Update 9/5/14 9:24 a.m. ET: Lenovo’s Y70 Touch gaming laptop is available for purchase now on its official site. The company originally told Digital Trends that it wouldn’t begin to ship until sometime in October.
We reached out to Lenovo for clarification, and we were told that the information that was initially provided to us was specific to versions of the Y70 that will be offered in retail stores. When it comes to what’s on Lenovo’s site right now, a company rep told us that they have to seek out more information.
Original story
Remember Lenovo’s Y50 15.6-inch gaming laptop? We reviewed it a couple of months back and found it lacking despite a quick processor and GPU, but hopefully Lenovo’s newer, larger Y70, announced today at IFA 2014, will fare better.
The Lenovo Y70 Touch wears the same shades of black, the same brushed look on the lid, and has the same angles and contours as its smaller sibling does. What’s different here is the inclusion of a 17-inch touch 1080p display. Lenovo says that the Y70 Touch is the company’s first 17-inch notebook with touch.
The Y70 Touch will ship in multiple flavors, but the CPUs in this notebook will go up to Intel Core i7. It will also ship with Nvidia GeForce GTX 800M-graphics, and as much as 16GB of RAM. You can outfit the Y70 Touch with a mechanical hard drive as large as 1TB, or a solid state drive that goes as high as 256GB. Of course, SSDs are faster, but you’re trading in space for data transfer speeds. If you have an immense library of movies, music, or games, you might want to go with the mechanical drive. Or, you can get the SSD, and invest in a cheap 500GB external hard drive.
The roster of ports on the Y70 Touch will include a pair of USB 3.0s, one USB 2.0, HDMI, Ethernet, a memory-card reader, headphone/mic jacks, and a lock slot. The keyboard’s backlight is customizable, and includes a full numpad. The Y70 Touch’s JBL speakers, which are backed up by Dolby Advanced Audio, should provide a better-than-average listening experience.
Related: Lenovo IdeaPad Y50 review
Curiously, Lenovo is including an external optical drive along with the Y70 Touch. We appreciate the added extra, and we’re glad that Lenovo didn’t pack it into the Y70 Touch and make it even bulkier with a feature that’s used less and less these days. However, we wish that money was spent towards other parts of the system, like extra USB ports.
Keep in mind that the Lenovo Y70 Touch is a gaming notebook, and that its battery likely won’t provide more than five hours of life on a full charge. For what it’s worth, the smaller Y50 lasted just three hours and three minutes in our Peacekeeper battery tests. The Y70 Touch may include a larger battery, but its larger screen will also cut into whatever extra endurance the bigger battery may provide.
The Lenovo Y70 Touch will be available starting sometime this October. It will start at $1,300.
