Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 Review – enjoy media playback with Dolby Home Theater

Thursday, December 4, 2008, 10:19
Laptops
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Lenovos IdeaPad Y530 is equipped with features that are aimed at media consumption. The $949 Y530 supports touch sensitive media control and subwoofer with Dolby Home Theater sound.

As far as the design is concerned, the Y530 is rectangular shaped laptop similar to Lenovo’s business-oriented systems. The laptop feels solid and sturdy but it’s a bit heavier than the competition. The IdeaPad Y530 avoids the fingerprint prone glossy finish with its matte black finish, etched with linen like pattern in it. The metallic keyboard deck provides some interest in all-black body laptop.

The excellent keyboards are the specialty of Lenovo laptops and Y530’ keyboard is no exception to it. The touch pad has adequate size with well positioned mouse buttons. Just above the keypad lies a row of touch-sensitive media controls that are backlit in orange. The buttons include control for disc playback, programmable application-launch button, a button to launch controls for Dolby Home Theater sound. An orange shuttle key on the right of these buttons is provided and can be used to switch the touch sensitive buttons to equalizer for various media playback presets. The sound quality of Y530 is better than an average laptop as it includes four speakers with a subwoofer and Dolby Home Theater audio.

The highly reflective 15.4-inch display provides a great experience while watching movies. The 1280×800-pixel screen is quite distracting while sitting close to a window. Otherwise the screen looks great while working or watching videos. The kinked hinge keeps the screen a bit away from the keypad. The 1.3-megapixel Webcam uses face recognition to allow you to log on.

The Ideapad Y530 is powered by 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 processor and 2GB of RAM, and 256MB Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS graphics. This combination provides excellent performance for Web surfing, media playback and your day-to-day office work. The discrete graphic card allows you to play 3D games with ease but still, the system is not best suited for hard-core gaming.

The Y530 is provided with the ports that you’ll expect from a midsize laptop, such as VGA-out, HDMI and Webcam for video, 4 speakers with subwoofer, headphone/microphone jack for audio, 3 USB 2.0, mini FireWire, multiformat memory card reader for data, Modem, Ethernet, 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth for networking and an Express card/54 slot, and a DVD burner.

The battery life of Y530 is rated at 3 hours of video play back. So, you can expect longer life with casual office work and web surfing.