Laptop-Review.eu

Affordable ultraportables - these are the words from Lenovo when the topic is the U series, so we are lined up for an exciting test.
Many may associate Lenovo with expensive products and lack of innovation, but Lenovo is making such opinions a thing of the past. This is in part thanks to more generous pricing of products that do not necessarily sacrifice quality, and in part because Lenovo has stepped up with some innovative products that glow with excellence.

Lenovo is also known for some rather unique system tools that make maintenance, updating and general service easy as pie. Combined with some of the best support around, we believe Lenovo are in a class of their own. The new U series is a statement of quality where there are no compromises in terms of design, and IdeaPad U550 M25C2MD CULV is no exception!

Sound good? Yes, but we are not the only ones who like U550; it has received praise from reviewers around the globe, so we were quite excited to try it out. IdeaPad is made for you and development and the price is well up there, but not too high. This model could easily be a competitor to e.g. Apple’s MacBooks. Well, then. Let us get on with the review!

The product was kindly lent to us by Lenovo.com

Specifications

Category
Business, students

Processor  
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo SU7300 Processor ( 1.30GHz 800MHz 3MB )

Chipset
Mobile Intel GS45 Express

RAM
4 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz

Hard drive
500GB
5400 RPM

Display
15.6 " HD Wide
LED

GPU
ATI Mobile Radeon HD4200 512MB

Battery
6 Cell Lithium-Ion

Optical drive
DVD Recordable

I/Os
3x USB 2.0 ports
1x HDMI™  
1x VGA™  
1x Headphones/speaker/line-out  
1x Microphone-in jack  
1x Ethernet (RJ-45)
1x DC-in jack for AC adapter
1x 4-in-1 Card reader
1x Webcam 1.3M 1366x768

Wireless connectivity
Intel Wireless Wi-Fi/WiMAX Link 5150
Bluetooth Version 2.1 + EDR

Dimensions
25.1 cm (D) x 37.7 cm (W) x 2.9 cm (H)
ca. 2.4 kg including battery

Support
Support is available via Lenovo

Warranty
1 year

Operating system
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 32

Price
About £550


Package contents

The package includes the computer and all the standard accessories. There are manuals and user guides in different languages, as well as shorter quick start guides. There are no CDs or DVDs. There is also a power supply.

Included
- AC adapter
- Manuals and warranty certificate

Construction & Design

The first impressions



Lenovo IdeaPad U550 appears to be a really sleek product. It is a device made for the road and you quickly realise it. First of all the materials are great and seem very durable, and the size and weight are incredibly comfortable for on-the-go use. It weighs only 2.4kg and that actually gets you a 15.6” display with a 16:9 aspect ratio and excellent resolution.




The computer is very thin for a ”larger” model, and very nice to touch. The product itself does not look particularly unique – the most original thing it features is the pattern carved into the lid. That looks particularly good though, and is probably one of the most striking things I have seen on a portable device. If you have to do it, you might as well do it right. Lenovo’s logo prides the lid in a silvery metal.





The keyboard is of great size and feels really, really nice. It is also great to see a notebook that actually has a well-functioning touchpad. Your fingers glide easily across and it feels good. The display, as mentioned already, is of great size and razor sharp. The only thing you might be concerned about is glare.



The device features specially designed speakers on either side, square of shape and covered with a holed material. Though they are somewhat challenging to describe they work as they should here and go really well with the design.

A nice little feature is the fingerprint reader they managed to squeeze in also – many models do not have it, but I find it a quirky little thing.



The hinges appear a bit ”plasticky” but work well with the screen, and I think they are durable enough. They are highly glossy as well, which may be what makes them look cheap.



All in all the product shines with positive feature, and you can see by the modern, thin design that they are trying to entice slightly more design-conscious consumers. You could easily imagine e.g. MacBook owners considering a Lenovo PC next time. I could certainly imagine being the proud owner of a Lenovo notebook someday.

The lid



The lid is thin and has, as mentioned already, a finely designed lid with a square-like pattern (etched directly into the lid) that matches the speakers. It is glossy black on the inside, so you will be seeing some fingerprints sooner or later. Luckily the other parts of the notebook do not suffer too much from this.



The hinges are glossy black and seem durable, if a bit ”plasticky”. They glide really well though, and if they are anything like the rest of the computer, you have no reason to fear for their longevity.

The front



The card reader is easily accessible at the front, and there is also a small switch for when you want to open up the device. It is kept quite simple, and the very small number of ports and such makes it very discreet. There is also a button with which you can switch GPU from powersaving to high performance to get the most out of the battery.

The rear



Nothing much of interest at the rear.

The bottom



The bottom is black and there are hinges for various things. This is also where you find the code for the OS, cooling and such. Not much of interest to us.

The right side



The left side



I/Os



IdeaPad keeps up well with technology. It has plenty of USB ports, a card reader for four different formats and HDMI to connect to your TV or other monitors. It also has the old VGA port to make it compatible with older projectors and such. A fine balance of I/Os.

Diodes




The diodes are, like the rest of the device, quite elegant. They all glow white and are located to the left of the touchpad and beside the power button. They are small but glow quite brightly so you can always see them, and they indicate the status of things like Caps Lock, Numlock, Bluetooth and such. Not a whole lot of surprises, but at least it works exactly as it should.

Keyboard and touchpad




The keyboard is large, as are the keys by extension. They are pretty easy to hit and comfortable to press. They may be a little noisy when you type – while not excessive, it is neither the most silent we have worked with. Many of the keys have an additional function which you access by holding down the FN key while pressing them.

They have added the OneKey Rescue button to the keyboard. It is a solution that can supposedly “rescue” your computer if it breaks down. It is essentially a combined antivirus, reparation and system restore button. Pretty nice to have if something goes wrong and you are not sure what.

The integrated webcam comes with Lenovo VeriFace software. It is a face recognition software that allows you to log on to the computer via your facial structure, in a similar way to using a fingerprint. You can simply associate your facial structure with your account, and then all you have to do is sit in front of the device and bam, you are logged in.

See for example this video

The touchpad is very nice to use and comfortably large. Your fingers glide easily across it and you can use a scroll-function at the right side. The two mouse buttons are located below the touchpad and tend to show fingerprints on their silvery surface. They are soft to press and go down quite far – they work well enough, but I find it a shame they did not put the same effort into the buttons as the keyboard.

Display





The display has a very nice size for travelling. 15.6” is large to look at and the resolution is great – it is particularly nice to be able to see websites in their full format. The resolution is HD and the display is LED-backlit, so it is really no wonder it looks so good. It is great for watching a movie, and if you are in a line of work that requires colours and contrast to be just so, this display will suit you just fine. In fact, you might even want to scale them down a bit.

As noted already, its greatest problem is that it is very glossy. Enjoying looking at yourself while you work is probably a fitting attribute for a display like this, but if you are outside and the sun is shining, it becomes nearly impossible to see anything on it.

There is another incredibly handy feature here – the built-in ambient light sensor which automatically adjusts the brightness of the display to match your surroundings. This is a fine little feature you do not often see, and it works!

We have started testing displays for pixel errors and faults in the backlighting. For that we use a program called MonitorTest. It works by for example blackening the entire display, which will then expose dead pixels (pixels that do not change colour). It also allows you to see if the backlighting is uneven.

There are no faults in the display, which is just another point to the long list of why this product is great.

Sound and speakers




The speakers do reasonably well. They can play fairly loud and are fine for music like jazz. Hiphop and electronica will lack bass though, and rock as well to some extent. All in all though, listening to music on it is tolerable and it does well enough for a notebook.

The speakers are of course in stereo and made in collaboration with Dolby. That should tell you they are far from poor.

Noise, heat and power consumption
It does not seem like the computer gets very hot, even when strained. You could sit with it in your lap, but we never recommend this for several reasons.

It is quite silent, and we have to admit it is incredibly nice to sit with a product that does not always make a lot of noise due to a fan running amok.

The computer is very power efficient and it is quick to advertise it. The chipset is a Mobile Intel GS45 Express that falls under the platform known as CULV (Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage). It is a very power efficient processor developed by Intel and has competitors like AMD Yukon. Keeping power consumption low on a notebook is always crucial, especially for those who use them on the go. This platform is especially made for thin notebooks and ensures battery life is quite high, and since less heat is evolved, less cooling is required. That, in turn, helps keep it silent.
It was originally developed for single core chips, but has evolved into a chipset like this one where a dual-core processor is also possible.

Lenovo has embraced the future, and we consumers can only appreciate that fact...

Benchmark

All benchmarks were run at highest performance settings on the laptop. No other settings were tampered with.

Windows Vista Experience Index



The computer receives a score of 3.9, which is comparatively high. This is the first sign that Lenovo is delivering a great overall product, also when it comes to hardware.

I have decided to compare it with the Acer TravelMate 8371. It is a slightly cheaper computer in the business segment that Lenovo normally operates in. Hopefully Lenovo can finally prove it is a much better and fairer product.

The Acer TravelMate 8371 model had the following specifications:

Category
Students - business

Processor
Intel® Core 2 Duo SU9400 – 1.4 GHz – 3 MB L2 cache - 800 MHz FSB

Chipset
Intel® GS45 (Cantiga-GS) + ICH9M

RAM
2x 2048 MB Samsung DDR3 SDRAM – PC3-8500 - 1066 MHz

GPU
Intel® GMA 4500M Shared onboard

Hard drive
1x 500 GB 5400 RPM

Display
13.3 inch AUO B133XW01 V3 LCD panel - 16:9 HD WXGA – 1366 x 768px

Sound card
Intel® 82901IB ICH9 – High Definition Audio (A3) (RealTek ALC269)

Optical drive
None

Battery
6 celled 2.8 Li-Ion battery

Connectivity
Intel® WiFi Link 5100 AGN – 300 Mbps* (Draft-N)
RealTek RTL8168C(P)/8111C(P) Family – 1000 Mbps
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

I/Os
3x USB 2.0
1x VGA output
1x Kensington lock slot
1x Card reader (SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro and xD)
1x Docking Connector
1x Audio jack-in and output

Operating system
Microsoft Windows Vista Business SP1 (build 6001)

Weight and size
Width: 32.4 cm
Depth: 22.8 cm
Height: 2.53 cm
Weight: 1.65 kg

Price
About £700

Read the review here

Boot times and out of standby



Boot and out of standby times are measured from when the power button is pressed till the computer enters the Windows desktop.

Both computers do really well here. They are both quick to start up, taking under the magical 1 minute limit. Perfect.

Battery life



Idle times are measured at the lowest power profile while Classic times are measured at the highest performance profile. Both are tested with BatteryEater 2005 to find the maximum battery life at the given settings.

The battery life was much lower than expected for the Lenovo computer. It is up against an Acer which is superb in this field, but I was hoping it would have lasted a bit longer. Still, it is enough to survive the odd train ride without power, and that is the goal I think.

The processor

SuperPi



SuperPi calculates the number Pi with 1 million decimals. The result is a time in seconds, so the lower is better. The time taken can be directly compared with other devices that have run the same test.

The processor does well and crunches the numbers quickly. It is slightly faster than the Acer model, so no complaints here. Both are based on the CULV platform mentioned before, which is one of the reasons why the Acer was chosen as a basis for comparison.

SiSoft Sandra CPU Arithmetic



SiSoft Sandra's Whetstone and Drystone benchmarks test the processor’s ability to perform pure number crunching that occurs during gaming or photo editing. Measures are in Mflops (Millionsof Floating Point Operations Per Second). A higher value is better.

The Acer did not go through this benchmark, and it can probably count itself lucky for that. Lenovo deliver a very good result and I am sure they would have beaten Acer.

SiSoft Sandra CPU Multimedia



The multimedia test in SiSoft Sandra, performs calculations on a 2D figure. The result (it/s) is Mandelbrot iterations per second, and once again a higher value is better.

Again we have nothing to compare it with, but the numbers here can be used for direct comparison with any other device you might want to look at.

RAM SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth



SiSoft Sandra’s Memory Bandwidth benchmark is used to measure RAM performance. A higher value is better.

RAM performance is quite good. It seems Lenovo are keeping their promise and we have a product with no obvious weaknesses. It seems like a very nice device and the results are quite satisfactory.

Hard drive performance - SiSoft Sandra Harddisk Read



SiSoft Sandra’s hard drive test module is used to measure the hard drive performance.

The hard drive gets past the 50 and things start to look up. It does very well for a 5400RPM hard drive, and it certainly shows in day to day tasks. It is quick and easily retrieves data tucked far away.

GPU performance - 3Dmark



The 3Dmark tests show the performance in DirectX 9 and paints a picture of how well the computer does in newer games and programs. No tests have been run in DirectX 10.1, though both GPUs support it.

The Lenovo has the option of switching between powersaving and high performance graphics. That means it can run even newer games quite well, or you can choose to extend the battery life if you are on the go. It is great to have the choice and it is easy to do with the button at the front.

Here you can clearly see how the high performance easily sweeps away most others in this segment. It is also important to remember we are actually dealing with a both mobile and thin device. Great stuff.

Overall performance



The PCMark05 results can be compared directly with other laptops that have run the same version of PCMark. The program gives a score from tests that encompass performance of processor, RAM, hard drive, GPU and so on.

It is difficult to say why it actually scores lower than the Acer, especially since not all tests were run. Both do very well and I can only say that in the time I have had the Lenovo, it has performed admirably. As such it is hard to see why it does not do better, but it may be because the Acer has a faster processor whereas the Lenovo went for a better GPU. It is a complicated score.

OpenOffice – mostly for students



As we have reviewed several laptops that cater to students, I have decided to run some average times in OpenOffice, a free program comparable to the Office Package (Word, Excel, Powerpoint).

The load times should give you an idea of how quickly it starts up the applications. I personally think it is quite fast, but it is a matter of opinion.

Conclusion

This is the first Lenovo computer I have tested personally, and I am not disappointed. It is hard not to get excited about a products that works well from a to z.
Physically it beats many other devices. It is made of sleek materials that go well together, and synergise to give an overall product that oozes of design and security. There is no doubt some very experienced people had a hand in making this product.  
Unlike some other Lenovo devices, this model is a bit more modern and contemporary.
We are dealing with a handsome design that makes it a mixture between a faithful companion for business or school, or just a nice “friend” to have a home. The keyboard is sublime to type on, and the keys are nice and big and easy to use. The touchpad is incredibly smooth and very precise, and though the buttons are a bit too soft and go too deep, that hardly detracts from the overall impression.

It does well in terms of sound and the speakers have been specially designed to go with the rest of the notebook.

It has a nice big display that richly reproduces colours and contrast, and a webcam that works really well and also provides some fun when it comes to logging in via facial recognition. All this and it still manages to be both slim and light so it is easy to bring along. It is actually quite incredible.
The display is unfortunately quite glossy and so you may get problems with glare. The battery life is not too good either, but nevertheless still decent. It also has modern hardware in the form of I/Os, with both HDMI and card reader, and could you really ask for more?
Well, it is actually quite hard to say anything negative about this product. You may be paying a little extra for the brand, Lenovo, which probably costs some £50, but this should not scare away potential customers, because what you actually get is well worth it.

We are very close to awarding a rare perfect score to U550, with only minor details keeping us from it.
Laptop-review.eu highly recommends this well-made product.    

    
Pros
- Design
- Materials
- HDMI
- Weight
- Quality
- Touchpad
- I/Os

Cons
- Touchpad buttons
- Battery
- Glossy display























Battery:	3,5 / 5
Graphics:	4 / 5
Construction:	5 / 5
Mobility:	4,5 / 5
Software:	4 / 5
CPU Performance:	4 / 5
Innovation:	3,5 / 5
Price:	3 / 5
Design:	5 / 5
Weight:	4,5 / 5
Performance:	4 / 5
Overall:	4,5 / 5