The good: The Lenovo IdeaPad Y570 looks great and has a surprising amount of configuration flexibility for a mainstream laptop.
The bad: The system is brimming with bloatware, and a physical switch for GPU modes is confusing.
The bottom line: A sharp-looking mainstream laptop with decent graphics and some configuration flexibility, the IdeaPad Y570 is a solid alternative to some of the better-known consumer laptop brands.
If you're shopping for a midsize 15.6-inch laptop, there are a lot of choices out there, to put it mildly. For example, Dell and HP make several perfectly fine machines in this category, Dell with its midrange Inspiron and higher-end XPS lines, and HP with its midrange Pavilion and higher-end Envy lines. Lenovo's IdeaPad also merits a look, and the Y570 model is a 15-inch laptop that looks and feels very high-end, but can be configured anywhere from $799 to $1,149.
Our version hits close to the perfect middle ground, coming in at $849. For that, you get an Intel Core i5 2410M CPU (which we've seen in laptops as inexpensive as $579), but also Nvidia's GeForce 555M GPU. The 4GB of RAM and 500GB hard drive are standard (or maybe even a little subpar for an $849 laptop), but Lenovo's design savvy and helpful software make up for it. It's also worth noting that Lenovo currently has the same model, but with a larger 750GB hard drive and Blu-ray, discounted to $799 for an unspecified period of time.
Read more: http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/lenovo-ideapad-y570/4505-3121_7-34642470.html#ixzz1aom2DZ9w
