Today we are taking a look a the Lenovo Ideapad 700 15,6-inch laptop, specifically model number 80RU00FEUS with a dedicated GTX950M graphics card and plenty of RAM for the most hard core of multitaskers. After doing a quick once over I was quite impressed with what it has to offer and decided it needs a full review. So let’s see what this Lenovo can offer.
The Exterior
When it comes to exterior design and Lenovo you usually know what to expect. The Lenovo Ideapad 700 15,6-inch laptop is no exception. It is in keeping with the companies design language coming in a very sober matte black finish with just some minor design queues here and there. Even without the discrete logos you could have easily told this was a Lenovo product.
The entire body of the Ideapad 700, even the palmrest gets a matte black finish. They went as far with the matte as to make the gorgeous 15,6-inch FullHD (1920 by 1080 pixel) IPS screen also with a matte finish. While this finish looks grate when new, once some skin oils get into it, I expect it to start slowly becoming a fingerprint magnet. I’m sort of getting ahead of myself here, so let’s take this step by step again.
Other than a chrome Lenovo logo on the top left corner, the top cover doesn’t have any mentionable design queues. The entire screen assembly has cutouts on either side to make room for the two large speakers. Many buyers have said the Lenovo Ideapad 700 has very good speakers. I for one am not surprised as most other laptops have their speakers underneath the body and that muffles the sound badly.
The matte 15,6-inch FullHD screen gets, you guessed it, a black matte plastic bezel with just a dark grey lenovo logo on the bottom left side of the screen. There is also a small model inscription with the same dark grey colour on the other side of the bezel. The built in 720p Webcam is located in typical fashion in the middle of the top border. A small rubber strip around the edge of the display helps keep it away from the keyboard. This is a very small detail that is usually present on much more expensive laptops.
The palmrest continues with the same sober design with lenovo’s signature full size keyboard with numerical pad in a black on black color combination. The touchpad and a few function keys add bit of color with some minor orange details. As a final detail there is a rather large dark grey power button on the upper right side of the palm rest, just above the keyboard.
The Connectivity
The connectivity of the Lenovo Ideapad 700 is exactly what you would expect from a laptop powered by a 6th generation Intel processor. For the 80RU00FEUS model number in particular you get the following:
- On the left side of the body it gets the Kensington-Lock-Port, Lenovo’s proprietary power connector, one USB 2.0 Port, the Card Reader and the audio combo jack. Also on the left side of the body is a small hole for the built in microphone.
- The other side of the body features the remaining Ethernet Port, HDMI-Out, two USB 3.0 Ports and the status LEDs.
- On the inside if features the newest Wireless WiFi 802.11 AC with speeds of up to 433 Mbps. It also features Bluetooth 4.0.
The Performance
The main reason I decided to review the Lenovo Ideapad 700 15,6-inch laptop is that in this specification (80RU00FEUS) it is a powerhouse of a computer. It is very well suited as a work computer for people doing a lot of CAD and engineering work and of course for the gamer who wants raw processing power. Let’s see what we get in this package.
The main feature of the Lenovo Ideapad 700 80RU00FEUS is the 12GB of DDR4 RAM in combination with a 6th generation high power variant Intel Core i5-6300HQ processor running at 2.30GHz. This is no low power U or Y variant design for low energy consumption. Add to this the very fast PCIe 256GB SSD and you already are talking about a very powerful and responsive laptop. The final cherry on top of this amazing cake is the nVidia GeForce GTX950M graphics card with 4GB of VRAM. I know the GTX950M is only the first graphics card with an X on the end, but let’s not forget, this card in no slouch:
The only thing that pulls the entire package down is the very small 3-cell battery. With just 45Watt Hour the up to 4 hours battery life claimed by Lenovo seems somewhat plausible if not a bit optimistic. I would expect, based on the high powered CPU and the gaming GPU around 2 to 3 hours even with just browsing. Thankfully you have the 12GB of RAM to satisfy Chromes voracious appetite and still be able to do something else.
So overall from the performance side I think this is the perfect work computer for power users and heavy multitaskers. I know I am one. (Right at this moment I have 2 browsers with multiple tabs open, music playing in the background, a photo editing program to cut the photos for this post, various open explorers to find the individual files, a Skype window, an email client open and god knows whatever Windows is doing in the background. That’s a whole bunch of RAM being used right this instant!)
I would also have to add that because this isn’t a laptop specifically built for gaming it might run into overheating issues under full load. I know this thing has two fans, but I’m not quite sure the way it’s setup it’s up to the task. I might be wrong here. On the plus side, Lenovo was kind enough to give us access to all the important components.
