Lenovo Essential B40-70 (59-440450) Laptop (Core i3 4th Gen/4 GB/500 GB/DOS/2 GB)

Majority of the laptops in this price range come with a 1368x766 resolution screen, however this one comes with a full HD 1080p display which is really awesome. It also comes with an anti-glare display unlike many others which is also a plus point in my books. nnI paid Rs 28490 after the 10% StanC cashback offer, which is a sweet price, plus you get a free 3 yr warranty extension. The laptop came with backpack as well, but its the cheap Lenovo branded backpack. Overall this was a VFM deal. nnI got the laptop delivered in less than 10 hours after placing the order, living in Bangalore has its merits! :) Anyway coming to the actual laptop, its sturdy and feels solid. I installed a copy of Windows 7 Professional that I had as this came with only Free DOS. Getting the drivers installed was a bit cumbersome, had to download close to 2-3 GB of drivers from Lenovo's site, it did not come with a DVD/CD with the drivers. nnComing to the graphics, the laptop has what Lenovo calls it switchable graphics. Basically, you have both the integrated Intel HD 4600 graphics along with the AMD Radeon R5 M230. You need to install the drivers for both Intel and AMD to get this working. I wasted quite a lot of time trying to figure out why the discrete graphics adapter wasn't working. Once you have both drivers loaded, you will have an option to switch to the Radeon graphics when you need, for example running graphics intensive applications and use the integrated energy efficient Intel adapter by default. nnBattery life appears to be pretty less, I got just 2 hours or so after a full charge, I am not sure if its just due to the initial driver installation and configuration changes which resulted in a low runtime on battery. Perhaps things would improve over time.

Pros:nn- Full HD (1920x1080) screen. It's a TN panel so vertical viewing angles are not that great but on a 14 inch screen it provides a really sharp and nice image. Contrast is good enough, colors look fine. This is NOT something you get on many laptops in India right now, most are imported with useless 1366x768 ("""HD""") screens that look blurred starting from 13 inch diagonal.n- Slim and light yet solid build quality. It's plastic but good and well put-together plastic.n- Plenty of useful ports, including *gigabit* (1000 Mbps) Ethernet - not "Fast" (100 Mbps). If you work with data on a gigabit local network a lot, this is important.n- Pretty good input devices. Keys could use more travel and touchpad gliding capabilities are average but it's one of the best for the price.n- No NumPad - for me it's an advantage because I never use it and the rest of keyboard remains nicely spaced with proper-sized keysn- Very easy (remove two Philips screws, slide a panel off) access to: SATA bay (can replace HDD with SSD for more responsive system, 9.5mm thickness and less supported), RAM (2 slots, one free), Wi-Fi card (2 antennas), CMOS batteryn- Removable batterynnCons:nn- No mSATA slot :(n- Screen brightness could be higher. I estimate it to be 250 nit at most, you can work indoors comfortably and there are no reflections if you go outside, but the screen contents will still be washed out by the bright sun. Remain indoors or in the shade. Still better than all laptops below 30K I worked with.n- Lenovo cheaped out on the battery. It's a 33 Wh one, which means that you'll only get about 2-3 hours of Internet browsing on Wi-Fi (which consumes about 10-15 watts). This isn't a problem of the laptop, people, just a small-capacity battery. Laptop vendors do that very often on low-budget models with ULV (ultra low voltage) processors because it allows them to save money on battery and still claim "4-5 hours of battery life" (which they measure at minimum load, haha) For me, this is something I can live with considering the laptop is an office desktop replacement and will be plugged in most of the time.n- No easy access to the fan. Partial disassembly will be required for cleaning it.nnNotes:nn- Boot menu is accessed with Fn+F12 and BIOS is accessed with Fn+F2. Once inside, you can disable the annoying "Hotkey mode" that makes you press Fn to activate the primary function of F1-F12 keys. Then the shortcuts become just F12 and F2 and you need to hold down Fn keys to activate the secondary functions (indicated with orange icons - like volume toggle etc.)n- AMD graphics card can be disabled fully in the BIOS (select "UVM graphics"). This is very useful to avoid having to set up AMD drivers and configuring switchable graphics (simplifies Linux installation a LOT), also allowing to save some power. Leave it on only if you will actually use the card for something.n- Ubuntu 12.04 runs fine but you'll have problems with scaling (screen contents are very small with FHD @ 14"). If you decide to settle on it, install kernel 3.13 from updates for proper hardware support.n- Ubuntu 14.04 runs fine AND there's a scaling slider that allows you to make screen contents bigger without changing resolution. This comes with kernel 3.13 already but you can get 3.16 from updates which will allow you to use Intel's P-State driver (automatically) leading to better power efficiency.n- You'll have scaling problems in Windows too, and they're worse in many applications. Windows 10 is your saviour when it comes out, will have better scaling, be patient. For now 8 is slightly better than 7 in this regard.nnBottom line:nnNothing better for this price, and if screen sharpness matters to you, up to like 50-60 thousand. I wish they'd also offer a 15.6'' model with a FHD screen though, I understand that 14'' won't suit everyone. It's sharp, sure, but it's still small.