Lenovo Essential B470 Review

The Lenovo “Essential” B470 is a small-to-medium 14-inch business laptop.

The Lenovo B470 Essential is equipped with an Intel Core i5-2410M dual-core processor, 4GB of 1333Mhz DDR3 RAM, and an NVidia GeForce 410M, or at the flick of a switch, Intel HD integrated graphics. Our test unit came with a 500GB 5400rpm Hitachi hard drive.

The new B470 Essential settles for an all-black plastic design with texturing on the lid, pretty much standard for its class. A small helping of brushed aluminium would have made the lid seem a bit more sturdy. A rigid metal backbone concealed inside the chassis prevents any keyboard flex under pressure. On the whole build quality is good. Let us take a look at some cool Lenovo Essential B470 pictures:

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The Lenovo B470 Essential has a 14-inch glossy display was a 720p 1366 x 768 resolution. For a business notebook the glossy display is unusual, though for us, more vibrant colors are probably preferable to optimized outdoor viewing when considering how best to get through the daily grind. As for higher maintenance, how much dust does a notebook collect during a day in the office?

Horizontal viewing angles are narrow although vertical angles are better. But it’s only a minor complaint on a business notebook anyway. However, to be lacking on nearly every count adds up to a substandard display on the Lenovo B470 Essential.

Two small speakers sit on the top left and right of the chassis. With audio enhancements applied, the Realtek HD audio is crisp and clear, but volume is not at all loud.

The B470 Essential follows the current fashion for Chiclet keyboards, and the slightly concave keys fit well to your fingers as you type. The smoothness and quietness of the keys also add to the pleasant typing experience. The touchpad’s surface is textured to aid fine-grained control. Features include edge scroll, smart motion and multi-finger gestures. The features are configurable for faster/slower cursor speed, faster/slower scroll speed, narrower or wider scroll area, you get the picture – maximally optimised for maximum productivity. The trackpad’s buttons are also wonderfully quiet.

The Lenovo B470 Essential’s port selection is quite impressive – a 6-in-1 SD card reader, four USB 2′s (one eSATA combo), HDMI, VGA, Ethernet socket, headphone and mic jacks, a WiFi switch, and a very useful GPU switch. No express card and no USB 3.0 might annoy some folk.

The Lenovo fingerprint reader is situated on the far right of the palmrest, and a Lenovo OneKey Recovery quick launch buttons is at top-left.

Performance

The combination of powerful processor and fast and plentiful memory are sufficient for the Lenovo B470 Essential to multitask or run office software with ease. The NVidia graphics card is entry level only but can cope with HD video or games froma year or two back. The advantage of the 410M card over the integrated solution is only apparent during highly-demanding applications or games.

The large hard drive doesn’t compensate for the 5400rpm speed. There’s not even an option to upgrade. The B470 Essential’s fan ran quiet as a church mouse, and perhaps the coolness of the components contributed to a very impressive 6 hours 17 minutes on medium usage tasks (browsing, WiFi, Windows’ balanced power profile). So if you can avoid direct sunlight and desert storms, and you don’t intend to play the latest games or blast music while at the office, this could well be the business notebook for you. Our configuration was available on offer at $669.

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