Customer Reviews

Lenovo Ideapad U-450p 14-Inch Black Laptop - Up to 6 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

So, I did extensive research on the ulv-class laptops from Asus, Acer, Toshiba, and Lenovo. My main goal was to buy a mid-range ($500-700) culv laptop with Windows 7 to tide me over until the release of the Asus UL80-JT (I3 CULV with automatic switchable graphic cards and 12 hours of battery life), which won't be released until later in the year.

What I got was exactly that. The reviews complained mostly about the Lenovo customer service, which I have not dealt with personally. However, I have heard that Lenovo's customer service isn't *that* bad and it is a smaller company than HP or Dell (you and your laptop will actually end up worse for the wear after dealing with their customer service). No one's customer service can ever compete with the quality Asus customer service, and I was sad that the price point on the Asus ul30 and ul80 moved back up to around $850 on Amazon and that they were sold out on most other websites, but so it goes.

So, onto the Lenovo, it has a sleek look and you will never have a fingerprint problem. The keyboard is the most ergonomically designed keyboard I have seen on a thin and light laptop and it has the greatest feel to it. The laptop does not feel flimsy at all and seems pretty sturdy all around. It comes with a CD/DVD drive, which is great, since most of the other thin and lights have eliminated an optical drive in favor of weight.

The veriface log-in is a cool added feature.

The screen has really good resolution and the laptop comes with a really decent graphics card. The one obvious drawback to this is that it takes a toll on the battery life. Now, I've moved from a normal laptop getting 2 hours of battery life at the most, so I am enjoying the added battery life. However, it is not as good as some of the other culv laptops. I get about 4 hours and 15 minutes on average depending on what I am doing. This is again, great compared to the regular lithium ion batteried-laptops, but it seems pretty average for the culv class laptops with Acer boasting 9 hours and Asus boasting 12 hours. (Asus doesn't get 12 hours but instead close to 9, but that still rates above the Lenovo). So, I ultimately find myself a bit annoyed when I have to plug the Lenovo in.

The laptop runs cool and quietly and with no real noticeable fan noise.

I think the only con on this laptop is the battery life AS COMPARED to other laptops in its class. Overall, however, I am happy with the purchase and would recommend it to people who are looking to get a less expensive culv laptop, because it ultimately has a better price point than its competitors.Lenovo Ideapad U-450p 14-Inch Black Laptop - Up to 6 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

First of all, I would like to point out that the laptop is incredibly lite weight and it's quite sturdy.

-- Intel SU4100 consumes only 10 watts at its max. Fast enough for what I do on my laptop. I am student by the way, so portability what came to my mind.
-- Intel GMA4500 and GS45 are enough for me. Watch few movies here and there. GS45 consumes 12 watts at its max.
-- 250GB HDD Western Digital. Not the best, but serves its purpose. It constantly goes into power saving mode and parks the R/W heads. Creates like a click noise. Quite audible actually. I'm sure it has something to do with this particular HDD.
-- Keyboard is what makes this laptop to stand out even further. Lenovo claim it's an ergonomic keyboard and lenovo were right. It is very comfortable to type and I make fewer mistakes compared to my previous 15.6" laptop.
-- The design on this laptop is absolutely stunning and is not a finger print magnet. It has this checker design on the lid of the laptop and it's beveled which means it has some sort of depth to it.
-- The speakers on this laptop are actually very loud compared to my previous 15.6" laptop

Cons
-- I would have wanted this laptop with Intel 5100 agn + BT 2.1, but I suppose I am asking too much for its price.
-- Came with Windows 7 Home Prem 32 bit, I would have preferred the 64 bit edition, but I immediately erased it and installed 64 bit edition of Win 7.
-- Comes with few bloatware which are removable.
-- The lid does have bit of flex when pressed from the top
-- DDR3 RAM is clocked @ 400mhz because RAM is ½ of FSB with GS45 chipset. It's not an issue as memory benchmarks have shown very little difference between DDR2 and DDR3 RAM, hence it will improve battery life. (Tom's HW)

[Other Thoughts]
-- I performed various tests which stress both CPU and GS45(GPU + memory controller) and I/O (ICH9-M) for certain time and surprisingly SU4100 stayed well below 60C and the total consumption of this laptop stayed below 30watts.(measured using "Kill A Watt" meter)

-- I also want to point out that this laptop is nearly silent even under full load. In fact, while surfing web, listening to music etc, the only thing I can hear is the Hard Drive spinning.

-- I found that once the CPU temp reaches 50C the fan turns ON, but it's almost non-audible. I could sleep with that kind of noise. I would compare it say someone breathing through their nose lightly that is how quiet the fan is under full load.

-- This laptop also includes DVD/CD RW which not many thin laptops have these days.

--Overall, I am very satisfied with this very thin/lite weight laptop and would recommend this laptop to students and people who adore quiet and thin laptops.

Got this machine and is all in all impressive for the price:

The good
- light machine
- pleasing textured finish
- windows 7 is fast and stable
- screen looks fantastic and playing movies with Windows Media Center is fulfilling
- sound quality is great
- fits perfectly into a 13.3" neoprene sleeve

The bad
- not sure whether the SIM card slot exists as advertised in the product manual
- battery life is slightly less than 5 hours and not 6 hours as advertised (I suppose this is reasonable)
- no bluetooth
- Windows 7 shipped with the device was not 64-bit as advertised
- Lenovo bloatware (I believe I have seen ads flashing on the desktop)
- Battery charge time is long

All in all it is a remarkable machine for its price. Happy with the purchase.

My new lenovo was delivered two days ago and so far it has been amazing. I did a ton of research on this laptop and found little cons but many pros. I would say this laptop is for a first time user to an everyday business person. It has a little something for everyone. The six hour battery life is a major plus considering my old laptop only gave me three at most. The only only real con I believe is the screen size but thats only because I had a bigger screen before but the lightwieght design covered that. So if your thinking of getting this I would say go for it. Sure there's better laptops such as hp,dell,toshiba, etc but this so far as done everything my old toshiba has done+. Oh and windows 7 is amazing.

I really like this computer but I did have to call technical support in order to get it connected to the internet, the system came locked, so that was a bit of a pain, but its been working great since then.

I bought this laptop back in March of 2010 before starting graduate school in the fall. I must say that I've been pretty happy with my purchase considering the quality of the laptop for the price I paid (~$700).

General impressions

Screen: Not too much glare for an LED with a glossy cover. 14 inches is perfect for me given the ability to put a Powerpoint document right next to a Word document while taking notes in class. Any smaller and documents would have been too hard for me to see with my less-than-perfect eyes.

Battery: I usually get about 3.5 hours of battery life with Microsoft Office, web browsing, and email use. You can push it to 4.5 without using the WIFI, but I haven't had much luck in getting the advertised 6 hours.

Software: There is some Lenovo bloatware pre-loaded, but you can uninstall it all, which I recommend. Windows 7 works fairly well, but I have occasional problems with hibernating and putting the computer to sleep where the computer wakes up from sleep/hibernation (both cases) and immediately goes to the "crash screen" and forces a restart. I haven't found the cause of this problem yet, but it only happens once every few weeks or so.

Build: Keyboard is fantastic, but I wish it was backlit. Typing is a pleasure, even though the right shift key is shortened. Some of the plastic hinges pop out of place occasionally, but they're easy to pop back in. The bezel around the screen is a fingerprint magnet. Installing extra RAM (8 GB) in my case was a bit of a pain because one of the DIMM slots was underneath the keyboard. However, you only have to remove 2 screws to lift the keyboard and access the slot. The other slot is still under the laptop. I really like how thin and light the keyboard feels. It is barely noticeable when packed within a sleeve in my messenger bag.

Performance: I've been able to run Arkham Asylum demo is medium settings on this laptop with not too much lag/stutter, so that's cool. Netflix, Hulu, and youtube run fine, but I believe playing HD videos is not so great unless you have a very good internet connection because I usually don't have a connection sufficient enough for all the video data trying to load on my computer. Microsoft Office runs easily, as expected.

Overall:

Pros
- decent keyboard (it's a Lenovo, so you should expect that) for those who don't like chiclet style keyboards
- thin & fairly light (4.6 lbs)
- great screen for the price

Cons
- mediocre battery life for a modern laptop
- keyboard is not backlit
- occasional software crashes
- build materials could be nicer, but I didn't mark the laptop down for this nice it's a mainstream notebook and not a business class $1,000+ machine.

I purchased the Lenovo U450p about ten months ago. The laptop has several "pros" to it and a few "cons" that other reviewers have mentioned here so I won't repeat them. Unfortunately the laptop's hinge to the screen broke under normal use and within the warranty period. This machine was used only at home an hour or two a day and under optimal conditions, it was never dropped or abused in any way. When the hinge went, it tweaked the bezel of the screen and and also threw the other hinge out of joint. I called Lenovo to get it serviced and sent it into them under warranty repair. A day later they called to inform me that their technician said it was "customer damage" and they would not repair it under warranty (excuse me? and I thought the screen was actually designed to be opened when used - silly me). It seems other reviewers were correct that Lenovo's warranty service is geared to deny as many claims as possible. I had to request to speak to a manager and they did oblige. When I explained the facts to the manager, he confirmed that there were no signs of abnormal wear or abuse on the machine. After the manager spoke with the tech, they agreed to repair it under warranty. When the machine arrived, the repair was properly done and it turns out that Lenovo checked the system and found the hard drive had some bad sectors so they installed a new hard drive for me. So, my opinion of Lenovo customer service rose after they performed the repair and replaced the hard drive. I actually like this laptop, but I have concerns about the build quality after the hinge failed like that. My son has had better results with his Acer 4810T-8480 which is an ultra low voltage lightweight competitor to the Lenovo U450p. The Acer has better build quality and stronger metal frame as well as better battery life.

I purchased this computer a few weeks ago. After a few days the hard drive started making a scraping sound. Received a call from a technician the next day informing me that they have identified the problem with the hard drive. After waiting a few more days for the computer, I called for a status update. I was then told they can't find any problems and were waiting to hear back from me to find out what the problem was. Huh? Now I'm being told the (grinding) sound is normal. If I turn the computer on it's side the noise completely goes away. That's "normal"?

In addition to the hard drive problem, it also would only wake from standby 50% of the time. Lenovo support told me it's a known Windows problem that has been around since Vista and that I just need to disable the hard drive sleep function. If that's the case then why does my Thinkpad have no issue waking from standby in Windows 7?

This computer is junk. Saving money on a computer is not worth the hassle.

Very light computer, I have windows vista on it and it is fast, it runs very cool, the battery does not last anything over 4.5 hours but it is enough for what i need. I really like it a lot. highly recommend it. At the time of this review Lenovo website had it for around $490 plus free shipping. I considered buying one of those Acer timeline that lasts 8 hours but they had bad reviews. This Lenovo looks cooler and works right out of the box without anoying crapware to unistall. Get it, you will not regret it. Hope this helps. This is my first review ever.

I bought Lenovo notebook 6 month ago in JR music - large electronic store in NY with 1 yr. warranty. Then bought 3 yr. extended warranty.
I was surprised to find out later that my warranty status was showing it almost expired.
When I called them, they gave me really hard time updating it. They actually made me to go to the store and recover 6 month old receipt for it even though I was ready to present them.

It took many calls, hours and aggravation.
Meanwhile i find out their warranty does not cover software - completely. If you have wireless or any software problem - you are on your own, can not even call to microsoft or vendors because they do not provide service for OEM software. Too bad.

Next time they gave me a hard time when I called asking to send me red mouse point which fell of from keyboard.
I spoke to 3 levels of representatives - 40 min with each.
First 2 - support guy and his manager were lying about warranty. When I asked both to show where it says in a warranty, they were leading me to the warranty page.
Right before it, they admitted that it does not say in particular in a warranty but they do not have part number or/and it's their policy or insisted they do not cover damage which they both invented.
I was pissed off like hell.
3rd level guy agreed to send it to me. I told him I was researching notebooks and consider Lenovo busn. line as a top product but would never buy it again only because of they service.
He honestly told me that both previous representatives were folowing company policy to reject / reduce claims by any means!!!

Honestly, machine is good but people behind it are not.
You will be calling them for support one way or another and if you want to save yourself aggravation - STAY AWAY!