Lenovo Ideapad Y700 17ISK 80Q0 Notebook Review

Maintenance

The set of 14 Philips screws on the bottom panel can be easily removed while the panel itself can take some work to snap out. We use the term "snap" literally as the panel simply does not slide or lift out, but must be pulled until it snaps out of the additional hinges holding it down.

Once inside, users get direct access to the dual SODIMM slots, dual storage bays, dual fans, battery, and WLAN card. Nearly the entire board has been redesigned from the older Y70, so the Y700 17ISK has more in common with the Y700 15ISK than it does with its older sibling.

Warranty

The standard one-year limited warranty applies. A handful of competing manufacturers offer two years as standard instead, such as Gigabyte and certain resellers. As per usual for Lenovo products, a wide variety of options are available for warranty extensions.

Keyboard & Touchpad

Everything has carried over unscathed from the previous Y70 down to the two levels of red backlight lighting, key feedback and layout, and sizes of both the keyboard and touchpad. The touchpad itself is a smoother plastic compared to the rubberized palm rests surrounding it for better traction and control. Otherwise, our same comments on the feel and performance of the Y70 will also apply here.

We're still disappointed that the system carries no dedicated Auxiliary or Macro keys. We had the same complaint about the Y700 15ISK as well, but the omission is only more inexcusable on a physically larger system where extra space is at an abundance. Nonetheless, we appreciate the fact that the notebook uses full-size Arrow keys unlike on the Envy 17 or Acer Aspire Nitro VN7.

The high quality of the LG Philips panel is shown by its high AdobeRGB and sRGB coverage of 56 percent and 85 percent, respectively. Less expensive panels typically cover 60 percent of sRGB while even costlier panels can cover nearly all of sRGB, such as on the Asus UX501 or Eurocom DLX7. A wide gamut is not as important for gaming purposes as it is for digital graphics work.

Further display measurements with an X-Rite spectrophotometer show the Y700 to be slightly better than last year's Y70 in terms of brightness, black levels, saturation, gamma, and grayscale without any calibration efforts from the end-user. Orange and Yellow colors, however, are represented less accurately than others. Measured colors become increasingly less accurate the higher the saturation level due to imperfect sRGB coverage. A quick calibration will improve grayscale and flatten RGB balance.

Outdoor visibility is average on a cloudy day and uncomfortable if under direct sunlight. Reflections still occur to a moderate degree despite the semi-glossy panel. Viewing angles are good as expected from an IPS panel with just slight changes to brightness and colors if viewing from extreme angles.

Raw CPU power from the Skylake core is essentially on par with the Core i7-4720HQ while operating at a lower TDP and with more powerful integrated graphics. CPU performance gains when moving from Haswell to Skylake are wider during multi-threaded loads than single-threaded loads. As an example, our Y700 is 30 percent faster in multi-core operations than the i7-4700HQ in our older Y70 configuration, while single-core operations are almost on pair according to CineBench results.

See our dedicated CPU page on the Core i7-6700HQ for more benchmarks and comparisons.

PCMark benchmarks rank the Y700 well ahead of last year's Lenovo Y70 and close to other systems with the same Skylake CPU and GTX 970M or 950M graphics. A good portion of the performance gap can be attributed to the primary SSHD in our older Y70 unit, which will always rank lower than a modern dedicated SSD like the one in our Y700 in PCMark tests.

Subjectively, the notebook runs smoothly without any recurring software hitches or odd issues. Though a rare occurrence, the notebook would sometimes not wake properly from Sleep. We're unable to reliably repeat the issue, but it's worth mentioning that our recent 15-inch Y700 also suffered from the same Sleep and wake problem as well.

3DMark shows the GTX 960M to be roughly 40 percent ahead of the GTX 950M in the Envy 17 and 40 percent behind the GTX 970M in the Aorus X3 Plus v5. The numbers are relative, so the performance gap between the 960M and 970M is larger than between the 950M and 960M. Regardless, the Y700 lies exactly where we expect a system with the GTX 960M to be.

We stress the notebook with synthetic benchmarks to identify any potential throttling or stability issues. With just Prime95 active to stress the CPU, the i7-6700HQ is able to run at its steady 3.1 GHz maximum without any issues whilst maintaining a relatively low average CPU temperature of about 66 C. Results are similar with FurMark for the Nvidia GPU with the core throttling just slightly to 1032 MHz from its base 1097 clock rate. Running both Prime95 and FurMark simultaneously will cause core temperatures to max out at about 70 C since throttling occurs for both the CPU and GPU.

Unigine Heaven stress is a more realistic representation of gaming loads. When under these conditions, the CPU and GPU will stabilize in the 55 C and 65 C range, respectively, with consistent GPU Boost at 1176 MHz. The CPU will fluctuate accordingly depending on the onscreen demand.

Running on battery power will impact CPU Turbo Boost while GPU performance remains unaffected. A 3DMark 11 run on batteries returns Physics and Graphics scores of 8082 points and 5179 points, respectively, compared to 8749 points and 5237 points when on mains. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results are not unlike what we found on our 15-inch Y700 test unit.

Surface temperatures when idling are flat on both sides with warmer spots near the center of the notebook. The hot spots grow more obvious when under maximum load as they concentrate around the right side of the notebook on surfaces adjacent to the heat pipes. Thus, the right half of the keyboard will feel significantly warmer than the left when gaming or under other high loads.

When compared to last year's Y70, the 17-inch Y700 runs much cooler even after taking into account the different ambient temperatures during measurements. The rearranged cooling system means that the all-important WASD keys stay relatively cool on the Y700 series unlike on the Y70. The palm rests also remain cool unlike on thinner systems such as the GS70. Average surface temperatures are not all that different from the Acer Aspire Nitro VN7, either.

Lenovo has upped the capacity of the non-removable battery from 54 Wh to 60 Wh on the Y700. Combine this with the more efficient Skylake CPU and Maxwell GPU and overall runtimes are already better than last year's Y70. Runtimes are very good in general for a gaming notebook at roughly 5.5 hours of constant WLAN use.

The power adapter itself is roughly 14.5 x 6.5 x 3 cm in size and unfortunately does not offer an extra USB port for charging a la the Aorus X3 Plus v5.