Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga

Auto-brightness is the first thing I turn off on a new laptop - they just can't seem to get this right... In TPY case, however, I still had issues on battery until I found a check-box in Intel HD Graphics Control Panel under power settings to disable something called "Display Power Saving Technology" - this fixed most of the issues and made backlight flicker less noticeable to me. Didn't help with the ghosting, though...

 

I do this all the time. I rarely have the brightness up past 50%, and I have it at 25% or lower at night. I'm often waving a pencil (or rather a stylus) in from of the screen when I'm sketching. I also see this effect at times when scrolling (especially horizontally for some reason, as on the start screen), and it makes the screen look "jittery".

 

I got my Thinkpad Yoga a few days ago but decided to just wait to do anything with it for Christmas. Well, I started playing around with this thing this morning and haven't done anything else since. I won't get into any super specific details right now, just know that everything good I've ever read in this thread is absolutely correct and everything negative is not. I have no screen flicker, no damaged lid, digitizer is working like a dream, the display is perfect with no scratches, touchpad is the best I've ever used, internet is great, the fan is dead silent (I heard a two second long, extremely quiet mumble just once -- which is wonderful), no heat so far either, and the machine itself just feels extremely reliable and sturdy. The battery was dead on arrival but charged up quickly. I don't know what else to say other than I'm happy with this computer and it's so far the best I've ever owned, but I'll try to answer any further questions any of you may have.

i7 4500, 256gb, 8gb, dual band WiFi

 

Great stuff, alexngordon. I'm glad your unit is working great.

I ordered the same exact build as you, when did you order it? How long did it take to deliver?

 

Is there a tilt in the tablet mode to write on or is it flat on the table?

 

It's flat in tablet mode.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Same here, mine works great. I have a Bamboo CTH-670 for my desktop, does anyone know if or how the stylus will work with my yoga ? I tried different drivers but couldn't get it to work. Any help ?

 

I have a wacom pen for CTH-480 and I really like the feel of the pen and the ability to configure the pen with the Intuos pen and touch tablet. But I could not get it respond on the TPY. So I am interested in hearing from others as well.

 

It took about a week.

Yes, it lies flat on the table in tablet mode. No tilt like with the Vaio Flip.


Anyhow, did Lenovo get rid of the battery option that allowed you to restrict the laptop from charging past 50%? It was there when I was first using the laptop but I did a bunch of updates right away and there's no trace of it anywhere since.

 

I don't think the stand-alone digitizers work with the active digitzers.

MOTION COMPUTING Additional Digitizer Pen for L-Series
and this one
Wacom Bamboo Feel Stylus(CS300UW)

are the ones im getting

Here's a review of Motion Computing L-series pen

it works with the surface pro, so I'm guessing it will work with the TPY as well....

 

I thought I should post. I have watched the TPY since its 9/5/13 when it was introduced and have followed this thread closely. For the most part, I think the reviews are a little too negative relative to my TPY. Hopefully my built-to-order TPY with 4500 i7, 8gb ram, 256gb SSD, Dual band AC and digitizer is a representative sample.

Background: I am coming from a late 2011 MacBook Pro 15" and a i7 custom desktop. I really just got bored with the macbook and felt limited by the keyboard and touchpad (although excellent) as being the only way to interact with the machine. I also wanted to use more programs like solidworks. Before the MacBook I had a Fujitsu 5010 and before that in days of yore a HP TC 4200 (for the uninitiated, both tablet PCs). In terms of other devices, I also have an Ipad and a Samsung Note 2.

Hardware:
-Build quality is superb. Rigid but light. Feels quality. Love the finish.
-Keyboard is the best I have ever used on a laptop. (lift and lock is very nice when browsing in tablet mode but touchpad still moves)
-Hinges are well made with smooth movement. I too have no idea what people are talking about with regards to excessive screen wobble with touch. Clearly Lenovo wants this as light as possible and wants mere mortals to be able to rotate the hinges between modes. Those two high priority design objectives supersede negligible screen wobble.
-The design is not ostentatious but it will draw comments of "Isn't that clever." every so often.
-Screen sharpness is excellent. Antiglare is also good. I have it set to 125% scaling for readability. (They could have fit a larger screen without the larger margins but I guess they have their reasons.)
The much talked about flicker is present VERY occasionally ~2% of real world use and improved with turning off the efficiency settings in Intel graphics menu. It's brightness level dependent. Overall, no big deal.
-Speed with SSD transfer, general processing and graphics is fast and reasonably good at CAD with the Intel 4500.
-The trackpad works well and is software customizable. The travel is deeper but hasn't slowed me down in any way.
-Digitizer after the wacom feel driver update: Accuracy could be better. At best it is often within 1mm after calibration. However, calibration gets screwed up with screen rotation decreasing accuracy to under 3mm consistently. If left in landscape orientation in photoshop it stays decent.
-Quiet- occasional fan 4% of the time with CPU intensive tasks such as rendering. Super quiet on the whole.
-Heat - Non issue.
-Weight - The lightest laptop I have ever owned. It is very comfortable in tablet mode and far easier to read and annotate a 973 pg. textbook in PDF than holding that paper behemoth in my hand. (WARNING PLUG: Best PDF annotator is Drawboard by a mile. Try it; you won't be disappointed. Great program with a responsive and friendly development team.)

Software:
Win 8.1 still has identity issues. Do these development teams ever hang out? (Most of these points are general criticisms of windows 8.1 and not specific to the TPY)
-Firstly, install Startisback or equivalent or else the desktop UI is near useless.
-The metro photo app is nice with expected swiping and zooming even with large files. However, it is damn inconvenient to leave the desktop UI when I want to look at some pictures. Also, once in the metro photo app, you can't truly access your file tree - I feel like I'm back in the IPAD sandbox...no you didn't. Why can't MS get these things right?! Generally, most metro apps feel crippled answering a "me too" priority rather than a real need. (There are exceptions of course but who reads a review for conciliatory statements - I will now continue the sermon)
-If I set up outlook, I don't expect to have to setup the metro mail client separately- that's just painful. Sharing things should be as simple as in Android or IOS; choose your poison.
Photoshop - why cant they include industry standard touch interface as an option for panning and zooming? I know it works on the Wacom Cintique so it isn't impossible - just needlessly limited.
CHROME (read in "Captain-Kirk-yelling-Kahn-voice) - I know google loves to nudge people toward google devices but they should make a better browser for WIN 8 tablets. There is absolutely no concession for a touch interface in an otherwise fantastic and smart browser.

**Eventually having two of everything is tiresome in Metro and regular windows when neither does exactly what you want. I feel Like I have options upon options in regular windows and entirely chaperoned in the metro interfaces. Hopefully, MS will intuit a better way to meld existing UI paradigms. It is quite possible to make a laptop and tablet hybrid better from a software perspective. Naysayers who claim otherwise have failed to grasp the overarching trend of convergence. Whoa, I got kinda' lathered up from the software review... my apologies.

I'd like to thank the many users on this forum that provided snippets of info and early reviews to make my decision easier.

All in all, I would buy this TPY again without hesitation. It has some imperfections that could be addressed from a software perspective but the hardware has been nearly everything I hoped for.

Cheers.

 

wow still cant get a discount out of a cs rep. anyway does anyone know the comparison between fujitsu q704 vs the yoga. it can be upgraded to all the same specs. just slightly differs on the nfc, 3g/4g, and the ssd.

 

I have an Intous 3 and was also hoping it's pen would work on TPY, but no such luck.

There is a lit of pens that work here: TabletPC Compatible Wacom Pens (Work with Surface Pro)

 

Has any one noticed a high pitch sound form the fan when the it is running? Is there a way to fix this issue?

 

Mine is silent, and I am usually very sensitive to noise.

I have a problem however: since yesterday, my Yoga displays "plugged in, not charging" and my battery level is below 30% and going down... Any suggestions ?

 

There's a 25% discount offer on warranty extensions on Lenovo UK website. Why are they charging £15 for shipping though?? What are they shipping???

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

Mine is silent while not doing any demanding tasks. The high pitch noise starts when the CPU usage rises above 80% (encoding a video) and the fan speed increases. Is it the case for everybody?
About the not charging issue, maybe the problem lies in the windows power options.

 

Is this with the original charger? Or did you purchase an additional one?

I had a similar problem on the Yoga 2 Pro that I tried for a month before returning, with a third party power adapter I picked up (I like having one at home permanently, one at work permanently, and one in the laptop case) until I did a firmware update that resolved something that Lenovo initially did to prevent third party adapters from working.

Have you ran all the updates including any bios update? Any other TPY owners out there using non Lenovo third party power adapters? Curious if they initially tried something with the TPY like they did with the Y2P.

 

I picked up an Energizer XP18000AB and that charges the Yoga just fine.

 

I got my i5-4300 8gb a couple hours ago (ordered on lenovo.com Dec 2). Great system, the keyboard is terrific. No system performance issues whatsoever. Fast fast fast.

The thinkpad sticker under the arrow keys is slightly off center, and starting to come off already. They look like they aligned the top left corner of the T, but the bottom left corner is a hair to the right so the rest is just off kilter and the right side is out of its rut. I remember reading someone else's story about that, and it doesn't sound like lenovo will send out another or anything. I'm sure the sticker itself will be off soon, but it won't affect the performance of the system.

One thing that made me laugh is that I ordered a system with ms office home&student, and they threw a CD into the box for me. For a system without an optical drive, I was a little puzzled by that choice. Luckily all I needed off of it was the product key, but still a little odd.

Haven't done the HD swap yet; I have an 840 evo here that I got from tigerdirect to install, but am waiting to make sure there aren't any problems with the system that I'd have to send it back for. Can't wait to throw the original SSD into my desktop and give that a boost.

 

Hi guys,

Just got my TPY i7, 8gb, 256GB SSD, no digitizer ($1200 from Costco) and it seems to be good so far.

My only gripe is the touchpad. I personally think it travels way too far on the click and that causes my finger to slip/move and then I'm clicking something else, or miss whatever I was trying to click on. Also, does anyone use the two finger click for a right click? When i right click on any icons in my tray (Firefox, windows explorer) it registers both a left and right click (opens the window).

Everything else looks fine though.

I've got to go right now, but does anyone know how to get into the BIOS? What about switching the FN and F keys? I have the FnLk on right now just to use the regular F1-F12 keys, but then there's a light on the Fn key (a bit annoying).

Sorry, haven't had a chance to RTFM, but I figured one of you would know

 

Hi.

I don't know if I'm the first from Malaysia or its neighbouring regions to post a review on the TPY. I bought the TPY with core i5, 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD and no pen (model 20CD002MME) for around MYR4600 (roughly USD1400). Despite the device being great (except for failing to rotate when I put autorotate on), I am disappointed for the following reasons:

1. I specifically asked the seller to confirm that the model comes with the pen, and they confirmed as such. Even their suppliers confirmed so. But surprise, the one I ordered came with no pen. I tried using the pen from my wife's Samsung Ativ Smart PC, but the TPY does not respond to it. I really need the pen as I do a lot of pdf annotating.
2. Upon the pen issue, the seller could not get in touch with Lenovo Malaysia to sort the mistake, the staff in charge at Lenovo Malaysia being overseas and such. Therefore I need to wait a while before I could get an exchange or a refund.
3. The very limited choice of TPY available: either i7, 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD, FHD; or i5, 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD, HD. No 8GB, no SSD, no FHD for the i5. And no mention of pen. And this is based on several retailers websites.
4. I found no retailer had the TPY in stock or for display.
5. The official Lenovo Malaysia website has yet to put the TPY in their product information, despite their facebook page announcing on 17 December that the TPY is available from authorised partners. And apparently Lenovo Malaysia does not allow purchase through their website unlike US etc.

I am confident with the product design and manufacturing quality. But what is wrong with their sales and distribution??

 

It quickly flashes "press enter to enter setup" during the splash screen, took me a couple boots to get it. In the bios you can also disable the splash screen, so you can read a different "Press F1 to enter BIOS" for about 2-3 seconds. I imagine that'll help in 6 months when I forget I need to press enter.

 

Thanks for your answer. I am using the original power adapter, and ran all updates.

I think what triggered the problem is the update of the Lenovo Settings app... In the bundled version, it had an option to "preserve battery" health that I enable and is supposed to prevent charging when the battery is above 50%. When I updated the Lenovo Settings app, the option disappeared and the laptop wouldn't charge even below 50%....

I did a factory reset, and everything works fine... To people who updated the Lenovo Settings app, have you run into the problem? do you know if there is a way to find this "preserve battery health"? One other thing I couldn't find (and I had on my previous Thinkpad) is the Lenovo Power Management app. I could only find the Windows one...

 

The two finger tap for a right click functions just fine on mine.

 

5 weeks from order to delivery. Delivery estimated to 7/1-2014 and I ordered 1/12.

I will never ever buy anything directly from Lenovo again. Considering returning it, if initial delivery takes 5 weeks I guess warranty service will be even worse.

I've never experienced such crappy service from such a big company before, even Acer is shining here compared to Lenovo.

 

Lenovo have confirmed that the demand was much more than anticipated, & production should normalize in the next couple of months.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

With regards to the fan whine... I notice it a bit when doing extended resource intensive tasks or gaming... anybody tried to replace the stock thermal paste with something of higher quality? I opened mine up to swap the HDD, I should have thought to replace the thermal paste then.. I might give it a shot and do some before / after temperature readings. it would be nice to get that fan to kick in a bit less often.

 

I purchased mine from a reseller and had to wait 1 working day. If demand is higher than expected it will be difficult to do a worldwide launch and have sufficient stock.

Maybe it's even better to have to wait a little while. The newer production batches probably will have issues from earlier batches fixed. For example mine was produced in December and did not the digitizer black hole issue.

 

My 1.5 year old X230t seems to have "unfixable" problems so I'd say you got off easy so far.

 

Mine shipped the 16th so I'll still get an early batch, just receiving it late since Lenovo choose to send it to every country known to man before sending it to Sweden. The worst of two worlds.

If they'd said it would take five weeks from the very beginning I would've ordered somewhere else. They told me two weeks and it took five and they never said anything about my order being delayed. It's really worst practice customer service.

 

Does it emit a high pitch noise while it works?

 

Yes, I can see how some people might not hear it because it is pretty high pitched, and it only does it when the cpu is working fairly hard. The noise isn't unlike some other small fans I have heard on other laptops though... with constant 35% CPU usage from a database rebuild, the cpu seems to hit 85 C and the fan is going pretty strong, not really that loud, but definitely noticeable... I'll run a full load stress test and measure cpu temperature and check for throttling.... seems like haswell in the mobile space, like the desktop space, runs incredibly hot, but the overall heat output is quite small. Hopefully when I actually really start playing some games on this thing it doesn't start having throttling and heat issues. I'll update some more once I have more hard data, but would like everyone else's experience with regard to this issue.

 

I've been watching this thread for a few weeks. My TPY arrived this past Monday. The matte screen cover was driving me crazy. A few people have posted that they removed it, so I took the plunge and attempted to remove it.

First attempt consisted of trying to lift the film from the corner with my thumbnails. It didn't work... this film is stuck.

Second attempt involved lifting the corner with a straight edge razor and then peeling by hand without the razor. This got about an eighth of the film up, but I was afraid that the peeling was going to damage the screen because of the pulling by the film removal.

Third and final attempt was the most successful. I placed some cold, barely damp paper towels across the portion of the screen and let them sit for an hour. Then peeled by hand. The film came up much easier... it took maybe 2 minutes after the paper towels were removed. I now have a beautifully clear screen. Feel free to ask any questions, but id highly recommend. This is a beautiful screen without that crazy film.

 

Mine too

Even more - it stats to whine a little when CPU is 15-20% for some time.
At constant load for 30-50% after little time fan increases and whine become much stronger.
Any game - strong pitch sound.

It's the single dissapointing thing for me in this notebook. The sound is not so loud, but very-very annoying due to high frequency.

Is any way to lower fan speed?

 

The laptop is thin. You can't build a fan to flow enough air that small without making it turn fast. I don't personally find it annoying, but I understand some people like silence. It's much quieter than many of my previous laptops. Yes the pitch is higher but I've heard much worse.

 

A nice review from notebookcheck:

Review Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga Convertible - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

 

I'm having trouble getting Java working. I was trying to run Minecraft for one of my sons on the TPY, and it claimed Java was not installed. Yet every attempt to install either comes up with a message to say the file is corrupt, or the OS simply says it cannot run the file (with no explanation.) Anyone succeeded in installing any variant of Java on the TPY? I have the 64-bit PRO OS.

 

I have the I7/128GB w/digitizer model shipped from China. Had been running fine since received 12/13/2013. On 12/27/2013 it no longer boots, it simply turns on the fan to an extremely high speed, lights the keyboard and shuts down. It repeats that cycle a few times that quits altogether. Th pinhole reset did nothing. It will not boot from the emergency USB stick. Lenovo wants me to ship it back for "7 business day" service. Bad timing since it was to be used on a trip soon.

 

I'd recommend looking up local laptop repair shops in your area for Lenovo. In fact EVERYONE should. Find an authorized repair facility then simply take the laptop there and not have to wait or pay shipping.

There's a good point to buying a mac, if you need something you simply go into the apple store. My old dell, I never worried about it and it had next day warranty service which seemed like a standard years ago. Now in the quest to make laptops cheaper the warranty service is a big add on.

 

I totally agree! I removed the film from mine also, and love it now. I think that it is also more resistant to smudges too. I was constantly wiping it off when the film was on.

 

An update on my system that had uneven backlighting -- I called Lenovo, and they set up a replacement order. I was able to keep my system until the new one arrived. It came yesterday, and the display is much better. In addition, my old one had a kind of creaking noise from the right hinge when converting to tablet mode, and the new one is silent.

So glad I asked for a replacement. This one is a keeper.

 

Just ordered my Yoga from Lenovo UK

Apparently going to take 17 days but I'm just happy its finally ordered!

I ordered an i5 with 256Gb SSD and the full HD screen with a digitiser.

I also ordered 2 year accidental damage protection as well as on site support

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

All right - there is something so horrible screwed up with my TPY. I've only had it for a week, and it is completely busted. It won't save configuration changes over a reboot (e.g. mouse button changes; browser home page changes.) I cannot install Java in any form. Can any kind person tell me how I might reinstall to factory default OS/drivers etc.? I'm getting very frustrated, and I'm sure I haven't done anything myself it mess it up. Thanks for any help you can give. K.

 

Both of these pens work great with the TPY. How do i check to see if the blackhole problem is gone?

 

To do a recovery to factory defaults, bring up the charms menu on the right and select Settings, then Change PC Settings. From there, select Update and Recovery, then Recovery, and you will see some options for resetting to factory defaults.

 

To anybody buying in the UK I managed to find a coupon code and it works as I used it to buy mine earlier!

CJDEC5UK for 5% off
CJDEC10UK for 10% off

I tried increasing the number more but 10 was the highest it would accept

 

Thanks beckib. Apologies for being dim, but I don't normally get involved in this side if things. Does this restore to Lenovo's settings, or vanilla Windows without Lenovo's drivers? The Lenovo solution centre app has a tool for building recovery media - would the USB stick that that builds be full Lenovo install with all the drivers? How does that tool know what to put on the USB stick, given that there is no recovery partition on the TPY?

 

You guys are amazing. I would never have the cojones to risk ruining a brand new $1700+ machine.

 

It restores to out of the box state, with Lenovo's drivers loaded. I believe that there is a hidden recovery partition on the TPY that it uses to do the restore and/or to create the recovery media.

To get a plain vanilla version of Windows 8 or 8.1 (with no Lenovo drivers), you'd need your own copy of the operating system and would have to use the advanced startup options to boot to external media.