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

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OVERALL RATING 4.1 /5 BASED ON 131 RATINGS
RATING DISTRIBUTION
  • 5 ★
    68
  • 4 ★
    39
  • 3 ★
    7
  • 2 ★
    5
  • 1 ★
    12
Lenovo Essential B40-70 (59-440450) (Core i3 4th Gen/4 GB/500 GB/DOS)
PERMANENTLY DISCONTINUED
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46 User Review(s)
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★★★★★
★★★★★
Great VFM laptop with FHD display

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.

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9 users found this review helpful helpful?
★★★★★
★★★★★
Full HD confirmed!

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.

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7 users found this review helpful helpful?
★★★★★
★★★★★
Good VFM Product.

Pros: 1. Great screen resolution.n2. Light and compact 14" form factor, making it a true portable.n3. Silent operation.n4. Remains cool even under resource intensive tasks. Great heat dissipation.n5. Looks professional and well built. Does not look & feel cheap/childish/flimsy.nnCons. 1. Touchpad is erratic at times.n2. Speakers are loud but lack clarity, poor midrange fidelity.n3. Keyboard shakes (goes in slightly) if you're typing a lil fast or hard. Not has sturdy as my Thinkpad.n4. Poor 4 cell battery. A full discharge cycle is a mere 3.5 hrs (avg).n5. No driver CD along with the pack, Lenovo support denied support in sending over the driver CD. Had to download the drivers manually, each of them ranging to the tune of 500 MB, that is a lot to download.n6. Poor ergonomics: the Optical Drive slot button is poorly located.

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5 users found this review helpful helpful?
★★★★★
★★★★★
VFM product go for it

Awesome product with great specifications and i have been using this from 10 feb didn't had any trouble since then. Awesome delivery from ws retail as usual. Got the product withing 24 Hours but the only con is that FULL HD is actually too high a resolution for such a small screen because you can increase the size of icons and text supported by windows but some application while taking the effect of big fonts and icons get blurred and you don't get that rich an experience while using those application like Netbeans which i use for coding. So what they could have done is increase the price to 2K more and provide 15.6 or 15 inch screen but then it would be heavy and is not that portable as you think. So it actually depends on you how you see it. Overall great buy for 30K. nOverall a GREAT VFM :D ! I think this review will be helpful to you guys :)nnSorry guys i am editing this review after using thir product for a while that for the apps that don't take the effect of big fonts just right click -> properties->compatibility tab-> and then check the checkbox saying "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings" after that you are good to go :D.nnGo for it guys :D

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4 users found this review helpful helpful?
★★★★★
★★★★★
Excellent laptop with good configuration and great VFM

My main reason behind buying this laptop was its FULL HD resolution which is very difficult to find at this price with 3yrs warranty coverage.nnI brought this laptop for Rs 28490 after the 10% cashback offer. The laptop came with backpack as freebie. On top of this, Lenovo offers a free 2 yrs warranty extension on top of 1 yr base warranty (Offer ends by 27th Dec, 2014). So, you’ll get 3yrs warranty overall.nnYou can verify your base warranty support coverage in Lenovo Support site under warranty lookup. If the base warranty date is different, you can send an email to Lenovo registration team. I sent an email (INDIA@lenovoreg.com) to Levono about my purchase with invoice, they have correct the warranty start date as per the date of purchase. Check the link for further details.nnNo problem with drivers, you can get required drivers from Lenovo website for Win 7 & Win 8.nnBattery performance depends on various factors like screen brightness, functions you do etc. If you have brighter screen, you'll have low battery performance. You need decrease the screen brightness for better battery performance. You can do it by increase and decrease buttons F11 and F12. I noticed that these buttons did not work initially. The reason behind it is drivers. You need to download and install both AMD M230 and Intel Display drivers. nnAfter reducing screen brightness, I’m getting a battery backup of around 3~4hrs for my case. nnOverall, a great product and I’m happy with my buy. I got good deal with this configuration.nnPROSn1) Very good configuration for a 28K laptopn2) 3yrs warranty coveragen3) Full HD display 1080p with anti-glare screenn4) AMD Radeon R5 M230 Graphic card with 2 GB dedicated memoryn5) Memory expandable upto 16 GB (most laptop at this price range do not offer expansion support)n6) Very good battery backupn7) Very slim, sleek & light weight laptopn8) Elegant black matt finish bodyn9) No heating issuesn10) Speaker sound quality is good.n11) keyboard buttons are very softn12) Fingerprint Sensor loginnnCONSn1) USB slots are very close to each other in left side, so it is difficult to plug two USB drives at a time in left side. BTW, you have another slot in right side. n2) Touch pad clicks are bit hard. n3) Camera quality is ok.n4) Drivers DVD is not available, you have to download around 2GB of drivers from Levono support site. Reason for not providing the DVD could be, in the internet era downloading 2GB is not a matter, You get the latest version of drivers from the site than DVD (remember DVD are not burned at the time of boxing the product, much more before that), Cost saving.

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4 users found this review helpful helpful?
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