Lenovo IdeaPad Y560 Review & Buying Guide: Gamer Joygasm?

Interested in the Y560? Check out the successor Y570.

Positioned exactly as a gaming and multimedia laptop, the Lenovo Y560 series of laptops are another indication that gaming on mobile is getting increasingly cheaper. A sub-$1,000 laptop (after the Lenovo Y560 coupon is applied above) with respectable gaming numbers & benchmark from a well known manufacture was but only a dream a few years ago.

Noteworthy Specifications for Lenovo Y560:

• All IdeaPad Y560 laptops comes with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 1GB, which is a solid mid-range discrete graphics card
• Choice of Intel Core i3, i5, or i7 processor
4GB to 8GB of PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM (1066Mhz)
• Option of 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm, 500GB Hard Drive
• Option of DVD drive or Blu-ray / DVD Combo
• Select model comes with Centrino Advance-N WiFi Network Card
• All models equipped with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

As mentioned, all models of Lenovo Y560 comes equipped with a Radeon HD 5730, a DX 11, Shader 5.0 capable card with 1GB of DDR3 memory (sweet). GPU is clocked at 650Mhz, while the memory is at 800Mhz, making the Y560 a gaming laptop with a solid mid-range video card. Comparatively, the HD 5730 is a bit faster than similar spec'ed machines equipped with nVidia's GT 330M.

Yes, the Y560 can run Crysis

But can it run Crysis?

With solid GPU hardware, the Lenovo Y560 should be able to run Cyrsis at medium settings at 58-60 frames per second, while upping the graphics settings to high will result in a still very-playable 28-30 frames per second.

Regardless of the CPU you choose, you should be able to have a decent gaming experience with this laptop, though of course the Core i7 will give it the best performance, an i3 or i5 choice will be 5-10% off from the numbers above (after all, even modern games are multi-threaded so much).

Battery life on the Y560 can be a bit on the low-side, but as its a performance machine, this shouldn't be a surprise. Expect about 2 hours of battery life with casual internet usage, under 2 hours for DVD viewing, and slightly near an hour for full load gaming/processing.

Which Lenovo Y560 to Get?

It really depends on your budget, but the Core i7 without 8GB of RAM is probably the best bang-for-the-buck choice, given that the more expensive Core i7 with 8GB of RAM has the same i7-720QM rated at 1.6Ghz. Although an additional 4GB of RAM is nice to have, the usual gamers should not see a noticeable difference and its a real toss up whether an extra 4GB of ram is worth the money. Next on the reasonable option is the i5 2.4Ghz model currently at a great discount of $750. If you absolutely want to save $50, the i3 2.26Ghz version at $600 is also a good choice.

You should note though the all of the models above are currently heavily discounted, with coupons expected to expire within the week, so if you're on the fence, research a bit more, compare and contrast, but quickly making a decision may be prudent.