The LCD panel on the Y500 is a 15-inch widescreen that has a native resolution of 1280x800 (16:10 aspect ratio). It’s a transflective screen means it will allow you to view the screen display even under the harshest lighting conditions. Lenovo advertises the screen as a 'Vibrant View' screen which delivers as promised. Compared to a lot of laptops, we have reviewed recently, the monitor definitely offers sharper color output, contrast and a decent level of brightness. This is a heaven-sent feature as it allows you not only to work for long hours without eye-strain, it makes watching movies and television on the laptop a good experience. There is a 1.3 MP camera present just above the LCD panel, which acts both as the biometric scanner and a webcam.
The keys of the Lenovo Y500 are of a standard design and have properly elevated keys. There is good tactile feedback and allows rapid typing without causing spelling mistakes. The only annoying thing is the placement of the standard Home/PG UP/PG DN keypad. It has been put into the right hand corner and causes you to hunt for the keys when you are working.
The area around the keyboard of the Y500 is fairly cluttered. Apart from the standard keyboard, there are separate control keys present for the subwoofer, Bluetooth /Wi-Fi radio, web-cam application, and one touch restore and a mute button. Despite such a large no of keys present, they are properly elevated and truly serve their purpose of being of being one touch. The last button and control key, towards the right side of the keyboard serve a special purpose i.e. allow you to access the TV tuner directly.
The touchpad of the Y500 was a bit of a disappointment. It was a bit too smooth and did not offer the precise control that we have come to expect from Lenovo. The responsiveness was also a bit off and despite us adjusting the speed, the mouse still did not improve. This could easily have been avoided by having a little more of a rough texture for the touchpad.
In terms of connectivity the Lenovo Y500 is well equipped. There are 4 x USB 2.0 slots present, 1 Firewire port, a single PCMCIA slot, 1 x headphone and microphone jack and a 4-in-1 card-reader. In keeping with the media-center aspect of this notebook there is also a TV tuner present with a remote control, a slot-loaded 6x DVD combo drive and a 2.5W subwoofer with a pair of 2 x 2W speakers.
Dear Sir/Madam,