General Testing
When I first turned on the Y580 the keys on the keyboard did not immediately turn on. You may need to manually turn them on. This is easily done by holding down the function key and pressing the spacebar. When your keys light up they will light up nice and bright with white backlighting. I am a huge fan of backlighting on keyboards, especially on laptops because many times you are working at night and it makes it easier to look at the keys, and hey it just looks cool!
I have been using the Y580 for quite some time now and I really like it. The larger keyboard plus full number pad is definitely a plus. Typing on the keyboard is very comfortable and I can see why Lenovo really did not change the keyboard from last years model. Lenovo did however change the trackpad. It is now smooth, which I did really enjoy. Your finger easily glides across it. Although you do not have two defined mouse buttons the buttons on the trackpad are easily identifiable.
One thing that I really liked about the Y580 was the screen resolution. You have a full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution…on a 15.6-inch screen! While I do love this feature it does take a little while to get used to. Because of the small screen size sometimes text on websites appears smaller than normal, but that is easily fixed by zooming in using the touch gestures on the touchpad. The full HD screen is great for gaming, watching movies and of course productivity. You can easily have many windows open and still have a sense of what you are doing.
Lenovo usually does not load their systems up with bloatware or extra software. This was pretty much the case was this system except Lenovo also loaded McAfee Internet Security.
Battery life is always an important when it comes to laptops. Lenovo has made sure you do get adequate battery life with the Y580. The 6-cell battery during normal use (WiFi and internet browsing) with 70% brightness I was able to get 5 hours and 32 minutes of use out of the Y580, which is pretty impressive.
