Lenovo B470 Review

Lenovo B470

Reviewer Rating: 

Review Summary:

The Lenovo B470 is an excellent value for small office and home users. The latest Intel processors provide great performance and battery life.

Pros

• Decent overall performance
• Excellent battery life: 6 hours
• Good keyboard and touchpad
• Low price

Cons

• Below average audio (two small speakers)
• Low res glossy screen
• Boring design

Lenovo B470 Full Review

 

The Lenovo "Essential" B470 is a decent-performing small-to-medium business notebook with a portable 14-inch form factor. The B470 offers an Intel dual-core processor, 4GB of RAM, a fingerprint reader, and either Intel HD or NVIDIA graphics. The system also provides an excellent 6 hours of mobile battery life.

Our Lenovo B470 Review Unit Specifications:

• 14.0" 720p HD glossy display (1366x768) with LED backlighting
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• Intel Core i5-2410M dual-core processor
• NVIDIA GeForce 410M (switchable to Intel HD)
• 4GB DDR3 RAM (1333MHz)
• 500GB Hitachi hard drive 5400rpm
• Intel 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1
• DVD-multi (dual layer) optical drive
• 6-cell Li-ion battery (48Wh, 10.8V) 
• Fingerprint reader
• Integrated webcam
• Weight: 6.61
• Dimensions: 1.30 (H) x 9.22 (W) 13.37 (D)
• One-year limited warranty
• MSRP as configured: $999

Build and Design
The new B470 "Essential" notebook features an all-black matte plastic design with textured horizontal lines on its display lid. The lid has rounded corners and the screen surround is covered in glossy plastics. The design is quite standard and unassuming, which is fine considering that it's an "Essential" business notebook. The only design element that might possibly make this notebook stand out from other business notebooks is its glossy plastics surrounding (and on) the display. The gloss will also collect fingerprints and dust easily.

The plastics used in the display are weak at the corners if you bend them inward, although, the "ripple" effect on the LCD isn't created. The lid as a whole just is not as durable as it should be; this could have been helped by adding a bit of brushed aluminum. The display's hinges are average; that is, it keeps the lid in place, but it's pretty easy to bend the display back and only somewhat harder to bend forward.

Under the keyboard inside the chassis is a hard metal backbone to keep the keyboard from flexing under pressure, a great move by Lenovo to help the otherwise average build quality. The bottom of the notebook holds a standard plastic matte build, and is extremely sturdy thanks to the strong chassis. Remove five screws to open the bottom up to upgrade the RAM, SIM card slot (select models), hard drive, and the Mini PCI Express Card slot compartment.

The overall build quality is above average. The complaints we did have involve the average screen hinges, easily-bendable plastic lid, and the use of gloss on and around the screen (which is kind of odd for a business-oriented notebook). The design is modest and pretty standard; which is fine for its class and intended use.

Ports and Features

The port selection on the B470 is quite expansive. It includes a 6-in-1 memory card reader, four USB 2.0 slots in total (one eSATA combo), HDMI, and a helpful GPU switch. The ports the selection lacks is a SuperSpeed 3.0 slot and ExpressCard.

Front: GPU switch (Intel HD/NVIDIA), LED status lights, vent, memory card slot (SD, SDHC, MMC, MS, MS Pro, xD), Wi-Fi switch

Rear: Nothing

Left: Kensington Lock slot, adapter slot, vent, VGA, Ethernet, HDMI, eSATA/USB 2.0 combo, USB 2.0

Right: Headphone jack, mic jack, USB 2.0, DVD-multi drive, USB 2.0

Keyboard and Touchpad
The B470 features the Chiclet (or island-style) keyboard with extra spacing between the slightly concave, squared keys. Keys are smooth and round off at the bottom. The typing experience is pleasant with a great feel due to the smoothness of keys. There is definitely enough tactile feedback due mostly to the extra spacing. Key travel (the distance between pressed and unpressed keys) is also good. It's also considerably silent and does not flex at all when typing or when pressing down hard on the chassis.

The touchpad has a matte surface and is textured to help with usability. It's an Elan Smart-Pad with a few nice features, including edge scroll, smart motion, and multi-finger gesture. Some of the features can be configured to have (for example) a narrow or wide scroll area, a low or high scroll speed, and a slower or faster cursor edge speed. The touchpad is easy to use and the textured surface shouldn't pose a problem either, because it feels as though it's barely there. The buttons don't make much sound at all when pressed.

All in all, the keyboard and touchpad combination are very user-friendly and do not carry any problems. The Lenovo fingerprint reader is location to the far right of the palmrest, and there's a Lenovo OneKey Recovery quick launch button on the top-left of the chassis.

Screen and Speakers
The Lenovo B470 has a 14.0-inch glossy display with a 720p (1366x768) resolution and a 16:9 aspect ratio. It's somewhat odd that the display has a glossy surface because it's a business notebook. While the gloss helps make the colors more vibrant, it will take away in usability because the reflections could be distracting at work and the surface will higher maintenance because of the dust it will collect. Our test results show a peak brightness of 227 nits with an average contrast ratio of 217:1.

Horizontal viewing angles are very narrow and colors begin to distort colors at about 10-15 degrees off center. Vertical viewing angles are much better; colors begin to distort at about 30 degrees off center. Viewing angles aren't as much of a problem in business notebooks, though, as users don't usually need to view the screen in any other way than straight on. Overall, the display is very average with its lower resolution, average viewing angles, and the on-par contrast ratio with other 720p notebooks in its class.

The B470 only has two small speakers located on the top left and right sides of the chassis. The Realtek HD audio is crisp and clear when audio enhancements are applied (not so much when 'raw'). However, volume levels are not sufficient at all; even when at 100% the speakers just can't deliver very loud audio. The bass is also extremely hard-pressed to hear. A set of external speakers and/or headphones would definitely be in order. The notebook has an HDMI port, headphone jack, and microphone jack.