Lenovo G505s Review

The Lenovo G505s has some excellent features such as performance, screen quality and the comfortable keyboard, all good for a laptop in this price range. Read our Lenovo G505s review to find out more.
Ever since the launch of Windows 8, PC manufacturers have been trying to sell us expensive Ultrabooks and tablets, and convertible tablets that think they're Ultrabooks. However, the top-selling laptops still tend to be unglamorous 15-inch models that sell for £500.00 or less, such as Lenovo's G-Series of 'everyday' AD-4019SL charger laptops. See also Group test: what's the best budget laptop?
Prices for the G-Series start at around £349.00 for a model with an AMD A4 processor, 4GB of memory and 1TB hard drive, but we tested the new G505s, which costs £499.00 with an A10 processor running at 2.5GHz, 8GB of memory and 1TB hard drive. The G-Series also includes one 17-inch model, which costs an extra £50.00, for people who need a larger screen. Take a look at The 8 best laptops of 2013.You're not going to get anything fancy for that sort of price, hp 714159 001 but the G505s gets all the basics right. The laptop's case is made out of plastic, but it has a smart matte-black finish and feels sturdy enough to withstand the occasional bump in a backpack. The keyboard is firm and comfortable, and was large enough to let me type at full speed when I took the G505s down to my local wifi watering hole. My only complaint here is that the trackpad isn't very sensitive, and you sometimes need to give it a good firm tap in order to click a button or launch an app.

It's also rather heavy, weighing 2.4Kg and measuring 28mm thick when folded flat. However, that's about average for a 15-inch laptop with a built-in DVD drive such as this, and the weight was just about manageable when I took it to my wifi bar for an afternoon. It's certainly no Ultrabook, though, and a laptop of this size and weight is going to spend most of its time indoors.
Battery life Panasonic ES-LA54 adapter is also a little disappointing. A laptop like this ought to have room for a reasonably large battery, but the under-sized battery in the G505s provides a capacity of just 41Whr, and could only manage three hours (180mins) of streaming video on the BBC iPlayer. More casual web browsing or running Microsoft Office apps might allow you to stretch that out for another hour, but that's still quite poor even for a laptop in this price range. Our recent review of budget laptops found that 4-5 hours of streaming video was quite common, so the G505s certainly leaves room for improvement there.
The screen is good for a laptop in this price range, though. It's not touch-sensitive, and the 1366x768 resolution isn't ideal on a 15.6-inch display such as this, but those are acceptable compromises at this price. More importantly, the image is bright and clear, with viewing angles wide enough that you can browse the web or sit back and watch some streaming video without having to constantly adjust the screen. ac power adapter for hp f4580 And while I'm not entirely sure what a 'glare wedge' is, I was pleased to find that the screen of the G505s was less glossy and reflective than that of many laptops we've seen recently.

It's well connected too, with an Ethernet port for a wired network, two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0, memory card slot and both HDMI and VGA ports for connecting a larger screen. There's no Bluetooth, though, so wireless connectivity is limited to 802.11 b/g/n.
Performance is relatively modest, with a PCMark 7 score of just 2700. But, to be fair, that score is largely a reflection on the 5400rpm hard drive, and the 2.5GHz AMD processor is more than adequate for web browsing and running Microsoft Office. The healthy 8GB of memory should also allow you to tackle more demanding tasks, such as the occasional spot of photo or video-editing, while the 1TB drive provides plenty of room for storing music, photos and videos.samsung r60 charger It can even handle a spot of casual gaming too, as the integrated Radeon HD8650G graphics managed a perfectly playable 35fps when running Stalker with medium graphics settings at 1280x720 resolution.

Maintenance
Access to the hardware is possible without any problems, since Lenovo integrated a big maintenance hatch. Behind the hatch, there is the hard drive, the RAM, the fan, the WLAN adapter, the APU and the dedicated GPU. Removing the fan for cleaning is possible. People who have the basic knowhow can also swap the APU.
The G505s comes with two RAM slots, just like the G500s. dell venue 11 pro power adapter One of the slots is occupied by a 4 GB module. The hard drive can easily be swapped. It is possible to use both hard drives with 7 and 9.5mm thickness. Further information for the maintenance and for swapping parts can be found in the accompanying Hardware Manual. This handbook not only covers the G505s, but also the G500s.
Dual-Channel Mode
The memory modules of modern APUs and CPUs support the so-called dual-channel mode. If there are two RAM modules installed in a computer, then they can be used simultaneously. This profits the whole system because optimally used the CPU and/or the integrated GPU give better results. At the same time, the frame rates of games would also increase. When the dual graphic mode is activated, the benchmark scores of acer aspire switch 10 charger
the G505s are not increased through the dual-channel mode. When the dedicated GPU is disabled and only the APU used, then the graphic performance increases.

OS and Recovery
Lenovo has installed Windows 8 (64-bit) on the G505s. A Windows-8-DVD is not included. Lenovo has set up their own system for repair and recovery, the so-called One-Key-Recovery-System. It is launched by pressing the One-Key-Recovery button when the notebook is turned off. This button is placed right next to the power button. When pressed, the notebook turns on and shows a menu. Here, the option "System recovery" can be chosen. The same menu also gives access to the BIOS.
HP Officejet 150 Mobile charger Lenovo has equipped the G505s with an AMD A6-5350M APU that is based on the Richland Architecture. The CPU part of the APU is a dual-core chip working at a base speed of 2.9 GHz. The speed can be increased up to 3.5 GHz (AMD Turbo Core). Thanks to a somewhat faster processing speed, the CPU should perform about 15% better than its predecessor AMD A6-4400M (Trinity). AMD gives a TDP of 35 Watts for the A6-5350M APU.

The CPU test of the Cinebench benchmarks tries to get the CPU to work with 3.5 GHz. This usually works for the single thread tests. Only occasionally the cores are throttled to the range of 1.4 up to 3.4 GHz. HP Officejet 150 Mobile chargerIn the multithread tests, the throttling occurs more often. The Pavilion (AMD A4-4355M, Radeon 7400G) is beaten in all tests. That is not very surprising as its chip is clocked much lower. Both notebooks cannot keep up with the Aspire (Core i3-3110M, GeForce GT 620M). It has the strongest CPU. All three notebooks perform similarly in the Cinebench 10 GL tests. In Cinebench R11.5 the G505s delivers the best values.