Lenovo G570 Review

While Lenovo is known for its business notebooks, the company has been making consumer machines for a while now. The Lenovo G570 ($749) is a 15-inch laptop that has a little more flair than its ThinkPad cousins, featuring a glossy lid and a metal palm rest. But you also get ThinkPad-like amenitites, including an AccuType keyboard. Add to that a fast Intel Core i5 processor and a roomy 500GB hard drive and you've got a solid system.

Design

With the exception of a little swoop toward the back, the Lenovo G570 looks rather bland when closed. A bright chrome Lenovo logo adds a bit of personality, but the glossy plastic dark-brown lid is a fingerprint magnet. The notebook's interior looks better, thanks to its black brushed-aluminum deck. The black matte keyboard resides in a recessed space surrounded by a thin strip of darker chrome. The touchpad is also slightly recessed and surrounded by a thin strip of lighter chrome.
Located above the keyboard to the left are the power button and a button to launch the OneKey Recovery software. In terms of aesthetics, we prefer the HP Pavilion dv6t's sleek brushed-aluminum exterior and interior; its dark umber finish with silver accents helped highlight the notebook's rounded edges and more elegant, cleaner lines.
Measuring 14.8 x 9.8 x .6 - 1.3 inches and weighing 5.2 pounds, the G570 is easy to move around the home or office and was light enough for an hour and a half of a standing-room-only subway trip.
Keyboard and TouchPad
Lenovo packs an island-style keyboard with a full number pad on the G570. Similar to the ThinkPad Edge line, the large AccuType "smile-shaped" keys are generously spaced and provided nice, firm feedback. While it's one of the better keyboards we've tested on a consumer notebook, we took issue with the un-dersized right Shift and Enter keys, especially during the Ten Thumbs Typing Test. We consistently scored 40 words per minute with a four-percent error rate, which is a bit worse than our usual 50 wpm and one-percent error rate.

The 3.5 x 1.7-inch touchpad has slightly raised dots, creating a pleasant texture for our fingers to glide on. Selecting text and moving text within a document was quick and responsive. Pinch-to-zoom worked fairly well, although we noticed some lag, and rotating photos didn't always work on the first try. Two-finger scrolling was too quick and oversensitive, but three-finger flicking was smooth. We appreciated the two large touchpad buttons, which clicked firmly.

Display and Audio

The G570 comes with a glossy and bright 15.6-inch anti-glare widescreen display with a native resolution of 1366 x 768. We saw beautiful images during the Transformers: Dark of the Moon trailer; Rosie Huntington-Whitely's blue eyes popped amidst all the wanton destruction, as did Optimus Prime's red and blue chassis as he chopped Decepticons to bits.

Music got loud on the G570, but it sounded somewhat flat. While the speakers were powerful enough to fill a small room, the bass line in Katy Perry's "E.T." was lacking, and the synthesized instrumental sounded distorted. When we listened to Drake's monotone warbling on "Marvin's Room," we heard non-existent bass. You'll want to stay away from the max volume setting to avoid harsher-sounding audio.

Heat

This is one cool customer. After streaming video on a full screen video on Hulu for 15 minutes, the G570's touchpad registered 85 degrees Fahrenheit. The space between the G and H keys was a little warmer at 93 degrees, while the notebook's bottom came in at a lap-friendly 88 degrees.

Ports and Webcam

The right side of the G570 houses a USB 2.0 port, a DVD burner, a headphone jack, and a microphone jack. On the front sit a 5-in-1 card reader and a wireless on/off switch. The left side features three USB 2.0 ports, one of which doubles as an eSATA port. There is also a HDMI port, VGA, Ethernet, and a Ken-sington secure lock. We woud've liked to seen a USB 3.0 port, though.


Using the included Cyberlink YouCam software, the G570's 2-megapixel webcam recorded bright, clear video under the florescent lighting in our office. However, when we used Skype, a caller reported that we appeared rather dark and that there was blurring when we began to move. The audio, however, came through loud and clear without any background noise.

For an added measure of security, the G570 comes with Lenovo's VeriFace face-recognition software. After a five-minute setup process (which involved scanning our face five times), the app quickly unlocked the notebook with a quick facial scan.

Posted in: Lenovo