Lenovo Y50 Owners and Information Thread

I don't think many people are saying the display is unusable. I'm not saying that. But it is bad.

There's a link in my sig to my review, where I've posted pictures comparing the Y50 and my Clevo.

 

Hey... Have the y50... It's a chi mei display... For gaming... It makes
No difference whatsoever....

Other scenarios.. Honestly... It's usable....colors are average... Horizontal angles are fine... Vertical sucks for darker images... Basically... Just don't expect anything great from it... Other than that... The laptop is simply amazing

 

I would disagree with the gaming statement. Gaming is what really turned me off the display. The colour shifting made it hard to play in certain games. General use (web browsing, email, etc) is where the panel didn't bother me so much. Precisely because gaming is where I get darker images, where the colour-shifting is most apparent, while normal desktop usage is mostly lighter images, where the colour-shifting isn't so bad.

 

I am not looking for a representative test, I am looking to accentuate a perceived defect in the keyboard. If I get 1 error out of every 30 full-dead-on-center key-presses, it is frustrating. I can get 1 error per 20 keypresses if I don't hit dead center, but the issue is even further accentuated if you press the corner of a key. Others who claim to have a 100% accurate keyboard, I am asking them to do a test that could expose or accentuate a previously 'unnoticed' issue. I understand that this test is not representative of normal typing. I am not a fast typer (40WPM), but I am riddled with errors from this keyboard. My wife types 80-90 WPM and hers is riddled with errors as well - she hates the keyboard.

@Lucky - Thank you very much for performing the test. I really appreciate the effort! When a key depresses it gives tactile feedback (a sort of 'click') that indicates it has been pressed. If you are pressing hard enough on a corner of the key to get that click, then you should get a letter produced. This is not the case with my y50. I am on an XPS 15 right now that works 100%. I've never experienced a poorer keyboard then the y50 has, and I've owned probably 40 computers in the last 18 years.

Again, this is a test. It is not meant to be a test that represents normal usage. If users who don't notice a problem can be made to see a hint of a problem - then my plight to get a working keyboard by sending it back to Lenovo is quite grim. On the other hand, if some people out there actually have 100% correct keystrokes, then I actually have a chance.

 

I get what you're saying... But I just adjusted the panel as needed.... Didn't notice much color shifting as long as the screen was in the right angle.... And in a light color background... Color shifting is really hard to notice....

 

my instructions should be outdated by now and I recommend all of you to update to 340.43 instead. everything is registered in this driver and there's no need to follow my procedures anymore. try it and let me know how it works

 

I can second this. Installing 340.43 beta was like installing any other video driver - easy.

 

Hi guys,

just a short question and please forgive if this was asked before and in that case just kindly link me to this statement:

What is your Y50's core clock under load?
I read of 1097Mhz on the P34g v2. Can you confirm that on your Y50 laptops as well?

Did some of you notice slight throttling in boost clocks on around 80°C ? I know with the seemingly fantastic cooling system this is barely achievable , but the user 'alaskajoel' noticed slight throttling in boost clocks when hitting 81°C...

Thanks.

 

I got a slight performance bump from the 340.43 drivers as well. Getting 960 after running unigine heaven. My 3770k+7970 only gets about 1600 too. So not too far off.

 

Good LORD it was nerve-wracking taking off the bottom cover. That loud plastic crack when removing the part on the hinge made me pucker a little.

 

Glad to hear BabelBabble mentioned something about the bluish-ness of the Chi Mei display - that is exactly what I experienced too! I actually ended up turning down my blues by about two numbers in comparison to greens and reds because it felt imbalanced in favor of blue.

ScubaAddict, my gosh, I feel your pain!! Your experience was similar to mine with the Asus N56JR, which I had to return twice. For me it was because I couldn't type without it missing keystrokes - this new issue with the "corner test" is not something I ever tried until now. I got 17 out of 20 Ms on the Y50. However, I missed a few letters doing the corner test on my old Dell laptop too, which always had a good (non-chiclet) keyboard. Because I can type normally without the Y50 missing keystrokes, this is not a concern for me unless someone demonstrates why it should be. I understand what you're saying about the key "clicking" though - doing the corner test I can get occasional "clicks" that don't result in keystrokes. My particular Y50 is leagues better than the Asus and I do not have a keystroke problem as far as I can tell (that being said, I have not typed pages-long anything yet, which is generally where I would notice it the most). You are right about the two-finger scrolling however - I can do it on my Y50.

(Can anyone point me to documentation on all the different ways to use my Y50 touchpad? I'm very unfamiliar with touchpads and don't know all the gestures. Thanks!)

Ramzay, you are right about dark movies or gaming being noticeably worse on the FHD (Chi Mei for me). I watched some TV episodes that are typically darker lighting while sitting on my bed with my laptop, and felt like I was adjusting the screen a lot more than on other laptops. I haven't gotten a chance to start games on this computer but can definitely see where that might be an issue, especially if you're looking for specific small things on the screen or moving very quickly in a game, in a dark setting. I believe you have the AU panel and you still feel like "dark graphics" color shifting is an issue? Do you have any problems reading text on your screen or just graphics? (Hard to keep everybody and their panels straight with so many people on this thread!)

Other than voiding warranty (does it void the warranty for sure or only possibly?), are there drawbacks to replacing the screen or should it work 100% perfectly after installation?

The only other new thing I noticed about the Y50 is that, like others have mentioned, the battery life was very disappointing and I am trying to adjust it to fit my needs. Due to the poor quality of the screen, I need to use most of my brightness even while on battery or it is way too dim. As a result, when watching a movie or a few TV episodes on battery, it dies too quickly to watch a longer movie all the way through, and when I noticed it wouldn't be able to play out, I lowered the brightness and other settings twice and even after that, the battery only lasted for two hours. Not enough for two and a half hour movies at satisfactory settings. If I keep it on those lower settings to begin with, maybe. But most of the time I'm on battery, it would be to watch videos of some kind.

I mention the bad only because I really like this laptop in every other way and still feel positively about it and want it to work. I am just trying to figure out what I can live with and there always seems to be big compromises no matter what computer I buy.

 

My standard install SSD > boot from USB drive > install windows is turning into a nightmare with the Y50. I cannot get it to boot from my bootable USB Windows install drive, even after tinkering around in the hidden advanced BIOS settings. Using the CD drive immediately causes a hard freeze right after "Press any key to boot from...", and it never continues, and I'm forced to hard reboot.

EDIT: After my 5th time telling it to use "Legacy" mode, the USB drive worked.

 

Keyboard impressions:

I've gotten so used to the swapped Fn and Ctrl keys on my T420 that I'm having trouble adjusting muscle memory.

The small right side Shift is killing me; I'm swift with my pinky and I keep hitting the up arrow. This thing shouldn't have a numpad at all. I will likely disable all the numpad keys and add Shift function to the up arrow using SharpKeys.

Mushy, mushy, mushy! Wish it had a more ThinkPad-style chiclet keyboard (and I wasn't a fan of that one, either).

 

I measure 90.2% sRGB gamut coverage.

 

10% give or take sRGB deviation is pretty normal I think

 

To play around to activate 2 finger scroll and other stuff for your mouse pad, go to your mouse pad driver. In my case the ELAN icon in my tray. There you can activate different things like zooming, scrolling, clicking and tapping

 

@starburst: Thank you for sharing your results! I am beginning to believe I am going to have to settle with whatever they send back.

@LuckyBoldwin - those options definitely were not available when they sent the computer back to me. I had the ELAN settings but no zooming, no clicking, no tapping options. Only a couple of very basic options like pointer speed (or something similar), tracers, and center wheel click functions (yep - center wheel click options). Multiple driver and touchpad uninstalls and reinstalls still didn't provide touchpad options.

 

Yeah, especially if different devices are used. I use a Spyder4Pro.

 

I only have an older Spyder2 device... I wonder if I should trust the calibration or just use the defaults!

 

It seems that my left speaker is dead, or blown, or something...only getting good sound out of the right one and subwoofer, all balance settings checked.

 

are you sure you are not just playing music that only uses the right stereo lol?

 

One thing for sure is that the 860M plays WoW at ultra settings and 8x AA between 40-50 fps. I don't even need it that high, but MAN!!

 

Lol, yup. Checked multiple audio sources, music, YT, games. Seems that sound IS coming from the speaker, but it sounds very muffled, while the right speaker is loud and bright.

 

The purchased specs were anIntel 3120 wifi card, but the one in mine is a 7260 and it has the dreaded dropout problem.

 

What are people doing about storage options on the Y50? With no mSata expandability- what can I do for more storage?

 

After about 6 hours with the Y50, here are my coalesced day-zero thoughts:

CONFIG
i7-4700
8 GB RAM (upgraded to 12 GB)
860M 2 GB
1 TB HDD (replaced with 128 GB SSD)
Windows 7 Home 64


BUILD
- Structurally sound, but a lot of case flex and the weird lip where the bottom cover meets the top case looks sloppy and unfinished.
- Hinge seems solid, very little screen wobble.
- I like the soft touch material on the wrist rest
- Fingerprint/grease magnet.
- Odd placement of exhaust, but seems to do the job.
- Ridiculously stiff USB ports, I've yanked the laptop across the desk trying to pull out a flash drive.
- Glossy bezel looks cheap and out of place.
- Have to remove entire bottom cover to get at HDD and RAM slots; a bit scary when pulling it off (loud plastic cracking near hinge).
- Sealed battery.
- Wish it had rear risers or the old wedge battery option for better typing angle.
- Slides around on my desk too easily; both the back ridge and front risers seem to be plastic, not rubber.
- Power plug should've been 90-degree.


HEAT/NOISE
- WASD area gets noticeably warm when gaming, but not it's uncomfortable by any means.
- Fan gets quite loud, but fortunately it's the sound of rushing air, not a high-pitched noise/whine.


KEYBOARD
- Ridiculous amount of flex; mushy/spongy feel when typing, surrounding keys bend; especially annoying as I've been using ThinkPad T-series for years and love stiff backplates.
- Uneven backlighting; the left half of my keyboard is noticeably darker than the right half.
- Undersized, undifferentiated Escape, and Delete, and FN keys.
- Totally flat keycaps.
- No separation of numpad from main keys; arrow keys are crammed in.
- Right Shift key is half-sized; my pinky finger keeps hitting the up arrow when using Shift.
- I find it a real chore to type on, not pleasurable at all.


TOUCHPAD
- I have it disabled, as I'll be using an external mouse all the time; has multi-touch feature.
- Seems to be the same janky pad I used on a T440p and loathed; feels cheap and rickety.


SOUND
- My right speaker is loud and bright, but my left speaker barely outputs any sound; defective. (EDIT: Turns out there was a stray screw magnetized to the speaker, I removed it and things work fine now)
- Subwoofer makes a noticeable difference in the sound quality.


DISPLAY
- Mine came with a ChiMei display a little on the blue side, but the provided profiles here improved it a lot.
- No screen door effect; no dead or stuck pixels.
- Text is a little small at native res, even for my 20/20 vision.
- Viewing angles aren't great; noticeable shifting with little head movement, but I'm used to that on laptops.


PERFORMANCE
- Very snappy in Win7 and Win8 once booted.
- Stock drive replaced with SSD, and, well, it's an SSD. It's awesome.
- Intel 7260 WLAN has the dreaded dropout issue.
- 860M graphics play WoW at Ultra and 8x AA in DX11 mode at 35-40 FPS in a raid setting; I've dialed the settings back a bit, very happy with the performance.
- NVIDIA still has a problem with color profiles and DX11.
- Lenovo's drivers are way behind, and neither of their Windows 7-specific graphics drivers worked; I downloaded them directlyfrom NVIDIA/Intel instead.
- BIOS is set to show only basic settings; you have to hold down F2 (EDIT: that's not how I got into it, I can't remember now! I know I was in there, though!!) at boot to get to the red meat; out of the box I couldn't boot off USB or the included CD drive, had to figure it out in the BIOS. Dumb.


OVERALL
It's a great performer for the price, but the awful keyboard, defective speaker, and wifi issues are real bummers. I will need to get a riser for it to improve the typing angle, or I may just hook it up to a monitor, attach a real keyboard and call it good.

 

hey guys i want to ask, this is my first laptop as i pretty much have been using desktop for a long time. Are we suppose to plug in power when we game?? at all times when gaming? even when 100 percent charged do i still need to plug in charge to play. It uses a lithium ion so i assuming keeping it plugged in for long is not good.

 

Hey... If you don't keep the laptop plugged in.... The gpu will underclock... And youre not gonna get the same level of performance....

 

so in conclusion whenever gaming just keep the laptop plugged in no matter the battery level?

 

Yes

10chars

 

and don't bother yourself because of the battery: I work exactly that way (or better game ...) for quite some years. my actual laptop is 5 years old and the battery is only showing very slight signs of wear.

 

okay, thanks for the answer guys.

 

So I've had the UHD model for a few days now and I have to say I'm quite happy with it. The display is gorgeous, speakers are great for a laptop (nice to actually hear some low end out of the sub), and the speed of the SSD is just ridiculous with this being my first experience w/o a platter drive. I was able to do some gaming the other night with a Diablo 3 marathon run and it looked and ran beautiful - fan noise was barely noticeable (had game sound coming through speakers) and didn't experience any heat problems after playing for around 3-4 hours. I ran D3 on max settings at 2048x1152 with vsync off and the framerate was steady around 70 FPS with screen tearing barely noticeable, if at all. D3 isn't really a game where you're cutting quickly across the screen, so I imagine that helped to minimize signs of tearing.

I personally haven't had any issues with the keyboard and have mostly used a bluetooth mouse, but didn't really have any problems with the trackpad the few times I've used it. I also haven't had any issues with the Intel 3160 AC wireless card yet - connections have been smooth and consistent. I was concerned knowing that this was a lesser card compared to the 7260, but so far so good.

The only cons I can really think of at this point are the battery life hovering around 3 hours, and not all software jiving with the 4k resolution - some programs load very small (like Battle.net and Origin), and others are proportionally full size but suffer from subtle blurriness (iTunes). That said, the battery and 4k issues were expected prior to purchase, and hopefully I'll either be able to find solutions to the 4k/software issues or fixes will come over time.

If anyone is looking for a fix to google chrome blurriness, I found one here: Chrome High DPI: How To Enable It In Windows 8, 8.1 (v34+) | Ubergizmo
There is a link at that site to download a registry fix that enables the High DPI setting within chrome, making text, images, etc look nice and crisp.

If anyone has any solutions to blurriness in iTunes, it would be much appreciated, as I use it quite often and I've been stumped so far. While it's not the end of the world, it would be nice to see text and album art nice and clear.

Cheers y'all!

 

For those who don't like to use the search function:

Y510p Screen
90% sRGB
66% Adobe RGB
595:1 Contrast
379 cd/m2 max brightness

Y50 Screen
57% sRGB
43% Adobe RGB
242:1 Contrast
217 cd/m2 max brightness

These numbers are from Bulgarian reviews
Y510p
Y50

The Y50 panel they tested was the N156HGE-EAB, which I believe is the Chi Mei display.

 

I thought you can only get up to 48FPS on the UHD so how are you getting 70FPS?

 

Hey Zarley, how are your yellows on the UHD. Mine are definitely skewed to the greenish side. Not horrid, but noticeable.

 

The FPS number displayed is what your GPU is pumping out. Your screens refresh rate determines what is actually displayed.

In this case the GPU is rendering 70FPS, but the screen only displays 48 of them.

 

Keyboard backspace issue


For others with the Y50 non-touch, every once in a while the backspace function slows down and it takes forever to delete a few words. I checked the rates in the keyboard settings in Control Panel and they are fine (fast). Is anyone else facing this issue? Sometimes a restart fixes it.

 

Hi guys.

What about the temperature? really warm? (if I play a long time - Diablo3, WoW, Rift, BF3, BF4, Titanfall etc) or not really?

Is it a good laptop? or choosing another laptop?

Sorry my english is bad Thx.

 

The keyboard settings claims it's fast but it's really not. This is my fix whenever I notice that setting is messed up. Purposely slide it down lower then apply that then switch it back all the way to fast. For some reason tho every now and then I have to do this and i don't really know why it resets but it's an easy issue to fix at least.

 

Not sure if it's a green effect I'm seeing, but I noticed that my yellows, oranges, and really just colors in general look a bit "dulled" or darkened for a lack of better terms. For example, the yellow in the google chrome logo doesn't have that bright yellow as I've seen on other monitors. I'm looking at my Y50's screen next to a monitor I have here at work, and there's definitely a noticeable difference in the shade of color - compared to the brighter red, yellow & green I think most of us are used to in the chrome logo, on my Y50 the red looks more like a blood red, the green actually looks fairly the same, and the yellow looks more like grey mustard..

And here's something interesting: I just went to take a picture of the screen to show it here, but looking at the screen through my iPhone's camera, the colors all appear noticeably brighter through the phone than looking at the screen dead on (didn't have flash on or anything like that) - maybe one of you photography experts can explain that one?

P.S. - hockeyfox. I dig the name, hockey is my sport too.

 

First off, glad to hear I am not the only Y50 owner with this problem! Is this a Windows 8.1 problem or a Lenovo Keyboard/drivers problem?

 

Yes...GREAT sport. But growing up in Minnesota, you have little choice. Having experienced the "orange" reds with the otherwise very nice HP Envy 15 display and now these off yellows, I just need to sit back and not be too discerning I guess.

 

So, my Y50 Touch (16gb ram, etc) should be here on Monday and I had a quick question. I bought a EVO to replace the stock hard drive and was wondering if I should do a clean install of windows 8.1. Basically I'm wondering, is Lenovo's bloatware really that bad? I feel like there are a couple of utility items included in the programs that would be handy. I would also prefer not have to deal with silly driver issues as a result of the fresh installation of windows. Please let me know your opinion on the matter. Thanks!

 

Is there any solution for the lack of storage options on this device? Not wanting to carry around an external drive.

I have seen a Sata to 2xmSata drives but to be set up as individual drives the laptop has to be "port multiplyer" compatible. Does anyone know of it is?

 

I think port multiplying died with Sandy bridge. Could be wrong but last I checked all Haswell laptops were incompatible.

 

I'd like the same info. I got mine a couple days ago and while I'd like to wipe it and do a fresh install of Win8.1, it seems there are several applications on there that might be nice to have in the future, and i'm not sure if I'd have any way to re-install them after a fresh install of Windows.

 

maybe get a larger sata 3 ssd? I don't understand your problem here, if you that much storage then stay with the 1tb sshd, otherwise you can just grab a 512gb ssd. crucial mx100 is like 200 bucks now. I don't see the point of using two msata drives rather than just 1 single sata 3 drive

 

Hey I was talking to the lenovo rep and they said that the max ssd the touch can handle was 8gb thats why they included it in the models. I asked if it would be able to handle a ssd and they said no. Can you please let me know if it is able to use a ssd, it sounds kinda ridiculous that you would not be able to. This is what I wanted to do also. Also how are the colors and viewing angles on it. Thanks.

 

Hi everyone,

I just bought my lenovo Y50 15"6 fullHD LED non-touch:
Intel Core i7-4700HQ
8GB (2x 4096MB) - DDR3, 1600MHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M (4GB GDDR5, GM107)
8GB SSD +1TB (1000GB) 5400rpm SATA
Wi-Fi 802.11ac

First thing I installed Win 7 x64 and of course encountered the issue with nVDIIA drivers, but thanks to this thread I found the solution. THANKS for it.
Then I installed all the other drivers recommended from Lenovo website, updated the Windows, installed couple of basic apps/programs and thought everything should be fine. Well, I guessed ALMOST correctly. Indeed I haven't seen any major problem so far, but there is this one issue, which annoys the hell out of me:

When I play League of Legends, every single match, randomly I receive lag spikes/freezes for 0.5s. It's just very irritating and frustrating. It's so tiny, but yet so disturbing and it doesn't happen rarely, oh god, it happens all the time. I don't know if you ever have played it, but let me draw you the picture: While you move your character across the map, sometimes he just shows up to a different location than you sent him, something like he was teleported to a small distance, it can happen in a fight of course. It's either FPS drop or lag spike. However, I have been monitoring it while the problem appears. It shows 60 FPS permanently, no matter what graphic quality I choose, or how loaded the system is. But it's the same with the ping as well... when the micro freeze/lag happens , the ping is unchanged.

I thought it was a network issue, since the ping was going up and down(but not when the lag/freeze happens). BUT on my previous laptop, I didn't and still don't have this issue. Which made me think it might be the Wi-fi driver, so I installed the last version from Intel, unfortunately the issue still persists.

I even typed the times when the micro lag spikes happened and then checked the event viewer: nothing was correlated...

I also tried with Ethernet cable connection: THE SAME issue


Any ideas ? Thanks in advance!

P.S. It only happens in this game, for example in Path of Exile I don't have any lag spikes/freezes