>>I'm Dan Ackerman and we are here taking a look at the Lenovo IdeaPad Y460. Now Levono's IdeaPad line, that's a whole bunch of laptops designed for mainstream consumers and it's pretty different from their ThinkPad line, those are the very sort of stayed button and business systems they are known for. The IdeaPad systems they have kind of an adventurous designs and some unique features. Really the complete opposite from ThinkPads and we think the whole line is pretty underrated because they really do some adventurous stuff. A great example is this guy, the Y460 which is a 14-inch fairly hardcore gaming multi-media system for 14-inch system with an Intel Core i5 processor and a decent ATI discrete graphics card. It's still pretty slim and portable and definitely one of the better looking gaming capable laptops out there. At the same time, it's a little bit more than $1,000 and that kind of puts you in very, rarified air; you're bumping up right against the 13-inch MacBook Pro or even the less expensive HP Envy 14 which is almost the gold standard of 14-inch laptops. What you do get, however, is really decent gaming scores. You get a nice display even though it's only 1,366x768 and you get some unusual control features.
One of the more unique features is the special capacity of touch control above the keyboard. Now, you've got some touch control buttons for like volume and screen display mode but you've also got a long bar if you run your finger across it slowly then you get access to a whole bunch of quick launch buttons that are programmable. If you run your finger across there quickly, it actually zippers up the entire screen which basically turns off the keyboard and touch pad and puts a picture of a zipper up on the screen. Not really sure what's that good for but if you go back the other way, then you can change the screen background just by flipping your finger from right to left instead of left to right. Again, not particularly useful and also not particularly easy to use, we sat here for several minutes trying to get just exactly the right speed to go this way or that way in order to either zip up the screen or unzip it and change the background. Clever idea but in the end not very practical. Despite that you've got your typical Lenovo excellent build quality. The machine feels very solid and sturdy. It's got a great keyboard and great touch pad. Nice big mouse buttons which we always appreciate seeing and JBL speakers, good for your multi-media and movie playing purposes. It's also got switchable graphics. You can turn the ATI card off or on. You have to do that manually unlike NVIDIA's Optimum system which turns the graphics off and on just automatically based on what kind of program you're using. Here you have to remember to turn it off if you don't want to kill your battery and even under the best of circumstances just using the integrated graphics batteries still not be great which is a shame because this is a fairly portable system and good at gaming and not going to be used that much on the road.
We really have mixed emotions about this system. It's really good at gaming especially for a 14-inch system, looks great, very powerful but it's a little bit on the expensive side and, of course, you're probably going to have it tethered to your desk because the battery life is not fantastic. I'm Dan Ackerman and that's the Lenovo IdeaPad Y460.
