Laptop with a great potential ...

Laptop with a great potential ...

Lenovo Y50-70 39.6 cm (15.6-inch UHD IPS) Notebook (Intel Core i7-4710HQ, 3.5 GHz, 12GB RAM, 1TB Hybrid SSHD (8GB), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M / 4GB, no OS) black (Personal Computers)

Customer Review

... But Because of the below Mentioned defects only for people with patience or very lucky.

// A word of explanation - normally I would give this laptop strong 3 or even 4 points but people searching for expensive (Relatively) things are more keen to read negative and Those Mentioned below are worth to be aware of //

I had this unit together with few other on my wish list for quite a while. Read all about it on various forums and thought I want to be smart enough to handle hardware problem (like mustard yellow screen, crappy wifi or poor hard disk).
For a short while price was reduced and the unit was available without Windows license (Which I'm not using) so I made the purchase.

Content of the box quite puristic - laptop and power supply.

Finishing pretty neat, looks nice. Indeed it is a fingerprint magnet.

To replace harddrive one has to remove complete bottom cover (no service flaps or anything). It is something one has to be very careful about the plastic latches holding the bottom cover near the LCD hinges - if not properly removed small plastic parts can break.

--- PROBLEM ---

HDD
Replacing hard disc is as in every other laptop - screws, remove cradle, screws, replace and return.
First issue fixedNo time.

WiFi
To replace wifi card is not that easy. Buying Lenovo certified unit is tremendously expensive and hard to get. It is all thanks to Lenovo New Policy of whitelisting hardware in BIOS.
There are some ways to bypass Either it or remove (Either by myself or by asking for help on Certain forums).
My card is with Realtek RTL8723BE chip. Standard Linux kernel has problems with handling it but fortunately it is Constantly developed by independent programmers.
Only the performance of the card is very poor. If I put next to eachother my Edge E540 (Intel 7260 AC) and Y50-70 (RTL8723BE) E540 uses full power of the 100Mbps while Y50-70 Reaches Barely 50Mbps ...

Screen:
It is UHD display. The resolution is astonish. Only the mustard yellow is indeed present and sometimes is quite visible. Been trying to use screen Calibrators but with quite poor results. From the analysis it turned out did the screen has way too much green.
Lenovo claims thatthis will be fixed by the BIOS update. We will see. So far what I read the latest update causes trouble with performance.
Screen will have to wait till it is proven fix. Laptop is being used as desktop THUS is Constantly Connected to external monitor and keyboard.

Fan tick:
Many people are reporting annoying sound while laptop is idle. It is quite distinguish but not disturbing. The cause of such is low spin and stop of the fan under low power load. Under Linux one can adjust the fan speed. Windows users can take the latest BIOS update.

Keyboard:
As I'm using it as a desktop replacement Mainly till now I had done very little typing. HOWEVER, I Took laptop with me for long weekend and had to write some long documents. To my surprise after few pages the "A" button begun locking itself. Investigating it Further I found did the plastic scissor under it had only one locking pin THUS IT what delatching itself if I have pressed the lower part.
Further checking by pressing Repeatedly all keys, one by one I found three more having same problem ...
Internet search turned out indeed it is a common quality problem for this Lenovo keyboard and the manufacturer is not willing to solve it claiming it is users fault for seeking They need to replace (read purchase) whole keyboard.
Took me a while to find where I can find replacement clips. (Tip for anyone for future problems: it is model A121 did you can find on web page of a company in Europe laptopkey).

Battery life.
With very low screen brightness (10% is fairly enough) typing and surfing it is enough to workover 3.5 hrs without plugging in.

Performance.
The Optimus setup is pretty well handled by Linux. Games from Steam working flawlessly.

Summary.
Lenovo Should Step Forward and fix small issues theyhave Caused during the finishing process and the unit will be really good, longterm desktop gaming laptop power.

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