Lenovo G570 M51BPUK review

The Core i5-based G570 M51BPUK from Lenovo isn’t lightweight, but this solidly built laptop has enough power to replace your desktop PC for most purposes. Its 2.5GHz Core i5-2450M CPU has plenty of power for a mobile processor and the G570 M51BPUK achieved an overall score of 59 in our benchmark tests, which means it has plenty of power to run popular applications. The system also has 6GB of memory, which provides scope for even intensive tasks such as editing high-resolution image files or doing video processing.

The laptop has both a dedicated AMD Radeon HD 6370M graphics processor with 1GB of memory and the Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU that’s integrated into the Core i5 chip. AMD’s switchable graphics management tool lets you select specific programs and states which GPU will be used for each, so you don’t have to use the integrated graphics for games or burn through your battery with the more power-hungry dedicated GPU when you’re not plugged in to the mains. Programs that use 3D graphics automatically trigger the control software, which then lets you choose which graphics options they’ll use in the future.

Unfortunately, the dedicated graphics processor wasn’t capable of getting anything approaching a playable frame rate in our Dirt 3 test. You’ll be able to play many 3D games at the lowest possible settings, but you could do that just as well with the integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU, which makes the Radeon seem a bit redundant.

Although it has two GPUs capable of outputting Full HD graphics, the G570’s screen only has a resolution of 1,366×768. Fortunately, there are both VGA and HDMI outputs, so you can connect external monitors, TVs, projectors or other 1080p displays. This is particularly useful given that the G570 M51BPUK has a Blu-ray drive, and makes it a bargain if you want to watch HD films on an external screen. The 750GB hard disk is also unusually generous for a mid-range laptop, so you can store a decent-sized media library on it.

The integrated display might not be HD, but it still looks good thanks to even backlighting and rich, warm colours. Red tones are very slightly oversaturated, but this only gives a slight flush of warmth to pale skin tones and doesn’t seriously affect pale backgrounds. The display is glossy, but isn’t distractingly reflective unless you have a strong light behind you while working on dark screens. The built-in speakers are adequate when it comes to system sounds or spoken word, but are unsuitable for music. They’re tinny, lack bass and have no separation.