Lenovo G570 15.6 inch Laptop (Core i5-2410M, RAM 6GB, HDD 640GB, DVDRW, Windows 7 Home Premium) - Black

Lenovo G570 15.6 inch Notebook (Core i5-2410M, RAM 6GB, HDD 640GB, DVDRW, Windows 7 Home Premium) - Black

FIRST OF ALL ABOUT LENOVO:

"Lenovo is a Chinese multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures and markets desktops and notebook personal computers, workstations, servers, storage drives, IT management software, and related services

"Lenovo acquired IBM's Personal Computing Division and created a new company that brings the strengths of IBM's legendary PC business together with those of Lenovo, that will provide the widest range of PC products and technologies to businesses, worldwide.

With this agreement, Lenovo becomes the world's third-largest PC company and a key, strategic IBM business partner. Lenovo will have all of the strengths of IBM's existing PC division, including research, development, design, and manufacturing capabilities.

Lenovo, which is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, is one of China's largest companies. Created in 1984, Lenovo was the first to introduce the concept of home computers in China. Since 1997 it has been the leading PC brand in China and across Asia, with annual revenues of approximately $3 billion. Lenovo is principally engaged in the manufacture and sale of branded personal computers and handheld devices. With this agreement, Lenovo achieves a size that would have put it into the top five of Fortune Magazine's annual computer industry ranking."

First Impressions:

*DELIVERY AND CONTENTS:

Item Arrived next day, in a very well packaged box, so in total 2 boxes, the laptop Box inside another Box.

Contents were minimalist with only the power charger, battery, booklets and of course the laptop.

*LOOKS AND FEEL

At first sight, I immediately fell in love with the lines, design and colour of the laptop. It looks way better, live than in the pictures (actually on the web pictures it does not look that good), but just wait until you unravel it. It looked and felt very executive like. Again very minimalist, without lots of buttons and lights around, but that is the way I like it. This laptop is definitely NOT a "TANK", to me it really looks nice and posh.

The laptop is though a real magnet for fingerprints due to the glossy finish used on the back of the screen as well as the charcoal-grey brushed-metallic look around the keyboard.
The area surrounding the screen is protected with factory protective plastic, which I have not removed yet and have no intention of doing so until it peels of by itself due to usage.
The lights of the laptop are a nice sort of "baby blue", which is really pleasant to the eye.

*SOFTWARE

My G570 comes with minimal intrusive software package, only the necessary, i.e. Ms Office ( only word and excel) Cyberlink (cd burning), Lenovo DirectShare( file synchronization ), VeriFace (face recognition), OneKey (system recovery and backup) MacAfee (anti virus), etc... I personally removed MacAfee right away as I am not fond of it.

* PERFORMANCE
First impressions with regards to performance are that I find the G570 to be very, very fast indeed specially in between applications. Multitasking is a breeze, kind of like slicing through a bar of butter with a hot knife. I have installed most of my Video editing and Photography software and the laptop just "swallows" them like mini breakfast, no problems. Internet browsing is slightly slower, but I think that this is due to Net speed and bottlenecks.

Boot up time has been varying with my laptop 29s being the lowest I have yet achieved. Currently it stands at 47s. There is choice of using built in software to minimize the boot up time, but I don't particularly find it very efficient.
Shutdown time is a different matter, with this being achieved way faster.

*Veriface (The Facial Recognition) Logon is brilliant, it works well and fast, recognizing my facial features in no time, all the time, ( provided that there is enough light) it is really nice to see. Web camera works very well with light, when there is little light, the camera struggles to clearly show one's face consequently the facial recognition fails to be able to recognize the user right away. This is due to low light and not the software. Give it light you will see that it will recognize you in no time and log you in. I've tried it both with and w/o my spectacles on and... voila... logged in.
*Another great security feature about Veriface is that you can use it to encrypt your folders and files, which is amazing if you have sensitive files on your computer. Just right click on any folder or file and click on "encrypt with Veriface", is that simple.

GRAPHICS - These are fine for everything except hard gaming. Sims 3 runs with no problems on it.

BLUETOOTH - Works a treat, I managed to connect to my iphone, which gave me access to my playlist so I could play it trough my G570 connected to my sound system. I also managed to have it connected to my Blackberry, this time it not only allowed me to access the playlist but also allowed me to make calls via G570, how amazing is that?

SPEAKERS- I really did not like the way they sound, I found it to be a bit squeaky and all over the place, the kind that gives headache and just irritates your ears, but I should say that this might also be due to the fact that I am very demanding audiophile. When you plug the headphones is just a completely different matter, this gave me a great deal of pleasure watching movies and listening to music.

WI-FI - picks up signal in no time, never had problems around the house with signal, not even from my kitchen, where traditionally signal access is very poor.

SCREEN RES - Is fine, though not brilliant I liked the way it is, the brightness can easily be regulated from the keyboard shortcut.

KEYBOARD - Feels very comfy and subtle with its round edges and the number pad on the right hand side is genius from Lenovo.

Touchpad/Trackpad/Mousepad - I really love the texture of it, its not slippery and offers a nice feel to it. It uses the same system as the Iphone, Ipod where you can zoom in and out using both fingers. A plus point is that you can scroll up and down using a vertical line on the right hand side of it.
The Left and Right mouse buttons are very noisy, not smooth at all. They should have used some sort of a rubber underneath to minimize or null the clicking noise it makes when pressed, but maybe its just me being picky.

BATTERY - It's ok. LastS me around 2:45h to 3:00h with heavy usage.

FAN: I find it to be very noisy and very rarely shuts up. My Toshiba in comparison is almost silent, but I will have to test the settings further.

OVERALL: I am very, very pleased with my LENOVO G570, I am always looking forward to get home and get on with it. It looks really good, it's fast, great security features, very ergonomic keyboard. I am very glad I picked it up after almost a month of intense research on shops and internet and taking HP and Samsung into consideration. I am glad I found this item with such great specs. It easily beats its competitors in terms of Specs/price.

I highly recommend this to anyone who needs a fast, nice looking computer with
Multitasking needs. Lots of Hard Disk space, plenty of memory wich can still be upgraded up to 8GB fast processor ( 2nd Gen i5 intel.

I hope this review has been in some way helpfull to someone.

I bought this laptop with a 12 month Lenovo warranty as stated on Amazon. The hinge went at 10 months. I wasn't told when I bought that Lenovo counts the 12 month warranty as beginning from the date of manufacture, not the date you buy their PC. You find this out on Lenovo support website when you check your warranty status. The (8 month not 12 month, in my case since the PC was manufactured 4 months before purchase) warranty expired before the hinge. Lenovo's UK website says "Warranty verification is required for Technical Support. If you are not in warranty, you may be billed for the call. We recommend you to check your warranty status before proceeding". Thank you Lenovo.

I am owning this laptop for one month and very glad that i have made this choice.
+ Long battery, i surfed on the web for 4,5 hours with the minimal brightness settings
+ Great keyboard
+ Almost no bloatware

- Poor screen. You can see pixelization on some gradients or colors. I am very upset about it
- HDD could be faster.