Lenovo Y70 Touch Laptop Review: A 17.3" touch-enabled all-rounder

[Paul Lilly]

Lenovo's Y70 Touch isn't a wild departure from the laptop designs you're used to seeing. In fact, it mostly looks like an average notebook, only sleeker and slightly more aggressive than most. But unlike that aging Windows 7 or Vista laptop you're using, the Y70 Touch boasts a 17.3-inch 1920x1080 multi-touch display. It's Lenovo's largest touchscreen laptop to date, and it's built for gaming, video editing, and to be an all-around work horse for the modern era.

Though big on ambitions, Lenovo's Y70 Touch measures a manageable 1.02 inches thick and weighs 7.5 pounds. That's not quite Ultrabook territory, but compared to full-fledged desktop replacement PCs, Lenovo's laptop is rather svelte (albeit still a bit hefty) by comparison.

Read the complete review.

 

[grumpiman]

"1TB 5400 RPM + 8GB Solid State Hybrid Drive"

This is a joke right on $1400 machine?!? I would at least expect a decent sized SSD.

 

[Guest]

Lenovo makes great stuff. I had a play of a Yoga 3 Pro and I can safely say it's the only device I'm considering as an alternative to the Surface Pro 3. Beautiful machine.

 

[Julio Franco]

"1TB 5400 RPM + 8GB Solid State Hybrid Drive"

This is a joke right on $1400 machine?!? I would at least expect a decent sized SSD.

We wholeheartedly agree, hence that was the number one con listed. The unsuspecting user may not notice or feel at ease having 1TB for storing large media files and whatnot, but performance suffers too much as a result.

 

[AnilD]

For all the flak touchscreen laptops get, I often hear people say that once they're used to having the option they find themselves trying to touch screens by reflex, even on laptops. Personally it's faster for me to touch something on a laptop screen than drag my finger around on the trackpad. Wish this laptop had a Yoga-like hinge and then at 17 inches could be used as a large tablet when sitting on a table.

 

[Guest]

Just give me a 15.6'er with a GTX 980m, a nice IPS matte display, and a gigantic battery so I can stay on it for 8 hours a day. I don't care if it weighs 7-9 lbs.

 

[Guest]

What's frustrating is that they haven't released the Y50 Touch in the UK market yet despite it being available in the US for ages - apparently putting a different keyboard in is hard??

The Y70 is just too large personally, but I'm itching for that Y50.

And yes, I do want a touch laptop - both to make developing for tablets easier and because reading long form articles on websites or PDFs, scrolling with my thumb is generally nicer (for me).

 

[Paul Lilly]

And yes, I do want a touch laptop - both to make developing for tablets easier and because reading long form articles on websites or PDFs, scrolling with my thumb is generally nicer (for me).

That's a good point about scrolling. The more I play with and review touch-capable systems, the more I find myself scrolling websites via touch.

 

[Scshadow]

Ridiculous, you don't want some cheap no name brand SSD stuffed into your laptop. You want them to give you the 1TB hard drive so you can use it something else. I used the 1TB I removed from my Y580 and I put it in my ps3. I gave my laptop a proper SSD, a samsung 840 pro. Honestly, if they put a SSD into your Y70, for even the $1400 what exactly can you reasonably expect you get? And my experience with Lenovo is, don't buy it at full price. And my experience is, don't buy it at Best Buy. Best Buy always sells things at rip off prices. Every other week lenovo drops laptop prices several hundred dollars. This week, under the disguise of a black friday sale, they have a better configured Y70 for $100 less then the best buy hunk of junk you bought. Don't be fooled though, you'll see this exact sale at least once every month.

 

[Been In My Box]

I wouldnt buy because of the SSD thats a huge downer..

I had owned a y510 with SLi and it was a great gaming rig not bad at all..

Keep up the good work lenovo!

 

[BrandNameUser]

As I sit here typing on my 2013 Lenovo Y410P 'Multimedia' laptop and read the graphic benchmark, I am wishing you had two sets, one with the Intel on-board display chip and the other with the so-called discrete nVidia gpu chip. Long story short, if that mobo is wired and software-driven like the Lenovo IdeaPad lines, you'll see that, for example, Mass Effect 3 displays: PhysX>CPU, when the nVidia Control Panel is set to "Show PhysX Visual Indicator" even though the nVidia is selected and supposed to be the chip in play. Some said it kicks in when the on-board chip is 'stressed' and acts like a co-processor (except the nVidia documentation states that it's gpu will not activate in the presence of another display chip even if that chip is inactive but people don't read anymore). That computer line, the IdeaPad series, was put out to pasture when last I looked in September, 2014. I'll say no more other than the Intel 4600 chip carries the load and so many buyers (as I notice a Y510 buyer comment here) just don't know it but now that's water over the dam anyway. Lenovo? Never again, not for me....

 

[zR4G3]

Would like to see the wireless card included in the laptop reviewed as well. Can't speak for everyone, but it seems the stock wireless cards in these Lenovo laptops aren't that great.