It has a brilliant keyboard; its keys are full-sized, sturdy and produce crisp bounce-back. The only inconveniences are the Delete and Control keys, which aren’t positioned in the far corners of the keyboard but three and two keys further in, respectively.

The touchpad is Teflon-like in its slipperiness, offering no resistance to your finger as it pushes the pointer across the screen; its accuracy is impeccable. It doesn’t mistake single-clicks for double-clicks, for example. Its left and right buttons are also very soft and easy to press while navigating.

From the outside, the Lenovo Ideapad Y430 we right now have looks exactly like the Y510. It has the same weave-textured cover, sloping hinge design, edgy corners, and matte black color. Yet once you open the cover, you will immediately see the difference between the two. The most apparent is the location of the Dolbyenhanced built-in speakers as these are now located in front. In addition, the Y430 has no external battery level bar unlike on the Y510, which leaves you with the on-screen battery indicator and the power LED in front to know when it is time to charge.

The bezel on the Y430 that contains the thermal keys has a duller look compared to the one on the Y510. Monotonous looking or not, I still find this set of buttons handy for allowing immediate access to and playback of multimedia files. The volume control located on the right saves one from using the function button or dragging the cursor in order to control the sound levels, while the small button nearby switches the thermal keys between playback functions and preset audio enhancements.

It has 2GB of DDR2 RAM, which is enough to handle Windows Vista Home Premium and also facilitate multitasking, and you also get an NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS graphics adapter. Its score of 1823 in 3DMark06 means it’s not good for playing many current games, but it will run a lot of older games.

After prolonged use, the bottom-left of he unit, where the CPU, chipset and memory reside, get warm, but not enough to be uncomfortable when using the unit on your lap. Nor is the laptop loud, thanks to its dynamic fan, which isn’t an annoyance even while it’s at its fastest setting.