Lenovo Y700 – 15.6″ FHD Gaming Laptop (Intel Core i7, 8 GB RAM, 1TB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M, Windows 10) 80NV0026US

Build: Solid chassis-
+1. brushed aluminum top and bottom
+2. hinges are sturdy
+3. design is the best I have seen in a gaming laptop- sleek hard edges you’d find on a modern luxury sports car… not childish and gawky (Alienware), not too plain (Sager & Gigabyte), not too cheap feeling (ASUS ROG with 960m) not too bulky (ASUS ROG 7** series with 965m or better) and not second-rate MB manufacturer off-brands turned laptop manufacturers like MSI and Gigabyte (ASUS started this- but is one of the best).

Performance: excellent
I used 3DMark 11 and 3DMark’s Firestorm benchmark: scores were significantly higher than the Dell i7559 i5 6300HQ with GTX 960M, and slightly higher than other identical setups as compared on notebookcheck.com

Sound: best speakers I have ever heard (on a laptop)
I have yet to hear sound like this from a laptop- no kidding! 3watt JBL speakers and a small subwoofer had me fooled when plugged into my Samsung 42" TV at home.. Since the laptop sat underneath it, the sound reproduction was so deep and loud, without hesitation, I thought the TV speakers were the output! It wasn’t until I walked up to the TV that I heard nothing coming out of it’s speakers..

Professional:
Since I am a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist and IT professional, I need my laptop to support Professional editions. You would be surprised on how many issues this has brought to light! The Dell 7558 had problems with the onboard TPM chip (required for storage of Bitlocker encryption keys) causing Bitlocker Drive Encrpytion to throw errors about the TPM initialization. The ASUS G751 didn’t even have a TPM chip and forced me to use a removable drive as the key. I expected the Lenovo to work properly considering their track record in the professional realm- I was right. Bitlocker activated with no issues and didn’t require me to go into the BIOS.

All that being said, one glaring negative below (#3) has caused this laptop to get a bad rep. Don’t let this throw off your decision when you are looking to buy- read on…

-1. keyboard has a good feel but the 10-key pad and other buttons are too condensed – touchpad doesn’t match the quality of the rest of the laptop
-2. in typical Lenovo/IBM fashion (for those who have worked on T series), the back plate is a bit much to remove and replace in order to access the RAM and storage bays.
-3. Get a model with either a HDD or both a M.2 SSD and HDD… IF you purchase a model that has a SSD only (which mine was a M2 Samsung), the proprietary ribbon/SATA cable needed to connect an additional 2.5" HDD is not included and it is very hard to source. Lenovo at this time still does not know how to get it (???) If, however, you don’t care, DO NOT LET THIS GET IN YOUR WAY.

So, this is a wonderful machine with some quirks. First, a previous reviewer indicated their inability to extend the screen to a second monitor; ignore them. This DOES only have one video output for said task, in the form of HDMI 1.4 (Booooo. Need. 120hz. Gaming.). The M.2 SSD is not terrible, certainly much better than a spinning disk. I have not opened my laptop yet, but I expect I will find that i am missing the HDD bracket and cable for the HDD bay. On arrival, I immediately reinstalled Win10 using the MS Win 10 Media Creation Tool, nuking the preloaded junk and freeing up about 40gb of partitioned space for Lenovo’s ‘One Key Recovery’. Be sure to get the drivers for this variant, the Y700-15ISK from Lenovo. If you ever wish to use the One Key Recovery feature, do not ever repartition the boot drive under any circumstance or it will be lost, requiring sending the laptop back to Lenovo for repair to get back. As I am in the tech industry, this was about the least critical feature for me. This machine comes with 2x 4GB sticks of DDR4 2133 and the specs suggest the max supported memory is 16gb.

Overall, I love this machine. It blows my mind that the most powerful machine i’ve personally owned is a laptop. This thing eats up BF4 and is currently the most demanding game I am interested in playing, but I am confident it will play plenty of future games well enough for me. The entire shell of the laptop feels like quality and sturdy. The speakers are decent, the screen is very nice, the finish on the keyboard bezel is amazing. I have nVidia global settings to nVidia performance preferred and get ~4.5 hours of battery with the screen brightness maxed. I was in fact able to play BF4 on the battery; it is not required to be plugged into the wall to make use of the dedicated GPU, though I have not measured the battery life in that situation. :p

This is also my first AC wireless device (2×2) and get a linkrate of 867 mbit connected to my Asus AC56R (2×2), which is very neat. And I think that’s about all there is to say.

This machine was purchased from an alternative online retailer.

P.S. I can’t believe i forgot to mention this, but this is the first machine i’ve been able to game on unmodified and without any third party cooling solutions, like laptop cooling pads. For this reason alone, I believe this laptop trumps the competition of similarly spec’d laptops.

Lenovo Ideapad Y700 – 12GB Ram – 256 SSD

Pros:
Fit and finish exceeded my expectations
Lighted keyboard is a definite plus.. I like the dimming feature
Nice, bright, full color, high quality display
Stays nice and cool during normal web browsing
Keyboard offers firm and precise keystrokes
Additional numeric pad is useful
Lightning fast processor
Has DDR4 Ram instead of the mentioned DDR3 Ram
Wide viewing angle display
Graphics are hard to beat
Simple to install m.2 SSD.. Just need a M2X3 screw

Cons:
Keyboard takes some getting used to.. Keys are spaced closely together
Touch pad is a little stale.. The use of a mouse is a must
Gets a little warm during heavy gaming
Battery life is less than desired, though I rarely have it unplugged
Loaded with bloatware, but it is easily removed
Doesn’t come with cable/bracket to install HDD

Had a problem with system crashing after entering sleep/hibernate mode. I blame Windows 10 for this issue, not Lenovo. Some simple settings changes took care of the issue.

I’m sure I missed some things in this review.. But the bottom line is that the good significantly outweighs the bad and I would highly recommend this laptop to any looking for a top quality machine that will last for years to come.