We've previously looked at a laptop from Lenovo's Essential G series (the G570), and now it's time to check out the Essential B series. If you're unclear on the difference, Lenovo helpfully offers that the B series consists of "budget laptops for working at home or at the office," while the G series is described as "everyday laptops at a great price."
Lenovo Essential B470 Intel Core i5-2410M
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
While the descriptions can be a bit of a head-scratcher, looking at examples of the two lines side by side it's clear that the B series, represented here by the $669 Essential B470, is the slightly more upscale of the two. The plastic of the body is matte rather than glossy, and the more compact dimensions of the 14-inch body (as opposed to the 15-inch Essential G570) help it feel more portable and purposeful.
As both Essential laptops we've reviewed use Intel's Core i5 2410M processor and have identical amounts of RAM and hard-drive space, the big difference under the hood is the B470's Nvidia 410M graphics card. It's about as entry-level as GPUs get, but it will give you better gaming performance in most cases than the default integrated Intel HD3000 graphics in the G570.
That makes the B470 a decent overall package, and a passably good-looking budget laptop, but also tough to recommend over the slightly larger G570, which was significantly less expensive at the time of our review. If you're willing to sacrifice the Nvidia GPU and move to a 15-inch screen, you can knock almost $100 off the price, which is rock-bottom for a system with the 2011 version of Intel's Core i5 CPU.