Lenovo IdeaPad Z400 Touch: Affordable, Touch-Enabled

Name: Lenovo IdeaPad Z400 Touch: Affordable, Touch-Enabled Windows 8 Notebook
Brand: Lenovo

by Joshua Gulick — Monday, April 15, 2013, 12:00 PM EDT

We kicked off our testing with some established benchmarks. Cinebench and SiSoft SANDRA are popular tools for measuring the performance of systems and are used by both reviewers and IT personnel.

Cinebench R11.5 64-bit

Content Creation Performance

Based on Maxon Cinema 4D software, this test uses a 3D scene and polygon and texture manipulation to assess GPU and CPU performance.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Z400 touch handled itself well for a mid-range system, even topping other systems in the CPU test by a small margin.

SiSoft SANDRA 2013

Synthetic General Performance Metrics

We like SiSoftware SANDRA (System Analyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) because its suite of benchmark tools let us get a look at the performance of individual subsystems. We usually run the Processor and Multi-Media tests, as well as a memory test and benchmark that taxes the system’s hard drive and (if available) SSD drive.

SiSoft recently upgraded the SANDRA suite, which means there aren't other laptops for us to compare the Z400 Touch to at this point. Still, the tests are worth a look; SANDRA is a good tool for pinpointing problem components or subsystems, and we don't see any red flags in the Z400's results.

Tags: Lenovo, IdeaPad, laptop, Core i5, touch, Ivy Bridge, Intel HD 4000, z400

Joshua Gulick

Josh cut his teeth (and hands) on his first PC upgrade in 2000 and was instantly hooked on all things tech. He took a degree in English and tech writing with him to Computer Power User Magazine and spent years reviewing high-end workstations and gaming systems, processors, motherboards, memory and video cards. His enthusiasm for PC hardware also made him a natural fit for covering the burgeoning modding community, and he wrote CPU’s “Mad Reader Mod” cover stories from the series’ inception until becoming the publication editor for Smart Computing Magazine. A few years ago, he returned to his first love, reviewing smoking-hot PCs and components, for HotHardware. When he’s not agonizing over benchmark scores, Josh is either running (very slowly) or spending time with family.