Ideapad Z500 Owners lounge

Hi i just got this laptop and i find it great. It's pretty and thin. Aluminium finish, matt screen and backlit keyboard too which is pretty rare for that price range (i bought it 450 euros in France). Usually anything below 700 euros does not come with backlit keyboard. Also, i love lenovo keyboards, i think they're the best by far. The speakers are very good too. Decent webcam with dual mics for stereo sound capture.

I have the 635M GT and core i3 2348M model. What surprised me with this laptop is that the cooling system is better than expected for a laptop that thin. I mean it never breaks 75°C while gaming without repasting or anything and is not that loud also.

I know there are better versions of this z500 with ivy bridge cpus and kepler GT 645M on board, which are beasts for the price and thickness. U can play anything at 720p with fair temps and no throttling if it's as cool as mine. I'd love to hear about this model from owners.

It's the kind with internal battery so accessing components (adding ssd, ram...) is a little more tricky than on clevo for example. But not that much, here i find a great youtube video that explains how to easily dismount it if needed :

Lenovo IdeaPad Z500 Gehäuse öffnen und Festplatte / Arbeitsspeicher aufrüsten - YouTube

If you have questions about details on this model, don't hesitate.

 

How do you feel about this laptop? What are the Pros and cons besides what you listed up top?

 

This laptop feels great. It's beautiful, runs cold and the backlit keyboard is a delight. The only cons i could see is the webcam not as good as advertised.

Thanks to the video above, i opened the lap easily in like 10 minutes. A child game. No soldered ram like many ultrabooks. A good point. There is no mSATA port available. I upgraded my ram to 8 GB and will probably upgrade cpu and HDD soon.

Also funny thing is that the higher priced 645M GT z500 model comes with an average glossy screen ( according to reviews) while the entry level 635M GT model that i bought comes with a pretty nice matte screen. I saw you can buy matte or glossy z500 screen on ebay from uk sellers. So one could upgrade for a matte screen aftermarket i guess. But still a 645M GT model with stock matte screen would have been cool.

Finally i must say that power consumption is not particularly low for an oriented ultrabook lap, even if it's not a real ultrabook. It idles at 15W at max brightness and wifi on which is totally acceptable. I got 4-5 hours of battery in low load scenario (It's a 50Wh).