If you haven't bought the G780 yet, I highly recommend that you don't jump straight away onto it, and consider the similarly-priced Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 first.
Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 (NVIDIA GT 650M, 15.6" 1920x1080 [glossy] display) -
$779
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- Click the activate coupon button in the cart.
- Note: No switchable graphics support, so a bit less battery life than others, but should still push around 3 hours basic use. EDIT: According to Notebookcheck's benchmarks, the G780 and Y500 should get around the same level of battery life. You don't have to worry about that. Maybe a 6% difference but not much. The Y500 comes with a larger-capacity battery than the G780, which in a sense makes up for the laptop's larger power draw.
- Avoid any variants that come with the 1366x768 display instead of the 1920x1080 display.
The Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 does significantly better in the areas of the GPU and the display.
The Y500 comes with a 15.6" 1920x1080 display, whereas the G780 comes with a 17.3" 1600x900 display. Not only is that a higher resolution in a smaller display, which means you'll be able to fit more onscreen despite its smaller size, 15.6" 1920x1080 LCD panels also tend to be significantly better in quality than 17.3" 1600x900 displays. 17.3" 1600x900 displays (as well as 15.6" 1366x768, 14" 1366x768, etc.) displays make things onscreen rather large, and tend to be low-grade LCD panels with very poor image quality due to low contrast. You should make a point to avoid displays like these when it is reasonable to do so, unless you require the larger text for eyesight-related reasons. The display is a critical component to pay attention to, particularly once you start getting into price ranges that give you the choice between getting a good display or a not-so-good display, because the display affects a considerable amount of your usage.
And regarding the GPUs: The Y500's NVIDIA GT 650M beats the G780's GT 635M by a considerable amount. But, even if you're fine with a lesser GPU, I'd say that the difference between the Y500's excellent display and the G780's poor display is reason enough to take the Y500 over the G780.
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