Gotta good offer on W530, and need some quick feedback; is it too big and heavy and how is the performance?

Hello guys, I have a chance to get W530 for around $1,000; and am wondering if its alright to buy this to play games and also to take it to college, how heavy does this get?

Is it too heavy? How does W530 compare against Y580?

So what battery to choose? is 6 cell enough? or is 9 cell required? Does 9 cell battery make it too big for portable? How many hours battery life for 6 and 9 cell battery?

How does the graphic card NVIDIA Quadro K1000M Graphics with 2GB perform? is it comparably inferior or superior to Nvidia 660?

Can it use smaller AC adapter? the one that comes along with W530 weights at 2.3lb..

My wife might take it to college few days a wee, but mostly this will stay home; so, is this very very heavy or is it manageable?

 

I have the W520, and I find it fine for games. Though, SCII is as intensive as my gaming needs get.

The W520 is like 5.95 lb with a 9 cell, I don't find its weight to be that bad (and I have a T420s for work), but I do find its size to be too big for carrying to places. It feels like I might bang it on something and snap it in half or something when I'm carrying it around due to its size.

I'm fairly certain that you can't order a W series laptop without the 9 cell battery, but that might have changed. In the W520 generation, a 9 cell battery has 60% more capacity compared to the 6 cell. I can get something like 8 ~ 10 hours of use in both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 for surfing the web or coding or something. For watching 720p anime, I can get around 7 hours in either OS.

On the W520, you can't use an adapter smaller than 135 W, and the 170 W adapter on the W520 weighs in at 1.4 lb, so you might want to double check those numbers.

I am a computer engineering student with over 30 hours of class a week, and I rarely find myself bringing my W520 to class. I find myself bringing my 2.5 year old $250 HP Mini everywhere, with its 2.5hrs of battery life (3 cell). Again, it's not because of the weight, it's because of the size. Oh, and the power adapter almost never leaves the desk for me.

 

This thing is big and massive. You wife carrying it to college? Poor woman! Please stop abusing her.

Heavy. 9-cell battery only. Power brick is exactly that: a brick.

Gaming? Acceptable, and no excuse because not designed for gaming.

 

i've been configing the w530 and you can indeed order just the 6cell

also OP, as far as i know, the 9cell sticks out a little past the back of the laptop

 

I find T430s to be much smaller size; so, what option do I have with Lenovo?

I just visited Bestbuy and Futureshop and thought th Samsung and HP with 15.4" size and new processors light, are Lenovo that much heavier compared to this?

What I am looking for is good resolution at min 1600x900; and graphic card that can play desent games, and screen size of atleast 15.4" as I currently have 18.4" Toshiba Qosmio, and I am using desktop with 28" screen, but I see 14" becoming a new normal size? why is that? are 14" made to replace talets?

what Options do I have in Canada to get good screen, size, 7200k hard drive?

 

The Bestbuy and Future shops in Canada offer mostly low-end notebooks even though their specifications look exactly the same as (or even better than) those in high end notebooks (e.g. Thinkpads). They normally are poorly engineered and use cheap materials and develop problems quickly.

Is the computer for your wife or for both? If it is for both then a T420s is worth it. I believe Lenovo Canada has a website that offer deep student discounts.

 

For Lenovo online shopping in Canada: lenovo.com/CA/en/ and lenovo.com/CA/fr/

Good screen on Lenovo notebook? There are only two worth considering: the 12.5" 1366x768 IPS (ThinkPad X220) and the 15.6" 1920x1080 (T/W520).

For 14" notebook, consider T420/430 (not the "s") with 1600x900 screen. But this screen is mediocre.

For 15" notebook, consider T520/530 with 1920x1080 screen. This screen is one of the best TN panels at this time. Its glossy brother is used in the Dell XPS 15 L502X (highly recommended) and various Clevo/Sager models.

Lenovo ThinkPad models are in a different category (business-oriented, more reliable, more robust, more user-serviceable) compared to the various models you see at Best Buy and Futureshop. They are not heavier, although they may look that way.

Bonne chance!

 

Any 15.6" laptop with discrete GPU and quad CPU is big and heavy, and W530 is even on the smaller and lighter side. If you want all that draggable away from the desk, you'll be dragging at least 5.5 pounds around. The only machine of that size and power that manages to get noticeably, about a pound something, lighter is the new Retina Mac Book Pro.

Size wise, it's big as said above, but due to 16:9 screen still fits into most backpacks that could fit the older 14" laptops, like T410. Power brick is heavy, but if you're using it indoors and mildly, 9 cell should last 5-8 hours depending on screen brightness & load etc, so maybe you don't need it, or would prefer another battery to drag around instead.

Screen wise, you'd want with FHD screen or at least 1600x900. For $1K it's a good deal, and will let you play many games, but not modern FPS at max settings of course (if performance of the K1000 is comparable to Q2000 from W520).

Still, If you don't really need the quad CPU or 32GB RAM, and gaming is important, something like X230(T) IPS for mobile use + eGPU like ViDock for games at the monitor (or TV) could be more shoulder-friendly and better experience overall. 15" display, while making a huge laptop, is still a very small screen.

 

Use the link and password from RedFlagDeals.com Forums and note the coupon codes on the start page when you login. They vary from week to week.

Stay away from 14" Thinkpads if you want to use their screen for anything but text work. The 3 decent screens in the whole line up are, 12.5" IPS in X230 series, and 15.6" 1600x900 and 1920x1080 (better) .

Usually, it's a good idea to get the smallest amount of RAM possible, and buy what you need at newegg etc. It will arrive faster than the laptop from Lenovo direct for sure, and will be, often considerably, cheaper.

 

I think that even Putty (and by extension VIM and whatnot) looks horrible on a T420s screen.

 

The W530 is around 6 pounds, which is fairly average for a notebook with a 15-16" screen. As for battery life, Lenovo states on the spec sheet that the 6-cell gets up to 7.7 hours on battery and the 9-cell gets up to 12.8 hours. Based on the W520, which had a 9-cell battery rated for 10.8 hours and reviews putting it between 6 and 9 hours, the 6-cell battery on the W530 should last between 4-6 hours on the 9-cell should last between 7-10 hours. The 9-cell battery sticks out the back a little, but doesn't add much weight to the notebook.

The K1000M graphics will likely be between the 640M and 650M in performance and definitely lower than the 660M. (K2000M graphics will likely be between 650M & 660M, so much closer to 660M comparatively)

You can use a 90W AC adapter for charging the notebook as well as the standard one, but you can't do anything intensive with the notebook while you're charging with the lower-rated adapter and still expect it to charge, since the notebook can use up to 150W or so (estimated from W520 usage) when under heavy load.

 

This may be true only if 640M/650M use the DDR3 VRAMs just like the Quadro chips. The GDDR5 version of 640M/650M most likely will outperform even K2000M while gaming due to K2000M's low DDR3 memory bandwidth.

 

I have used VPN on 14" and it's OK.

 

Why not the "s"? They are similarly priced, why not get the lighter one? Battery life might suffer though.

 

You said it yourself. Not "might," but "does."