Lenovo IdeaPad Y480

At first glance, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y480 didn't strike us as a contender for Editors' Choice. At 5.1 pounds, it's a little heavier than we like a 14-inch mainstream laptop to be. With a street price of $1,000 for our review unit, it's a chunk of change more than our Editors' Choice Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5) ($750 direct, 4 stars), too. But the Y480 had one important feature that seduced us quickly: horsepower. It flaunts one of Intel's new third-generation "Ivy Bridge" quad-core processors?the 2.3GHz Core i7-3610QM. Instead of integrated graphics, its Nvidia GeForce GT 640M LE discrete graphics give it the power to play demanding games, at least at medium resolution and detail settings, at speeds within shouting distance of the Alienware M14x R3 ($2,002.99 direct, 3.5 stars) at comparable settings. Add an exemplary screen and keyboard and a full set of ports plus WiDi, and you've got a winning laptop for both work and play. And if you're concerned about its weight and price, just think of it as an alternative to a 15.6-inch system.

Design
The 1.3 by 13.6 by 9.4-inch (HWD) Y480 combines a silver-gray brushed aluminum lid and keyboard deck/palm rest with black plastic sides and bottom. The slightly scalloped keys have a firm but precise feel, with just the right amount of give for comfortable typing. The keyboard is brightly backlit (toggled by the Fn key and space bar), and the layout includes dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys as well as Ctrl and Delete in their proper lower left and top right corners, respectively.

A button next to the power button launches Lenovo's emergency antivirus and system recovery functions when the computer won't boot Windows, which is handy. The good-sized touchpad below the space bar (no ThinkPad-style pointing stick here) has slightly stiff, clickable lower corners instead of dedicated mouse buttons, but scrolling and gestures?including four-finger flicks left and right to open a pair of Lenovo pop-up apps, a wallpaper picker and a sticky-note scratch pad?work smoothly.

The glossy 14-inch display offers the usual 1,366 by 768 resolution that's marginal for would-be image editors but fine for watching 720p videos or multitasking with a couple of overlapping application windows. It's bright and colorful, with sharp contrast and decent viewing angles. Two speakers above the keyboard ("JBL Brand Speaker," boasts a sticker on the palm rest) put out above-average audio, without tons of bass but with more than enough volume to fill a room.

Features
An SD/MMC card slot decorates the Y480's front edge, while microphone and headphone jacks and two USB 2.0 ports join the DVD?RW burner on its right side. Two USB 3.0 ports, VGA, HDMI, and Ethernet are on the left. Wireless connectivity includes 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) for beaming a video, DVD, or presentation to a big-screen TV outfitted with a third-party WiDi adapter.

The IdeaPad's 750GB hard drive has ample space for programs and files (622GB available out of the box), though its 5,400-rpm speed is a step behind the 7,200 rpm of the drive in the Lenovo IdeaPad U400 ($899.99 direct, 4 stars). There's a fair amount of preinstalled software, but most of it is bloatware-free (although the 30-day trial of McAfee Internet Security is woefully short); titles range from Microsoft Office Starter 2010 to CyberLink Power2Go, Google Chrome, and ooVoo video chat. An Enhanced Experience Boot Optimizer utility cycled through several reboots to whittle startup time from 60 to 48 seconds. Lenovo provides a one-year parts and labor warranty for the Y480.

Performance
The IdeaPad Y480's quad-core, eight-thread processor and 8GB of DDR3 memory powered it to a Cinebench score that swept us off our feet?6.26, versus 4.78 for the Alienware M14x R3 and 3.16 for the Dell XPS 14z ($1,299 direct, 4 stars). Its Handbrake video encoding time of 1 minute 17 seconds and Photoshop CS5 image editing time of 3:20 easily outstripped the Alienware gaming laptop (1:30 and 3:39, respectively) and left the Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5) in the dust, though the M14x eked out a win in the PCMark 7 benchmark (2,749 to 2,610).

The sticker on the palm rest proclaims, "Professional Gaming Graphics." In truth, the Y480 may not win many LAN parties against $3,000 gaming rigs, but its GeForce GT 640M LE graphics adapter powered the Lenovo to impressive results at medium (1,024 by 768) resolution and quality settings: 49.9 frames per second in DirectX 9 Lost Planet 2 and 68.4 fps in DirectX 10 Crysis, each result fewer than 10 fps behind the Alienware M14x R3.

The Y480 also broke the 30 fps barrier (34.2 fps) in Unigine's challenging DirectX 11 benchmark, Heaven 3.0, at 1,024 by 768 with no antialiasing. At its native 1,366 by 768 resolution with 4X antialiasing, however, it slipped to 24.1 fps in Lost Planet 2 and 21.3 fps in Heaven.

Having a battery that's removable or swappable for a spare, rather than sealed into the case, is a plus. The 48Wh battery's size, however, is nothing to write home about, and its endurance proved acceptable but not exceptional?the one test where the new Lenovo failed to topple the Dell 14z, at 4 hours 48 minutes versus 8:38.

Nevertheless, we're moving into the "Ivy Bridge" era and naming the IdeaPad Y480 our new mainstream Editors' Choice. When you consider its quad-core power, performance that'll save you measurable time every day, sunny screen, and comfortable backlit keyboard, it's a new benchmark for what $1,000 will buy.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Lenovo IdeaPad Y480 with several other laptops side by side.

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