Ideapad Y450a for $1015. Deal?

Wasup lenovo forum. I'm interested in the Y450a that I'm seeing here in HK for sale at approximately US$1015 with the specs below:


ahh Yes its the full black one with the orange trim.

• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz T6500
• 4GB DDR3
• 14" (1366x768)
• 500 GB 5400rpm
• DVD Writer
• NVIDIA GeForce GT 130M [512mb ram]
• WinVista Home Premium
• 3 year warranty

Irrespective of what I need from a laptop, is this laptop a good deal in itself considering the specs and the price? Or is it slightly expensive or something?

 

hey.. i registered just to reply here...

i'm in HK also and thinking of picking one up too. it's been tough to get an opinion as i don't read chinese.. The problem with getting an english reply is that in North America they have a different version of the machine... a lower quality vid card, smaller drive etc.. plus it's not all black (i had issues with the white). people in north america would love this setup.

basically, from what i've seen it's a great deal for one of the best all-around performance 14" laptops from a reputable brand.. the words "performance" and "14 inch" have never really been combined in laptops.

i'm currently using a POS ACER (never again) and it's also put me off of other brands such as ASUS etc..

if you're gaming then you can look up reviews on the vid card itself.. i think it's comparable to the 9600N which was a slightly better card than the average and usually found in more expensive laptops that were larger and bulkier than the y450a.

even something like the dell xps would be close to twice the price and heavier.. but it has a better cpu...also with the dell you'd have to pay extra for the LED backlit screen which is standard on the ideapad.

at this point (and i hope for more responses), i'll go on a limb to say that for the price and size - this is a great buy. it's sets the bar for affordable performance oriented 14" laptops IMO.

Lastly, i will say that if size isn't a concern for you - check out the y650a.. better specs/hardware in the lightest 16" laptop on the market (lighter than the 15" ideapad).

well that's my first post.. hope it helps and would like to read more opinions!

 

ahh.... luckyyy for you guys in HK, the u.s. doesn't get the 130M GT gfx card :[[[ ... 105M is a bitt ehhh ://

i think its an ok deal. like labjunkie said, you should check out the y650. its looks pretty sleeek and awesome.

 

I just checked the price in china, it's around 5000 -5300 yuan, but 1 year warranty.

For about 1100 USD , you can get p8700 4G GT 130M 320g in china or web purchase on taobao.com

I don't think the HK one you are looking at is a good deal, you certainly should get it like 100-200 usd cheaper if you talked local language.

I guess U.S should have GT 130m very soon, because the high demand season is almost gone in china.

 

can you provide a link?

i did a search and there's no P8700 setup for that price on taobao.com.. anything with a p8700 jumps to over $6800yuan

the 5000yuan prices are for the stripped down version.

the cost of warranty (1yr vs 3yr), hdd size (320gb vs 500gb), ram (2gb vs 4gb) and then conversion to hkd would make up the difference there.

 

great first post! ;-)

thanks for the reassurance and your insight. and i was originally looking at 13" laptops but then I realised there weren't any good deals under my budget. Plus the 14" screen seems to be a better size screen whereas the 13" is sort of on the small side. I saw a U330 for like 6000 hkd but it seems kinda small now that I've been looking at 14" laptops.

Yesterday I also saw the Asus U80 which was a beautiful laptop (and I don't say this often) which awesome lights on the trackpad and the keyboard. For slightly less than the lenovo y450a, it seems like a decent deal in itself with the ATI HD4570 and a great sold build. BUT the y450a deal trumps them all with its 500gb and gt130m!

I think I'm gonna pick up the y450a later this week. i'm ignoring all the people that say there are some heat issues with it cuz thats not gna change my decision. Fortress here i come.

 

thanks for the kind words..

i have no experience with ASUS.. but i do with acer.. as a general consumer i kind of group them into the "asian made" category..

but there is truth to "you get what you pay for"... i was wow'd by my acer and paid pretty good money for the setup (aspire 5670)..

what i came to find was that although it's spec list is impressive for the money, they cut corners by using shotty hardware.. everything was cheap cutting edge stuff.. at the time a 1.3megapix cam but the crappiest one i've seen, a mic that is useless, speakers that don't sound nice at all.. and the list goes on.. since then my monitor has crapped out, the power adapter had to be spliced together, the battery doesn't charge... needless to say it wasn't worth it.

and that is just my 2 cents.. i hope my comments are not out of line.

when i look at the y450 it's an improvement to industry standards without a huge cost increase. priced reasonably the same as it's y430 upon release.. introduction of LED backlit display (believable because LED screen costs are comparable in manufacturing but with added benefits of size, quality and life), the new nvidia card has been commented as a slighty upgraded version of the old 9600n if i remember correctly..

all in all it's a very believeable package for the price that happens to be better than other 14's on the market. But it comes at a cost, the heat of this thing has been a sticky point with some... but heat, performance and casing size all go hand-in-hand so i don't think it's a negative factor. in fact, it's why there are so little performance 14's in the market.. so i actually thank them for giving us the option to decide.

but this thread did spark my memory of the dell xps13.. decisions decisions..

 

Most notebooks have heat issues one way or the other anyway.

 

thanks. good to know.

 

Laptop bought, if you guys are interested in knowing. A bit annoyed at the ctrl and fn keys being switched but apart from that its great.

 

congrats! from where and how much?

any gaming with it yet?

are you upgrading to windows7?

did lenovo include the harddrive "active protection" (turns off harddrive when it senses movement in the laptop)?

 

Thanks.

A fortress in Mong Kok, near a corner. $7866 with 3 year warranty.

Tried NFS undercover and far cry 2, graphics are decent, can't really play on the highest settings, in which it becomes too slow, even the mouse moves around slowly. But it can operate somewhere between the medium and the highest settings - overall it's alright. I don't really game much anyway.

Yeah, it comes with a free upgrade to windows 7, although I'm guessing there's still a shipping charge. I was originally thinking of reformatting straight away and installing Win7rc but the Vista is pretty damn nice, I'll wait until I receive the Windows 7 upgrade. I tried Windows 7 (rc) before I had Vista and its pretty much the same thing - except for the taskbar. Vista has such a bad rep but in my experience it's really nice.

Don't think it has the active protection thing - cuz I haven't heard/read about it.

The laptop is really great. I love how it comes with so many extras: The two microphones (left+right) (which makes the voice recording extremely clear), a 1.3mp webcam, cardreader, bt, hdmi out, multi-touch touchpad, free remote, vista installation disk, 2 usb flash drives (4gb each), laptop bag+case, wireless mouse, upgrade to windows 7, veriface software (login to windows using the webcam).

 

Hey guys, thanks for the advice here. I saw this model in the wanchai computer centre and got the guy down to $6700 and him to upgrade the ram to 4gb. I was just feeling him out for a price, so I think could even get it cheaper with some hard haggling.

I'm probably going to buy it this week and try a bunch games out... so we'll see how well it does! Man it sucks needing a laptop for mobility while loving games...

anyways, ill report back here about the performance, heat etc...