Lenovo Y50 Touch review: A midsize gaming system with style

Lenovo, a brand best known for its conservative ThinkPad laptops and flexible Yoga hybrids, also makes some killer gaming laptops, even if few people are aware of them. That's a shame, because they generally look much nicer than the brick-like boxes from Origin PC , Alienware , and other gaming specialists, and they offer decent enough performance for mainstream gamers who just want to play the latest games away from a living-room console.

The newest entry in Lenovo's gaming lineup is the Y50 Touch, a 15.6-inch laptop that combines a slightly geeky style with decent (but not top-of-the-line) gaming components. First profiled at CES 2014, the Y50 is easily one of the computers I've received the most emails, tweets, and inquiries about from CNET readers. That says to me that there's a real hunger out there for a gaming laptop that can work as a full-time midsize home or work computer, balancing gaming and nongaming tasks equally.

A few different versions of the Y50 are available, with changes to the screen, storage, and other features, but the base configuration, consisting of an Intel Core i7 CPU and Nvidia GeForce 860M graphics card, remains the same.

Our test unit was the Best Buy configuration, combining an Intel Core i7 4700HQ CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB HDD/8GB SSD storage combo, Nvidia GeForce 860M graphics, and a 1080p touch display, all for $1,149. If you look at the Lenovo website, you'll find several slightly different configurations, most without the touchscreen. The single touch config costs $1,399, while an intriguing option to add a full 4K resolution display starts at $1,299.

In the UK, the Y50 starts at £1,000, but isn't available with a touchscreen. Lenovo launched the Y50 just before Christmas in Australia, also without the touchscreen and costing AU$2,199. That price does include the 4K display, however.

If you're searching on the (often-confusing) Lenovo site, note that the Y50, Y50 Touch, and Y50 UHD models are all on separate pages, so you'll have to click around a bit to see all the options. Frankly, the Best Buy configuration feels like the best overall value, especially if, like me, you think Windows 8 really needs a touchscreen to work for non-gaming tasks.

Sadly, there's one thing holding this otherwise excellent system back from being close to perfect. The display is clearly not one of the newer IPS (in-plane switching) panels that we're seeing in more and more laptops this year. Off-axis viewing angles are poor, and even dead-on, the display appears more washed-out than the best laptop and tablet screens.

That may be a deal-breaker for some. But the other aspects of the Y50, including the powerful overall performance, excellent design and build quality, touchscreen, and price, all combine to make it a great overall value. It won't compete with $2,000-plus specialty rigs, but instead leads the small field of crossover systems that can satisfy mainstream gamers who want to skip clunky, thick gaming laptops that sacrifice portability.

PC Geekbox

	Lenovo Y50 Touch	Maingear Pulse 14	Razer Blade 14 RZ09-0116
Price as reviewed	$1,149	$1,399	$2,399
Display size/resolution	15.6-inch, 1,920 x 1,080 touch-screen	14-inch, 1,920 x 1,080 screen	14-inch, 3,200 x 1,800 touch-screen
PC CPU	2.4GHz Intel Core i7 4700HQ	2.2GHz Intel Core i7 4702MQ	2.2GHz Intel Core i7 4702HQ
PC memory	8GB 1,600MHZ DDR3 SDRAM	8GB 1,600MHZ DDR3 SDRAM	8GB 1,600MHZ DDR3 SDRAM
Graphics	4GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 860M	2GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 850M	3GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 870M
Storage	1TB + 8GB SSHD	500GB HDD	256GB SSD
Optical drive	None	None	None
Networking	Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.0	Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth 4.0	Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.0
Operating system	Windows 8.1 (64-bit)	Windows 8.1 (64-bit)	Windows 8.1 (64-bit)

Design and features

Having just spent a few weeks looking at several giant, boxy, heavy, 17-inch gaming laptops (including a pair from Origin PC and Digital Storm built into the exact same retro-looking, off-the-shelf chassis), the 15-inch Lenovo Y50 was a welcome break.

The angular design is built around brushed black metal that's embossed in a crosshatch pattern, and there's a subtle chrome Lenovo logo on the back panel. Dark red accents add some color, with wedge-shaped red speaker grilles at the top left and right edges of the interior tray, and more red touches on the USB ports and subwoofer grille under the body.

The boldest design move is the deep red backlit keyboard, easily the visual highlight of the system. Many other gaming laptops offer backlit keyboards, usually in a rainbow of user-adjustable colors, but this version is built around that single red color. The effect is heightened because the side shafts of the island-style keys are made of translucent red plastic, and the light shines through the actual key bodies, rather than simply leaking from around the key cutouts, as in other backlit laptops.

The keyboard itself is fine, not as custom-made for gamers as, for example, an Alienware keyboard, but I appreciated the large Shift, Tab, and Ctrl keys -- all frequently used in PC games. But, partially because there's a full numberpad to the right, some of the keys take a little getting used to finding by feel, such as the Backspace and right Shift keys.

As most PC gaming is done via external mouse, you may not spend a lot of time with the touchpad. It's a buttonless, clickpad-style one, and offset to the left in order to line up under the spacebar (again, thanks to the numberpad next to the keyboard).

Lenovo packs this system, as it does most of its PCs, with a ton of proprietary software. Frankly, most of it can safely be called bloatware, and you're unlikely to ever take the time to learn to use it, but I liked the apps for tweaking power settings and for troubleshooting and installing system updates.

One thing I've asked for in the past from gaming laptops in general, and Lenovo's previous gaming laptops specifically, is a touchscreen. It's not so much that you need touch for gaming, but even a serious gamer will still spend a lot of time on non-gaming tasks, and Windows 8 is simply a gigantic pain to use without a touchscreen.

I got my wish, as the Y50 Touch combines a 1080p touchscreen with an Nvidia 860M GPU for gaming, but perhaps I should have been more specific. In previous years, this 15.6-inch display with a 1,920x1,080 native resolution would have been perfectly acceptable, but especially in 2014, we've been spoiled by the wide distribution of IPS displays, which use a technology called in-plane switching.

According to Wikipedia, "In-plane switching involves arranging and switching the molecules of the liquid crystal (LC) layer between the glass substrates," but in practical terms it means a laptop (or tablet) screen with excellent off-axis viewing angles.

What you get in the Y50 Touch is a display that looks decent head-on (yet still not as bright or crisp as other premium laptop displays), but that causes the image to degrade very quickly when you look at it from off to the side, or even tilt the screen hinge a tiny bit.

It's a real black mark for the system, which prevents it from getting my highest recommendation. But before you go ahead and buy that 10-pound Alienware instead, note that I still felt it was fine for general gaming, and I had several other excellent displays, including Retina MacBooks and Toshiba's brilliant 4K Satellite P50t to directly compare it to. For a reasonable additional investment, Lenovo has a version of the Y50 with a 4K display, and that version may indeed look better, but I haven't had a chance to see one of those in person yet.

Ports and connections

	Lenovo Y50 Touch
Video	HDMI
Audio	Stereo speakers, headphone/microphone jacks, SPDIF audio out
Data	2 USB 3.0, 1 USB 2.0, SD card reader
Networking	Ethernet, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Optical drive	None

Connections, performance, and battery

A decent set of ports and connections are included. Full-size Ethernet jacks are quickly vanishing from smaller laptops, but it's still especially important for gaming systems, as you'll want to plug directly in for quicker downloading of giant game files, which can get up to 20GB or more these days.

In our benchmark testing, the Y50 Touch performed up to our expectations, as we would expect from any high-end laptop with a current-gen Intel Core i7 processor. But, those expectations were also tempered by the step-down graphics card, at least compared to bigger, faster, more expensive gaming laptops from Origin PC, Alienware, and others. Many of those systems use the Nvidia GeForce 880M card, which is the current top of the line (newer models are expected later this year, however).

In those terms, the Y50 Touch requires you to turn down its detail and quality settings in new games, which may not be what the most serious of PC gamers are looking for. But when you look at the 15-inch Y50 in comparison with other midsize gaming laptops, such as the Razer Blade 14 or the Maingear Pulse 14 , it stands out as a strong performer.

In practical terms, the system ran our BioShock Infinite test at 1080p and high detail settings at 48.7 frames per second, and our very challenging Metro: Last Light test, also at high settings at 13.3 frames per second. The 17-inch $3,500 Origin PC Eon 17-S ran Metro at 27.3 frames per second, while the slim 14-inch Razer Blade 14 ran that same test at 15.3 frames per second.

I was able to run other games, including Thief, Titanfall, and Skyrim at medium-to-high settings at 1,920x1,080 with very smooth, playable frame rates.

PC gamers know better than to look for great battery life, and the Y50 Touch doesn't break the mold. In our video playback battery drain test, the system ran for 4:16, which is less than you'd want from a nongaming 15-inch laptop. In an informal gaming test, set to tax the GPU while on battery power, it ran for about 80 minutes.

Conclusion

The Lenovo Y50 Touch was, on paper, the answer to my search for the perfect gaming laptop. Not too big, not too small; just powerful enough; decent-looking; and with a touchscreen. It hits many of those marks, but the underwhelming overall screen quality is doubly disappointing, considering how close it comes on the other features.

But before you despair, the Y50 Touch is actually an excellent overall mainstream gaming laptop, and still my top choice for this category, with the possible exception of the Razer Blade 14, which costs $1,999 and up. For everyone else without a $2,000 laptop budget, the Y50 Touch is a great semiportable gaming rig that handles games at medium-to-high settings and also works as a sharp-looking everyday system. Of course, now I'm waiting for next year's model to add a better display.

Handbrake Multimedia Multitasking test (in seconds)

MSI Stealth GS70 169Apple MacBook Pro 171Razer Blade 14 185Maingear Pulse 14 188Lenovo Y50 Touch 223

Adobe Photoshop CS5 image-processing test (in seconds)

MSI Stealth GS70 183Razer Blade 14 189Apple MacBook Pro 190Lenovo Y50 Touch 195Maingear Pulse 14 229

Apple iTunes encoding test (in seconds)

Apple MacBook Pro 63MSI Stealth GS70 88Lenovo Y50 Touch 96Maingear Pulse 14 96Razer Blade 14 97

Video playback battery drain test (in minutes)

Apple MacBook Pro 561Razer Blade 14 267Lenovo Y50 Touch 256Maingear Pulse 14 246MSI Stealth GS70 219

System configurations

Lenovo Y50 Touch

Windows 8.1 (64-bit); 2.4GHz Intel Core i7 4700HQ; 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1600MHz; 4GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 860; 1TB + 8GB SSHD

Maingear Pulse 14

Windows 8.1 (64-bit); 2.2GHz Intel Core i7 4702MQ; 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1600MHz; 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 850M; 500GB 5,400rpm HDD

Razer Blade 14

Windows 8.1 (64-bit); 2.2GHz Intel Core i7 4702HQ; 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1600MHz, 3GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 870; 256GB SSD

Apple MacBook Pro

OSX 10.9.4 Mavericks; 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-4770HQ; 16GB DDR3 SDRAM 1600MHz; 1536MBB Intel Iris Pro Graphics; 256GB SSD

MSI Stealth GS70

Windows 8.1 (64.bit); 2.5GHz Intel Core i7-4710HQ; 16GB DDR3 SDRAM 1600MHz; 6144MB Nvidia GeForce GT 870; RAID 0 (3) 128GB SSD, 1TB 7,200rpm HDD

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