



Lenovo Z500 is another model from Lenovo which continues the U260 design (also used in Y500). Line goes from the top of the notebook and it wraps into the bottom. We are testing the brown model and it looks like a... Book. The white version is also available. Other producers rarely the care of the bottom design. Not in this case. Closed Lenovo Z500 looks like a notebook. Which is great. We can see that Lenovo took great care about design. Every single detail looks good. Z500 is a very elegant laptop.


Lenovo AccuType keyboards have already gained prestige. But they are not the same in every single Lenovo notebook model. There are some significant differences. The Z500 keys have a characteristic shape with a rounded bottom edge, but in contrast to Y500, plates are completely flat and have a little shorter stroke. The plastic used for these keys is not perfect. It's a little bit slippy and too little soft. Although it has managed to keep a pretty good typing experience. The keyboard is well constructed and it's surface  does not bend excessively.

Tested model is not equipped with keyboard backlight but Lenovo announces that the gadget is optional equipment on Z500. 


Screen size 15.6 "and a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels is the most common parameters of matrixes when it comes to notebooks with an affordable price range. Unsurprisingly, that and the other characteristics of Lenovo Z500 screen are average.

Glossy display which is produced by Samsung has an average brightness level exceeding 200 cd / m². This means that using Lenovo Z500 outdoor may be a problem.


WHEN IT COMES TO THE GAMES...:

Thre are a lot of Z500 versions. Core i3-3110M processor is the weakest processor among them, but for those applications that do not use much CPU memory, it will be a good choice for price-performance ratio. Included with the GeForce GT 645M graphics and hard disk with a capacity of 1 TB, it creates a good team. The hardware upgrade is very difficult, so if you are more demanding , consider choosing Core i5 or i7 processor (dual-core), more than 4 GB of RAM.

lowmed.highultra
Metro 2033 (2010)43.329.7fps
Mafia 2 (2010)50.543.9fps
Fifa 12 (2011)146.6115.9fps
Batman: Arkham City (2011)6025.1fps
Anno 2070 (2011)58.933fps
Diablo III (2012)90.381.5fps
Dirt Showdown (2012)53.639.6fps
Sleeping Dogs (2012)64.224.9fps
World of Tanks v8 (2012)47.739.7fps

You probably know that the Metro 2033 game is a very, very demanding one. But it runs quite good on Lenovo Z500. Impressing! Remember that we used Intel Core i3-3110M 2.4 GHz, 4GB of RAM and NVIDIA GeForce GT 645M for this test! So you can achieve better results if you want to pay more!

NOISE LEVEL:

neutral 33.2 / 33.4 / 33.6 dB
HDD 34 dB
DVD 36 / 42.2 dB
hard working 38 / 39.4 dB

30 dB
silent
40 dB
noticeable
50 dB
annoying
min: , med: , max:     (distance: 15 cm)


BATTERY:

There have been some wrong informations about batteries capacity. But this normal when the discussion is about the unconfirmed values ​​expressed in milliampere (mAh). However, it turns out that if you look at the energy resource in watt-hours (Wh) Lenovo Z500 battery has the same capacity as the Z580 battery which is 48 Wh. It means that it's performance is almost the same as Z800's.


neutral
6h 20min
 WLAN network
4h 29min
DVD
3h 11min
hard working
1h 26min
SUMMARY:

Lenovo Z500 is one of the few laptops with a relatively powerful graphics card at an affordable price. As such, it can count on high popularity. It does not offer such easy access to it's hardware as it is in models like MSI CX61, V3-571G Acer and Lenovo Z580. But Lenovo Z500 looks much more elegant.

Z500 may not gain favor in the eyes of those who need a good matrix graphic, or who like to dig in the hardware, but in overall I rate this model as a very successful one. Definitely worth it's price.


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