An attractive exterior, solid ergonomics and
unusually spritely performance combine to create a cracking budget laptop
Price: $625.5
Suppplier: www.lenovo.com
Lenovo
IdeaPad Z580
Where most of its rivals are bedecked in
somber monochrome plastic, Lenovo’s IdeaPad Z580 partners bold, glossy looks
with a speedy Intel Core i5 processor.
It might measure a chunky 33mm thick and
weigh a portly 2.41kg, but it’s the most striking budget laptop we’ve seen in a
while. Glossy white glimmers across the lid and sparkles around the
Scrabble-tile keyboard inside. Build quality is excellent by any measure, and
while there’s some give in the top and bottom plastic panels, the chassis feels
sturdy and free from excessive flex.
The specification is unusually potent.
Under that attractive exterior lies an Ivy Bridge-class Core i5 CPU and 8GB of
RAM, and this helped the Lenovo to power past the Core i3 and AMD powered
models in this Labs. With an overall score of 0.73 in our Real World
Benchmarks, it’s beaten by only Toshiba’s models.
That laptop has superior graphics power,
but the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip in the Lenovo is far from poor.
With an average frame rate of 47fps in our Low quality Crysis test and 21fps in
our Medium quality test, gaming at modest resolutions and reduced detail
settings is still on the cards. Thanks to the frugal graphics performance
stamina remains competitive, with the IdeaPad enduring 5hrs 33mins in our light-use
battery test.
Lenovo’s laptops typically excel when it
comes to ergonomics an the IdeaPad Z580 is no exception. We aren’t keen on the
narrow right Shift key, but it doesn’t take long to adapt to it. Typing is
immensely comfortable the scooped out keys give way with a cushioned spring and
there’s no give in the keyboard’s base.
The
keyboard is among the best here, with comfortable, responsive keys
The buttonless touchpad’s broad surface
provides fuss-free cursor control and, unlike most of its peers, we rarely
found ourselves struggling to register left or right-clicks. If there’s one
issue, it’s the two fingered scrolling support: we occasionally found the
touchpad refusing to scroll down pages until we separated our fingers by just
the right amount.
Lenovo has also made room for touch sensitive
buttons below the display for adjusting the volume, muting the speakers,
toggling the display presets, and even tweaking the fan speeds by choosing
between silent or standard operating modes.
We were particularly impressed by the
Lenovo’s display. The 1,366 x 768 resolution is par for the course, but its
quality is up with the best we’ve seen at this price. Brightness reaches a
middling 229cd/m2, but contrast hits an impressive 260:1, and respectable colour
accuracy delivers vibrant colours and natural skin tones.
There’s little missing from the IdeaPad
Z580. There’s an ample 750GB hard disk, two USB 3 ports, a single USB 2 port, a
DVD writer, SD card reader, and D-SUB and HDMI video outputs. Only networking lets
the side down, with single band 802.11n and 10/100 Ethernet looking rather
stingy.
Lenovo
IdeaPad Z580
Whatever you might think of the styling,
Lenovo’s IdeaPad Z580 is a cracking budget laptop. Dell’s Inspiron 15R edges
ahead due to its better ergonomics and superior graphics performance, but if
you just want a fast laptop for everyday tasks, the IdeaPad Z580 is a bargain.
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Rating
·
Overall: 10/10
·
Performance: 10/10
·
Battery life: 8/10
·
Features & Design: 10/10
·
Value for money: 8/10
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