Hands-on with Lenovo's new Ideapad Y710 for gamers

We caught the regular Ideapad Y710 last night, but Lenovo was nice enough to stealth this hot gaming version out of its VIP press debut and let us play with it for a while. The custom arrow key and system-monitor LCD unit replaces the numeric keypad, and it's rocking a Blu-ray drive and Dolby Home Theater certification -- which involves four built-in speakers plus a bottom-mounted sub that you can shut off when you don't feel like bumping it too hard. On top of that, it's got a second hot-swappable hard drive that sits in a carrier with a mini-USB port, so you can yank the drive and transfer files on the go. All in all, a sweet rig -- but check out how much bigger it is than the tiny U110 in the gallery.

Gallery: Hands on with the Lenovo Gaming Y710

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

[Rontalvos @ Jan 7th 2008 7:39PM]

The dedicated area with arrow keys is great and all, but it's on the wrong side to actually be useful for gaming, plus you'd lose the functionality of all the buttons near WASD for other functions. Still cool though.

[JohnTitor @ Jan 7th 2008 8:09PM]

give some respect for the lefties

[Rontalvos @ Jan 7th 2008 8:11PM]

Well, 85-90% of the general population is right handed, but good point.

[Ed @ Jan 7th 2008 9:38PM]

I'm a lefty that uses WASD and it just feels natural. Wasting valuable keyboard space with redundant keys, however, does not.

[Blakamin @ Jan 8th 2008 1:15AM]

All my lefty friends use wasd too...

[jay.viz @ Jan 8th 2008 11:26AM]

I'm a lefty, and I use the keypad.

[Jm @ Jan 7th 2008 7:45PM]

price?

[Andy @ Jan 8th 2008 12:56AM]

I saw a Y710, t9300, 2GB, 2x250GB, Radeon 2600HD, and Blu-ray for $1860 at TigerDirect.

[Jm @ Jan 8th 2008 8:00AM]

nice

[Flashpoint @ Jan 7th 2008 8:11PM]

I have the Lenovo X60.
These things have crappy HDD that stop themselves when they experience shock - they need SSD. They coulda kept the BR drive and gave me a WEBCAMERA. The Lenovo X60 doesn't include a drive at all so it weighs less than 4 pounds and gets over 6 hours on its battery.

[haha @ Jan 7th 2008 8:22PM]

On the X60s you can disable that monitoring or reduce its sensitivity by simply clicking on the icon on the bottom right. But this isn't supposed to be an ultraportable like a x60, its a gaming and entertainment laptop, thats why it has a blu ray.

[web2.oh @ Jan 7th 2008 8:22PM]

That's not the hard drive, that's software. You can turn off the HDD anti-shock feature if it bothers you that much. Learn to use the products you own!

And why the hell are you comparing an ultraportable Thinkpad with an ultra-massive Ideapad?? Different product lines and different purposes!

[turn_self_off @ Jan 7th 2008 8:55PM]

what would be great was if that extra arrow area was a module system so that you could pop in the numpad if you wanted it.

[iKrolm @ Jan 7th 2008 9:26PM]

anything more modular on a laptop is nice.

With this one, you can upgrade your hard drive with the pull-out drive slot.

[Husar @ Jan 7th 2008 9:10PM]

any specs revealed?

[Randy @ Jan 8th 2008 12:05PM]

Holy Cow! this thing is huge! I'll pass.

[imnotacylon @ Jan 8th 2008 5:52PM]

I think that's the little ultraportable 11in sitting on top of it. should be standard 17" size.

[OneLove @ Jan 8th 2008 12:43PM]

does that say TURBO!?

[Ruger @ Jan 8th 2008 6:33PM]

Yep...flip a switch and it's overclocked.

[littleroot @ Jan 9th 2008 2:34PM]

Is the T9300 processor as good or better than say the T7700? Looking at the Intel.com specs it seems the 9300 has two more MB of L2 cache so it seems better but some other specs are missing.