Hi there! It's been a week since I have had my Lenovo G560. Here is a quick user review by me. I want to try keeping it more pictures and less words. So here we go.
This is the package in which the laptop came in. Weigh around 3kg.
On the side of the package is a sticker showing what's in it for you.
This is what I paid for so I went ahead and open the package. There's a seal on the top and you have to break it.
The package comes with a plastic handle. A nice touch for people who are literally taking this home.
There are two things inside. One is the square pack you see and another is the laptop itself. You can see the laptop is secured inside two pieces of styrofoam.
Taking the square box out.
Inside the square box is the AC adaptor, battery pack and manuals. No frills except that I do get the Office 2007 with this purchase.
And then I fished the laptop out of the box.
Remove the styrofoam and flip to the back. You can see there is a security seal on the plastic.
To gain access to the laptop you have to break the seal. Once the seal is removed from the surface on which it was first attached to, changes in ink distribution occurs to indicate seal breach. The transparent LENOVO characters werent visible before I broke off the seal.
Now we are talking. Glossy finish on the top. No wrapping to protect the topside of the laptop. Fine for me though.
Flip the computer over and you can see the battery bay on the top, vent to its right, and the large panel that hides the HDD and memory chips.
Cant wait to fire it up. The laptop looks like this. A piece of non-woven fabric sits in between the screen and the keyboard. There was no protective film on the screen, only on the bezel.
I am revoming the protective film on the bezel. What is this film doing here? Protecting what?
The answer could be this. Protecting the built in web cam.
A picture of the operation area. Two laptop quality speakers on the top nearest to the screen, one at each hinge. Right below the speakers, to the left are power, power management and backup management buttons, to the right are three touch-sensitive volume control buttons. They all have LED backlight. This laptop has a built in equalizer function that boosts the sound quality when viewing movies.
Numeric keypad way to the right and they are a bit small. Not that it matters anyway. All and all the keyboard layout is very similar to that of the fullsize desktop. One thing worth mentioning is that although this G560 does not type like the ThinkPad although they are from the same brand. ThinkPad feels much sturdier and there is more feedback. But then again on my own benchmark the G560 is way better than any other Japanese brands of its size in terms of keyboard feel. It does not feel thrashy or bouncy.
Lenovo advertising for themselves. See if you can guess what these icons mean. You see the white dot above the top left icon? That's the built in microphone. with the built in webcam and microphone, i am able to call home using skype without jacking in the headphone. A nice feature. The microphone seems to be of good quality. The person on the other side could hear me although I was two meters away from my computer and didnt speak into that direction.
Well you know what these mean.
There are four indicators at the front each showing the power on/off status, battery charge status, wireless on/off status and the HDD access lamp. These are really nice because many laptops nowadays simply just do away with all lamps to cut cost. Above the indicators is the touchpad. This is a very bad touchpad. It traces the finger movement OK, but the lack of two individual touchpad buttons really kill it. The lower corners of the touchpad work like buttons but it feels sluggish and clumsy. When I push the buttons the whole plane of touchpad just tilts to that direction. The touchpad is probably built on a pivot underneath. This is another difference between the authentic ThinkPad and this G560.
This laptop has only three USB ports. One on the right, two on the left. Power inlet is on the right next to the USB port. LAN cable port is on the left sitting next to the VGA output. Next to the LAN cable port is another vent. There is no connectivity at the back.
There is a wireless on/off switch on the front to the left of the touchpad, to the right is the 5-in-1 card reader. DVD multi drive is on the right.
Performance wise this laptop is certainly not the best in league but it delivers in a Core i5 way. I must admit this laptop is very well designed, in terms of Value Engineering. Lenovo takes away the unnecessary variable in the equation leaving only the critical ones. For example, there is no open/close latch on the screen. When you come to think of it, when you are carrying the laptop in your bag chances are it wont open on itself. If you are using it then you are already opening, why would you want a latch?
There's more. The card reader does not have the spring kick-back mechanism. Meaning you insert the card all the way into the bay and when you retrieve it you simply pull it out with your finger nail. Even phones have a spring kick-back. But then again, the point is to read the card but not retrieving the card. Of course, user experience might be compromised but this design does save cost while keeping the function.
The G560 does not have a dedicated GPU but nevertheless I could play a racing game on it fine. The House Of The Dead shooter by SEGA also works fine.
Battery life is about 3 hours give and take. Long enough for me to watch a movie without having to find an AC outlet.
At the price ofRM2000 with the Office 2007 bundled, this is a great deal from Lenovo. Actually LENOVO is having an agressive campaign these days. For RM3000 a 12.1 thinkpad with NVIDIA dedicated GPU could be yours!!
Hope you find this review entertaining. :-)