Please help: Is U400 the way to go? Urgent

[dattakent]

Hi, I currently have 3 options open for buying a new Laptop. Keep in mind that I'll be buying this from the US, but will be used in India and hence the quality of hardware right of the box is important as I mostly will not have warranty back home.

3 options being Lenovo Y470p, Lenovo U400 and HP Envy 15.

Graphics card apart, these 3 are more or less with the same specs but my concerns are below.

HP seems to have had quite a few problems with regards to Hardware quality right from day1.

U400 is more stylish than the Y470P but with lesser graphics, hence I made the choice between sleek and performance.

Now if I were to decide on the U400, would the following be major problems?

a) Touchpad - I've heard Cypress is crap, are the new U400 coming in with Synaptics touchpad? Is Cypress a deal breaker?

b) Display - Reviews/ people keep saying the colour gets washed out and there is only a small sweet spot area for the diplay to look good. How good is the Display in real life?

c) WiFi - People have said this has really poor reception, is that so?

Any other points?

Secondly, is the Display of the U400 similar to the Z570 or any other? If so, please let me know since the Z model is displayed at my local tech store and I can have a look myself.

P.S: My range is upto 1200+50$ for a new laptop. I think 14" itself is big enough, so max screen size is 15". Performance and good design be the main parameters. Corei7 +discrete graphics... any other Laptop comes to mind to you guys?

Cheers

[jweiland]

go with the u400 it will do all your needs and more

[velenoso666]

I'd buy the y470p for 2 reasons, first at least you can play games on it if you feel like it, I not saying you should, but rather at least you can. And secondly I believe it will have a better re-sale value with a dedicated graphics card if you ever need to sell it.

[dattakent]

Hmmm, I've ok to take the hit on the gaming aspect for me.

And the U400 comes with a dedicated card as well right albeit a lesser powered one?

Games might be a bit dated ones, like Borderlands, UT3 and et all.

I'll be using it more for browsing, blogging and photoshop.

I seem to bea sucker for the sleekness of it all

[comongoose]

maybe i can help here becuase ive owned a y570 y470 and a u400.  They y series laptops in my opinion look sweet and have amazing performance.  They are flimsy as hell in my opinion though since I am actually a mac guy.  Some how my 5 year old white plastic macbook had less flex and more rigidty than both those y series computers.  Now the u400 is built solid and is just amazing to touch.  I havent pushed the gpu yet but yes it is discrete with 1 gb.  i played with solidworks a little bit the other day and it handled it fine.  Now the trackpad is pretty crummy because of cypress and it is a lot better now with the newest driver update.  it still get the bs where the cursor jumps when typing but now i would say it is not worse than any other windows laptop.   two finger scrolling and gestures are still impossible to work out.  As for the display...its not bad but if you need high contrast you will only get it in that sweet spot they mentioned.  The speakers in the computer are also lacking.  overall i think its still a good buy for an unibody aluminum computer.  this will have to be a personal call.  if your not very mobile with the laptop get the y series if you are i would suggest the u and pray u get a synaptics or just deal with the trackpad and wait for updates.  you should call lenovo to confirm whether the new touchpads are synaptics...if they are let me know, maybe i will send mine in.

[dattakent]

I just saw the U400 in a local outlet. It's a Core i5 version...

I think after playing with such a beautiful thing, I'll mostly go in for the i7 from the US.

Thanks for the reply!

Also, how's the U400 on the Battery front? - Say for normal browsing and blogging?

Does it suck as much as they say in the Wi-Fi department?

[comongoose]

wifi is good, i have had no issues what so ever...actually better than my macbook for sure, which is usually better than most pc laptops. Battery is decent. I usually get about 4 hours but I push it, with lots of videos, tabs open, indesign, etc.

[dattakent]

Great, thanks for the time taken!

Any other nuggets you might have gleaned on the quirks/ + points of the U400?

[comongoose]

ya no problem...i havent had the graphic issues others had either. everything i set to high performance stays that way. The shift key takes time to get use to and i personal mapped the home key to backspace because that key is small as well. besides this if u get this for a cheap price the value is far superior to anything else out there. the few nuances are worth how nice this computer is and how cheap u can get it.

[dattakent]

Great. My only qualm is the fact that I'll be buying it from the US for use back in India. So I don't want it to konk out on me!

I think Lenovo makes pretty sturdy laptops, my experience being through the ThinkPad line mostly, so I hope the U400 won't fall far behind!