Lenovo Y50 Owners and Information Thread

Apparently everyone that I talk to through skype can hear the music I play music through my headphones loud and clearly. HOW?!
The point of plugging in my headphones is so that they don't hear the music lol

 

Yes I found it! The option was turned off and after testing it, it worked even when it was off. It only works with the USB port on the right (USB 2.0 if I'm not mistaken) Anyway thanks for the help!

 

Y50-UHD(4k):

2. I have a glow or light leak from the top right corner of my screen. Is this normal, trivial, or perhaps a serious problem?
3. Those of you that HAVE DONE the HD system wipe and reinstall:
   • Is there a reference page or address for this process?
   • What software in particular did/should you leave on/in the system?
   • Perhaps it is easier to ask "what did you remove from the system"?
4. Any references for "optimal" screen settings for the UHD display?
   • Colors/Gamma/Etc?
   • Screen resolution (1080, etc)?
   • Other sources or suggestions?
5. I attempted driver updates via the "normal" My Computer venue with no noted updates found. However, I keep seeing various driver updates mentioned by people. Where do I go to find the appropriate steps to update these (audio/visual/wifi/etc) drivers more...forceably?

 

I believe the 4K panel is IPS. IPS screens typically suffer from backlight "bleed", which seems to be what you're describing. This is to be expected with IPS screens. TN panels have bad viewing angles, IPS panels have backlight glow.

 

my 4k version came with just 8.1 non pro

 

What's up Y50 owners!
I was hoping to join you guys and get the Y50. I was looking at the model with the 860m 4gb touch version. My question is, will the battery life be different than the other y50 touch versions that only have a 860m 2gb graphics card? And would you say that 5 hours battery life with 50 percent brightness and possibly power save on while doing tasks like note taking and web browsing for college is possible? And would klickonline offer an incoming college student like me any college discount?

 

Guys, i'm going to buy the y50 here in Brazil. But i have a question: Nontouch Full HD or 4K?

They have the same specs, except:

Y50 NONTOUCH FHD has: 8 gb ram(2x4), 1TB SSHD, Full HD panel. It costs 1850 dollars.
Y50 4K: 16 gb ram(2x8), 250gb SSD, 4K panel. It costs 2200 dollars.

The difference is 350 dollars. Is it worth?
If i buy the full hd version, i'm going to sell the SSHD for 140 dollars and buy an 250 gb SSD for 180 dollars.
So, this is going to take the difference to 310 dollars. What do you guys think?
Just remeber, these are brazilian prices. That's why it's so expensive.

 

if you don't game there's nothing that can really go wrong with 48hz, so far there are no movies over 48fps and youtube's 60fps video in the future is more or less playful rather than useful

 

For those thinking of hooking this up to an external display (and who happen to live in Canada), Canada Computers is selling a totally decent LG IPS monitor for $169. You then get it from Best Buy, who will price match and give you an extra 10% off. So it works out to $164 + tax.

 

Can someone please give me a their experience with battery? Ie average browsing and high use?

Thanks

 

One question: does the keyboard have a somewhat stiff backplate, or is it squishy?

 

Hello Y50 owners!

I am debating on getting the lenovo y40/50/ or asus n550jk. I am going to college in the Fall, and already have a surface pro 3 to use for my classes. I will be using the secondary laptop for multimedia purposes. I also prefer a 15.6 inch screen, which is why I am hesitant with the y40.

Also, will the y50 screen quality be fine for someone who only plans on using it for gaming, movies, writing papers,programing?

I like the portability of the y40/50 over the n550jk too. The n550jk looks quite bulky/thick.

I also looked at the g550jk, and was wondering if that model would be lighter since it has no touchscreen. If I remove the optical drive in the n/g550jk, would it make a dent in the weight?

If anyone has any other laptop suggestions please let me know! My budget is between $1100-$1200.

Thanks!

 

I'm in the same position- the N550 & G550 are both quite thick & heavy.

As for writing papers- it's going to be a strain. I"ve got a TN (similar to the Y50's screen) and it is extremely annoying to write on. Constantly moving the screen, parts of the screen are always 'off' colour.

Here's some examples (from another post) (Thansk shillywagon):

http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/ideapad-essential/113803d1404785355-y50-replacement-displays-compendium-cm_v_lg_front.jpg

http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/ideapad-essential/113806d1404785468-y50-replacement-displays-compendium-cm_v_lg_tilt_back.jpg

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ideapad-essential/755626-y50-replacement-displays-compendium-11.html

 

hmm the improved screens seem to range from $80-$130, I might just buy the y50 and replace the screen. The replacement screens look much better. I am going to wait though. probably till mid August or so.

 

This is a really good discussion, took me a few hours but I read all of it.

I was so confident about Y50, but now I know so much more about it. I am thinking of buying the touch model, but I am not able to decide on the following things:

1. How much of a performance boost does a pure SSD give over the hybrid HD? Someone mentioned the difference would be "significant", but if someone can quantify this (even if approximately) that would be great.

2. If I do plan to hook it up to larger FHD displays like a 27" FHD LED monitor, how much of a difference would video ram make on gaming performance (2GB vs 4GB )(to get over the bad screen, when I can)

3. I am thinking of getting the 8GB RAM version for now, as it seems enough for current games. I'll just get it upgraded when and if it becomes inadequate for future games. That's easy to do, right? No gotchas here?

I know people have posted videos on how to replace the hybrid and stuff, but I've never done this before so I would rather not open my laptop at least before it goes out of warranty. I've been saving for a long time for a good laptop, don't want to screw it up.

Thanks for the help in advance and for the really useful thread.

 

does anybody already have a comparison of the Y50-Touch and Y50-UHD model?
is the difference in quality too noticeable? or the only difference is the viewing angle?

 

Yes, I did try adjusting ClearType as well, and unfortunately that did not solve it either. Thanks!

 

Xentar712, thanks for this mention, curious to see whether that will improve the browser at least (though unfortunately not Word or other things), will try when I get home!

 

For word, have you tried checking the box in the compatibility tab for disabling scaling for high dpi

 

Has anyone created ICC profiles for the 4k panel?

 

Member Ramzay shared ICC profiles earlier for the AUO panel. You should be able to find them easily using the Search Thread feature.

 

That I have not yet tried either - I was afraid to install Word until I knew for sure that I am keeping the computer (since I believe my license key will only work for one use). I was using WordPad to get an idea of what the font might look like on word processing software. But would certainly try the DPI scaling thing on Word. I disabled it on Chrome but still no luck there. Firefox seems to be the "clearest" browser for text for me on the Y50 (still not up to snuff but better than the other two). Thank you so much for the suggestions; I didn't know what else to try so I really appreciate it!

 

Mine were for the FHD panel, not the UHD.

 

Ah, yes, of course. Thank you, I stand corrected!

 

We now have a few successful screen replacements in the replacement displays thread. Go have a look.

 

Thanks. That's what I thought. I went ahead and ordered it on Sunday night, and it's currently out for delivery, so I'm hoping to have it any time now.

 

1) A hybrid will give you the same 6-second boots most of the time, but a full SSD will speed up everything else too. Take your app loading times and divide by half.
2) The size of the monitor you use is irrelevant for memory. Only resolution matters. Barring extreme cases, the 2GB is going to be plenty. I've got the 4GB version but just considered it a nice perk since I wanted the extra memory and SSD anyway.
3) 8GB is plenty for a long time, but if you end up with one of the versions with two 4GB sticks of RAM it will be more costly to upgrade in the future. Unless you know you're the type to need the extra memory, odds are it will be plenty until you're ready to upgrade.

 

Not sure if it needs it's own thread (I created one here), but I think this laptop (with the IPS screen replaced) could represent the perfect affordable portable gaming laptop if it had more battery life.

Basically I'm wondering- we need to hack/modified the bios to change the volt speeds on the CPU to under-clock (ie to extend the battery)?

Is it possible to replace the CPU a more efficient one (like the 4510U)?

 

to answer your question 1 by 1

1. you can undervolt the cpu by 70mv using intel extreme tuning utility. it's intel's own software, so it's very reliable

2. I don't see why you would want to replace your quad core to an undervolted dual core i7, when you paid the price for a full quad core, not to mention you can't change the CPU regardless because i7 4710hq and 4510u both use BGA sockets which requires soldering on board.

 

Cheers for that. So no replacing the CPU- definetlely don't want to solder the board (and I assume there could be other problems down the track too?)

Would then underclocking (by 70mv) make much of a difference in battery life?

I've very close to buying the Acer V7 (with the 850m) because its' battery lasts 6.5-8 hours. I'd buy the Y50 instantly if I knew I could get close to 5/6 hours with normal use...

 

Posting from my new Y50 4K which just showed up about an hour ago. The screen is amazing. So glad I got this one rather than getting the FHD version and then having to mess with changing out the panel.

This is my first time using Win 8, so it's going to take some getting used to. Should be a fun learning experience.

 

I think you can buy an i5 version of the Y50 from Newegg if you're worried about the i7 chewing up your battery. I'm not sure how much more battery life you'd get out of it, though. The Y50 is a performance machine with a full-power CPU and a high-end GPU. If you're more interested in long battery life, there are other laptops out there that are more suited for that.

 

The i5 4200h is also rated at 47w tdp so you don't get to save much battery actually. The default clock is too high for it to have any major battery liFe improvements compared to i7

 

Can you confirm your screen is also 48hz locked? I realize the chances are next to none, but you got the different retailer version instead of the lenovo website version right? Maybe its different on that one.

 

How would I check that? I know I did go into the Intel HD Graphics manager and tried to set a custom resolution of 1920 x 1080 at 60 hz and it told me that setting exceeded the bandwidth, so I assumed that I had the same issue that Xentar was previously talking about.

 

And the only available preset resolutions were 1920 x 1080 and 3840 x 2160 @ 48hz for both? Yep its the same :/

 

Could anyone give the the dimensions of the box the y50 comes in if possible and weight as well?

Looking at buying one but need to know the size of the packaging first.

 

Wow, my y50 got here today, had about 2 hours of playing around with it and I´m simply amazed so far!
got a i7, 16gb ram, 4gb vram, 256gb ssd. First I had to install Windows (bought a freeDOS), which went pretty fast. The first problem I encountered: I didn´t think ahead, obviously I didnt have a Wifi driver installed, so had to connect it via ethernet. Downloaded all the drivers from the Lenovo site, but somehow my Wifi was still not working. This was due to me installing Intel driver (thought I´d have a Intel card) but its not an Intel wifi card. wifi is working fine so far, got no disconnects or anything.
The keyboard is just amazing! I was able to partly reproduce the missed keystrokes, but that is really an unreal scenario. You have to barely touch the key at the upper left corner. If you touch the keys lightly enough to not get it registered, you probably didn´t mean to press that button
The screen - I have the AUO screen- is not bad. Nothing impressive or spectacular, but not bad either. The only thing I´m not too happy about is the crappy touchpad. Don´t know if it is just mine but it feels cheap and inaccurate. When touching it litely I can hear it clicking, as if there was some room inbetween. How are your touchpads?
But since I mostly use an external mouse I won´t be returning it right away.

 

I bought the Y50 4k HD model - 16gb ram , 256 SSD and can confirm that the screen is locked to 48hz. I did however stumble upon something interesting which could further point to Intel's driver as the root cause. I immediately popped in a flash drive with Windows 8 and proceeded to wipe the laptop due to the massive bloatware that came with it. Immediately after re installing the machine and before installing and drivers, I checked the screen again. It was set to full resolution but showed 64 HZ. I thought wow maybe that fixed the issue. I went into windows update and updated software and drivers from there first and after it installed a new Intel driver, my screen turned off and on and I went back to check and it was once again at 48 HZ. This leads me to believe that the issue is with the intel driver.


Other than that. The machine is amazing. Screen is beautiful at all angles. I have a little bit of back-light bleed but nothing too crazy. I wish there was a way to turn of optimus so that I can just use the 860m all the time.


Edit! Just went back to Device manager and rolled back the intel 4600 driver. Its now back at 64HZ!

Take a look at these screen shots.

 

Yeah, without the HD4600 driver, it uses a standard driver that allows >48 Hz. I had the same experience. Unfortunately, the Nvidia card won't function without the Intel driver

 

Have you been using mostly light-coloured backgrounds and surfing the web, or have you set a dark, colourful background and played some dark-themed games?

As I mentioned earlier, the bad viewing angles and colour-shifting are far more noticeable on darker/richer images than on light ones.

My guess is those who don't find the viewing angles that bad probably haven't used the screen to view dark/colourful images or games.

 

somehow my mouse pointer speed keeps reseting every time i restart the laptop. this keeps bugging me right know. Does anyone know how to fix this?

 

Hi LuckyBoldwin and congrats to your device.
This exact configuration is the one i'm considering to buy. Can you please tell me, what SSD is built in your laptop?

Thanks.

 

Hey, where are you going to buy it?
It is shown in as "LITEONIT LCS-256m6s" in the device manager, which seems to be an OEM name for some Plextor SSD, you can google it to find benchmarks/etc.

 

I don't normally participate directly in the discussion here (not being a Y50 or Lenovo user), but I noticed the renewed speculation here in the pre-release thread about the curious 48Hz restriction of the 4K panel, and thought I would share some.

There are three different potential limiting hardware factors in play -- all of which are unrelated to whatever FPS is pumped out by the Nvidia GPU in any particular game:

1) The pixel clock of the graphics adapter circuitry, which determines the maximum number of pixels per second that can be sent to the display (including vertical and horizontal blanking which are vestiges from the days of CRT monitors).

This is what some refer to as bandwidth, although it is not actually a transmission limit, but rather a limit on how fast pixels can be produced (again, completely irrespective of how fast the GPU can render 3D pixels). In traditional graphics adapters, the pixel clock is independent of the GPU (which is just a 3D calculator). I believe Intel IGP (HD4600 in this case) implements it as a baked-in PLL (or several) but I don't know this for sure. According to this Intel spec sheet HD4600 should have a pixel clock (they call it "Graphics Frequency") as high as 1200MHz, which should theoretically support up to 3840x2160@120Hz. That number is too high to make sense, though, and may include total capacity of several PLLs to drive multiple monitors simultaneously. The sheet indeed claims a max resolution of "only" 3840x2160@60Hz.

As several here have pointed out, even if there were a pixel clock ("bandwidth") limitation of 3840x2160@48Hz (398MHz, excluding blanking) it would allow a refresh as high as 192Hz at FHD (1920x1080@192Hz, having only 1/4 the number of pixels). So pixel clock ("bandwidth") seems not to be the problem here, which leads us to the next possible limitation:

2) Transmission bandwidth to the display, which is limited by the type and version of interface used (in both ends). For external monitors, that means HDMI (since Y50 doesn't have DisplayPort) which requires HDMI 2.0 to support 4K@60Hz. Y50 is probably HDMI 1.4, though I don't remember seeing confirmation of that (I apologize if I missed it). As member heibk201 mentioned at one point, Y50 almost certainly uses Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) to drive its internal LCD, which has way higher max bandwidth than what's required for 4K@60Hz -- even if it should be limited to the older eDP version 1.3. So this is almost certainly not the limitation either, leading us to the panel itself:

3) Although I do not have experience with the specific 4K panel used in the Y50, it IS possible that the panel is physically limited to a 48Hz refresh rate, particularly if it is designed for movies. The panel displays 3840x2160 pixels regardless of whether it runs in FHD mode or 4K mode. So if the panel itself has such a refresh limitation, it could (unfortunately) apply to both resolutions. If that should be the case, I would fault Lenovo for choosing such a panel.

Usually, the only times a lower resolution would allow for a higher refresh rate, are when the pixel clock (1 above) or the interface bandwidth (2 above) are limited, which is almost certainly not the case here. So IF indeed there is a hardware restriction (not a driver one) it is most likely the panel itself.

The recent reports from members eugeneNYC and Xentar712 that Microsoft's generic graphics driver ran 64Hz refresh rate, are to me the most hopeful indication that the problem is software imposed and not a panel issue. Short of waiting for Lenovo, the fastest way to confirm this would be for an owner to test with a camera whether the 64Hz on Microsoft's driver is really what is being displayed.

While most owners of this laptop would be concerned about the effect on games, I would personally be concerned about the effect in daily use, scrolling text, moving windows etc (I am not a gamer). That said, this is not like an old CRT monitor, where 48Hz would be utterly unbearable, because the picture is only physically displayed 48 times per second and fades away in between each refresh; 48Hz would flicker badly. LCD panels keep the image displayed constantly, and the refresh rate is only a matter of how often that image is updated.

There seemed to be some confusion on the subject, and I hope this clarifies more than it confuses.

 

Forgive me if it's already been answered but does anybody have a link to the "Lenovo Settings" installer? I'll be replacing the SSHD with an SSD and performing a fresh install, I would like to settings app if possible. The Metro version on the Windows store is next to useless.

 

Hi, this particular configuration is only offered by amazon here in germany at the moment.
http://www.amazon.de/dp/B00KH6PAT8/...de=df0&creative=22494&creativeASIN=B00KH6PAT8

Thanks for your info. What do you think of your SSD? Actually i rather would prefer a 840 Evo Samsung...

 

So far, the only complaint I have about this laptop is with regard to the UHD screen and the fact that many applications are not properly coded to display on a high-DPI screen. I'm currently trying to set up Outlook, but the way the setup screen displays makes it nearly impossible, as I can't see the top or bottom of the window, and can't change the size of the window and cant' scroll within the window. It's maddening.

 

That's the exact same one I bought, I'm from Germany as well. I would've preferred a evo as well, but the deal is still great. My loading times are quick, but honestly I haven't used a ssd before so I can't compare. But the benchmarks indicate it's a decent drive. From the moment I press the power button until Firefox is ready is about 8-10 secs, so you get a feeling.
Regarding the person asking about the colors: you may be right, my background is blue, but not too dark. I haven't played a game where it is completely dark yet. I will see either later after the soccer match or tomorrow.

 

I just got my base model FHD Y50. If anyone has any questions left about it, I can start answering questions as well.