Lenovo IdeaPad G565 – Contemporary design, executive style Review

The Lenovo IdeaPad G565 is a decent mid-range laptop which provides good value for money, with its executive style features at an affordable price. Although, its bulky form-factor weighing around 5.5Kilo-grams is a major hindrance for office goers and frequent travellers. Also, its ordinary performance does not satisfy a pure performance hungry freak. However, it makes a good buy at Rs. 38,090 with its ability for casual gaming at decent frame rates and presence of executive style features being the major selling points.

The power button, OneKey recovery and battery status shortcut buttons are sandwiched between the battery compartment and the keypad. Two LED indicators namely: the caps lock and the num lock are located right next to them. The wide seam on the touchpad allows the user the scope for comfortable navigation on the screen. The four LED indicators below the touchpad represent the power, battery, Wi-Fi and processor status respectively. The integrated webcam is placed at the top centre of the screen bezel along with a biometric sensor right next to it. The sensor is activated during the Veriface login for performing the retina scan.

The Lenovo IdeaPad G565 is quite bulky, weighing around 5.5 kg. It includes two USB ports, one VGA port, one ethernet port & room for air-flow on the left; one USB port, one power port, one DVD writer (multi-speed), one headphone port & one microphone port are located on the right. It also includes one multi-card reader slot (MMC, MS, MS Pro, SD, xD) and one Wi-Fi on/off switch located at either sides on the front of the palm-rest.

[RELATED_ARTICLE]The keypad is cramped for space, making way for the textured design over the battery compartment, including two integrated speakers on it and the textured palm-rest below the keypad. We feel that too much of space is underutilised on either sides at the top and bottom of the keypad. Otherwise, we could experience better ergonomics in terms of usability of keys and comfortable keypad navigation. We encountered a few typos owing to cramped-up space between keys and lack of sufficient tactile feedback. The only plus is the special function keys marked in saffron with two function “Fn” operator keys for quick dual-hand and multimedia operation. Overall, the keypad build quality and ergonomics stood average at best, which fails to justify the executive class design portrayed by it.

Read on to know the Performance, Our Take, Specifications and Performance test results in the next page… 

Performance

[RELATED_ARTICLE]The Lenovo IdeaPad G565 delivered an average performance across all the synthetic benchmark tests, with a decent showing in the real-world and gaming benchmark tests. It showcased a rather ordinary battery-life (2 hours and 56 minutes), in spite of the low-end hardware configuration. Although, the interesting fact is that, it outscored the Asus U43Jc Bamboo in the overall score for 3DMark 2006 and Maxon CineBench test largely owing to the presence of ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 in its hardware configuration.

However, the Asus U43Jc did significantly better across all other tests & marginally better in the PC Mark Vantage gaming test scoring 3243 points, as against 3122 points scored by the G565. The Lenovo G565 did a decent job in the real-world game benchmarks with FarCry 2 and Doom 3, securing 35.84fps and 112.4fps (on an average) respectively, while Asus U43Jc secured a meagre 23.67fps (on an average) on FarCry 2. Thereby, the real-world game benchmarks clearly contradict the synthetic game scores to some extent. Thus, the scales would slightly tilt in favour of the G565 to be better suitable for casual gaming, if we were to consider the real-world benchmark and overall 3D Mark 2006 scores. However, if you are looking for a better overall performer sans gaming, then you would do better with the Asus U43Jc Bamboo laptop.

Our Take
The Lenovo IdeaPad G565 is a decent mid-range laptop which provides good value for money, with its executive style features at an affordable price. Although, its bulky form-factor weighing around 5.5Kilo-grams is a major hindrance for office goers and frequent travellers. Also, its ordinary performance does not satisfy a pure performance hungry freak. However, it makes a good buy at Rs. 38,090 with its ability for casual gaming at decent frame rates and presence of executive style features being the major selling points.

Specifications: Processor: AMD Phenom II N850 (2.2GHz); Memory: 3GB DDR3 533MHz; Chipset: AMD 785GX; Graphics card: 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470; Hard drive: 500GB; Display: 15.6-inch LED backlit, Screen resolution: 1366 x 768; Weight: 5.5 Kilo-grams;

Contact:  Lenovo India
Phone: 1800 425 2666
E-mail: pmatthan@lenovo.com
Website: www.lenovo.com
Price: Rs. 38,090

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Vinod Yalburgi