Lenovo IdeaPad G50-45 Notebook Review Update

Owing to its four CPU cores, the A6-6310 makes a good impression particularly in well-parallelized benchmarks. The APU not only outruns Intel's entire Bay Trail lineup - represented in the form of the Pentium N3520 here - but marginally also the Core i3-4010U based on Haswell. Unfortunately, it cannot be clearly ascertained based on one single review sample whether the slight lag on the A8-6410 with an identical maximum clock rate is only due to measurement fluctuations, or a more careful selection (and thus a better use of the Turbo) of the A8.

While a frequency of approximately 2.0 GHz is reached in most multi-thread tests, the clock climbs to roughly 2.2 to 2.3 GHz in single-core load. That is enough to again defeat the Pentium N3520. However, the A6-6310 has to let all Haswell contenders pass. Owing to its considerably higher per-MHz performance, the Celeron 2957U clocked with just 1.4 GHz shows AMD's APU its limits. At least the described performance is also available in battery mode without losses.

At first glance, the Seagate Laptop Thin SSHD might be seen as a conventional laptop hard drive - but this impression is deceiving. Owing to the additional large 8 GB flash storage cache, the drive can drastically increase accessing frequently used data. The advantages of this technology are only difficult to illustrate with the usual benchmark programs. The SSHD does not have a significant edge on a comparable HDD in either its access time (17.2 milliseconds) or its average transfer rate (90.2 MB/s) in HD Tune. That looks different in practice, but more about that in the following section.

The graphics card simply dubbed Radeon R4 by AMD is only the second-fastest Beema GPU at first glance - seeing that there is still the A8-6410 with its nominally stronger Radeon R5 core. Actually, the technical specs of both models, i.e. 128 GCN shaders, maximum 800 MHz, are exactly the same so that we do not expect any significant performance differences.

In fact, the A8 APU is 8% faster in 3DMark 11, which again could be due to the slightly better utilization of the Turbo. Regardless of this marginal difference, Beema offers a three to four times higher graphics performance than Intel's Bay Trail lineup and can even compete with the (usually more expensive) HD Graphics 4400. The HD 4400 first has a slight lead when combined with a dual-channel memory.

Unfortunately, the A6-6310 rarely manages to produce high frame rates with its comparatively strong GPU even in games. Limited by the low TDP classification, the CPU clock often drops below its base speed of 1.8 GHz when the processor and graphics card are loaded simultaneously. Unfortunately, we cannot say whether this is also true for the graphics unit clock rate due to the lack of suitable tools in the test. Ultimately, only a few games from recent years can be played smoothly using low settings. However, equally priced Intel contenders do not present a better performance either.

The laptop's temperature development makes an equally good impression. We only measured temperatures of over 30 °C in single areas. More than 36 °C was not achieved even in extreme situations or in the vent's direct vicinity. This, especially in conjunction with the throughout quiet operating noise, indicates a well-conceived temperature management. The cooling system would likely also easily cope with stronger hardware.

As briefly mentioned in the gaming section, the processor's clock rate clearly drops below the specified 1.8 GHz when CPU and GPU calculate simultaneously. We even recorded only 1.4 GHz during our stress test, and we also suspect (based on observations of the frame rates in Furmark) a lower GPU frequency of approximately 400 - 500 MHz. However, many current ULV chips show a similar behavior.

It goes without saying that miracles cannot be expected from a laptop for around 370 Euros, ~$479 (300 Euros, ~$388, without an operating system). Therefore, it is even more astounding how minor the restrictions that have to be accepted in Lenovo's IdeaPad G50-45 entry-level solution ultimately are.

Let's start with the assets: Our focus was particularly on AMD's new A6-6310 APU with a performance that can even compete with a pricier Intel Core i3 in well-parallelized applications. The graphics performance is also impressive, at least in comparison with the directly contending Bay Trail lineup. This, alongside the highly responsive hybrid hard drive, results in a very swift total system that should be able to easily cope with office and multimedia requirements for some years. The device even always operates extremely quietly and is fairly energy-efficient.

Unfortunately, we also discovered some drawbacks that we would like to point to here. While both the build and input devices can still reap in "satisfactory," the screen gives plenty of reason for complaint with its low resolution, weak brightness, and unsatisfactory viewing-angle stability - a mainstream low-cost screen based on TN technology. However, that and the not very long-lasting battery can still be ignored when the device is primarily to be used at home. Especially since certain compromises have to be made in this price range even among the innumerable contenders.