-I'm Scott Stein, senior editor at cnet.com, and let's play the laptop value game shall we?
This is the Lenovo IdeaPad Z370.
And what would you pay for something this or think in something in that 700-dollar range?
If it was in that 700-dollar range, it wouldn't be that exciting.
Frankly, you've seen this type of laptop before.
Core i5 processor, 500-gigabyte hard drive, 5 gigabytes of RAM, 13-inch screen,
speakers up here, multi-touch trackpad down here, very good keyboard, but you know, it's at same package that's-- you're seeing in laptops after laptop.
Now, where this is interesting is that right now this is on sale for about 599 on Lenovo's website.
That's a good deal.
And hey, if you put it down on that price range, you're looking at a budget laptop that is very well built for that price and has a good set of features.
Suddenly, our ears perked up and we go hey that's a good value, but if you see this thing at more than that,
the value equation maybe shifts a little bit.
One of the problems we have with this laptop is its battery life.
It's a little over 3 hours and we've seen laptops now, the Toshiba Protege, the MacBook Air, that are getting 7 hours of battery life.
Why would you settle for 3 hours?
We wouldn't.
You shouldn't.
But at a certain price, maybe that becomes a good value.
This doesn't have anything more than Intel integrated graphics, which are fine for basic game playing.
This is not a gamer's laptop.
This is, however, a keyboard fetish's laptop because this keyboard
is fantastic.
We like Lenovo keyboards.
Over and over again, we see them on ThinkPads and this is very much like one of those new gen ThinkPad keyboards that is a little slightly curved here.
It feels wonderful to type on.
If you are a writer, you are going to be very excited.
If you're not, you're going to ignore that statement and move on, but over all, hey it has a nice kind of clean metal design, this funky [unk] style of color scheme on the back here, and a medium-sized thickness.
I'm trying to get excited about a laptop that
looks a lot like other laptops, but again, for that price, maybe it's time you wanna take a look at it.
I'm Scott Stein and that's a look at the Lenovo IdeaPad Z370.