Lenovo 3000 Y410 tiptoes into the U.S. market
The Lenovo 3000 Y410 is available at retail outlets.
The eagle-eyed crew over at NotebookReview tipped us off to the appearance of a new laptop on Lenovo's U.S. site. Part of the Lenovo 3000 family, the 14.1-inch Y410 was announced in the Asia markets earlier this year, but it arrived in the States without even a press release. Curious, considering the Y410 represents the company's first foray into the consumer--also known as "home/home office"--market here.
Though its boxy silver case is hardly a departure from the conservative look of the Lenovo 3000 line, the Y410 includes entertainment-oriented features you wouldn't find on a business machine, including Dolby Home Theater audio with a subwoofer, the ability to play CDs without booting the system, and a media player called Shuttle Center. The laptop also is the first we've seen to pair a built-in 1.3-megapixel Webcam with VeriFace software to provide biometric security via face recognition.
Another first for Lenovo, which has been slowly growing its presence in retail: the Y410 is available only at retail stores--currently, Office Depot, Micro Center, and Staples--and not on Lenovo's site. Each store has a slightly different configuration, the least expensive being Staples' $700 version, with a 1.46GHz Pentium Dual Core processor and 1GB of memory. Office Depot, meanwhile, seems to be offering the top of the Y410 line, with a 1.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 processor and 2GB of 667MHz RAM for $950.
All 5.2-pound Y410 models feature a 14.1-inch display (1,280x800 resolution), integrated Intel X3100 graphics, a 160GB hard drive spinning at 5,400rpm, a built-in DVD burner, and a six-cell battery that the company claims will last up to 4 hours.
Pricewise, the Lenovo 3000 Y410 is competitive with similarly equipped systems, such as the