Lenovo Y550P Intial Review

I have seen a few Lenovo Y550P threads here but figured I would write one and share some of my expierences so far.

First off the laptop offers a lot at a great price no need to list specs here they are available everywhere. The thing is truly a fingerprint magnet but looks great and I have seen no build quality issues really and is on par with my previous laptop which was a Sony FW. The fan seems to run fairly quiet even though it's a Core i7 which was suprising and I squeezed out 2.5hrs on battery on Power Saver which is not bad. The laptop came with a ton of junk software wise which took a while to clean out. The suprising thing to me was a hidden 15Gb parition with nothing on it and a 30GB parition with just drivers (used for onekey recovery) both of which I deleted and merged back into C using Disk management.

As far as the keyboard goes it's fairly nice minus the backlit feature however it does not have a play/pause button so I remapped the dolby button to play/pause using KeyTweak. I am in the process of figuring out a way to remap the OKR button since right now it does nothing. The slidenav function is actually pretty nice however it does not work if the system is stressed in anyway. The window will nt even come up which kind of sucks.

As far as gripes go I do not like the fact that I cannot use built in software to remap the special keys. Also, I have noticed some black bars while playing World of Warcraft but only when I put it in Windowed mode and maximized with no bars. This thing plays it at high settings though with no problem and has basically maxed out CoD: MW2, Dragon Age: Orgins, Serious Sam HD: First Encounter with no problem what so ever.

Also, I want a way to disable Veriface when on battery because there is no reason to turn on the webcam and drain battery when your limited on power. However, this feature does not exist.

Now for the biggest problem of them all: PM55. The chipset is the PM55 which support the i7 but the iTunes bug exists and has messed up my iPhone already (restored using my old laptop) and my ipod (testing for fun). It might not be a huge deal but the downside is it doesn't look like Lenovo cares to push out a BIOS update for this and will prob be left in the hands of Apple or Intel to release updated drivers or some kind of work around.

The hard drive is also the BIGGEST bottleneck of the whole system especially the first day since Indexer is trying to go around indexing the whole system. After a while this settles down but a 5400rpm can't keep up with the i7, 240M.

This is my overall expiernce so far and I have only had this for 24 hours now. Overall, AMAZING laptop I am loving every minute of it except for the iTunes thing which cost me some time to figure out. If you have any questions about it feel free to ask!

 

Just noticed that the system will emit a very annoying beepin alarm when the battery reaches 10% if anyone knows how to get rid of this it would be much apperciated!

 

Hey thanks for review appreciate it
Getting mine hopefully next week. My country = Malaysia, I've waited over 4 weeks for it.

Could you tell us / show us a pic of the back with the cover off, so we can see the number of fans, heatsinks etc. Does it run real hot on gaming or even small tasks (<20-40% load)? Maybe you could show us a few screenshots of CPU / GPU temps? Much appreciated.

Oh, the chipset/iTunes issue seems rather annoying, and I've seen it on Lenovo forums.

Are there any other problems? Apart from heat or the chipset. To disable Veriface the only way, I think, is to uninstall, thereby rendering it useless. But I think when you delete the hidden partition, you've disabled the OneKey anyway.

Being able to remap the touch keys seems pretty cool. Why would I want Dolby watever on it. Yeah play seems like a good one, and even other things. Don't know how you do that lol.

Look forward to your reply ^^

Oh, I think to disable the Beep, if you can't do it in Lenovo's power management thingy, then you'd have to use the one from Control Panel, the power settings. There you could tweak warnings, critical level alerts, settings, standby times etc.

 

Why didn't you do a clean install instead? I'm wondering if there's anything I must know about doing a clean install with a Lenovo that's different from the Dell computers I'm used to. Any other tips about removing the junk?

I've searched the threads here and this one seems to be the best guide on getting rid of bloatware even though the latest OS it mentions is Vista instead of Win 7.

 

For my girlfriend's S12, the option was called "PC Beep" in Windows XP's volume control. I believe you had to go to "options/properties" to see it. I'm not sure about Windows 7/Vista. Maybe try "Volume Mixer/System Sounds"

 

This is a BIOS option - at least for Thinkpads, the option is under "Alarms," and that would be the low battery alarm. Disable it, and there will be no beep.

 

Well after them telling us about the Lenovo Enhanced Experience I figured I would hold off on wiping it until I tried this out see if its any different.

As far as your post kashing92 I do not have a screw driver on me (long story short im in a third world country atm) but if I can soon I will post pics. The temps can get a lil hot here are my readings mind you im in an 82F room:

Chipset: 58C
Core (all cores had same temp): 57C
GPU: 55C
HD: 36C
Power draw: 15.34W

While gaming its:

Chipset: 71C
Core: 71C
GPU: 68C
HD: 36C
Power draw: 55.04W

Power draw is the proc. thats the data I have for now sorry for the delayed reply was traveling for the past 2 days anyways if you have any other questions let me know!

 

Oooh thanks very much for the info
It seems the real problem isn't the load heat but the idle temps which are quite high. A certain degree of balanced undervolting may be able to help.

 

could you run intel burn test for 10-20 min and check max cpu temps? http://downloads.guru3d.com/IntelBurnTest-v2.3-download-2047.html

 

replacing the thermal compound should help a lot, but that'd void the warranty.

 

I will run the test later today and post the results also as far as the 10% battery warning sound it cannot be disabled through any windows control panel and might even be emited via the battery itself. If anyone knows any true way to turn this off I would much apperciate it!

 

Also my other gripe which is previoulsy mentioned is the iTunes problem. Every other company has come out with a BIOS update and I am wondering what Lenovo is doing to remedy this. If anyone knows any temp. workaround please advise!

 

Just to document a working fix someone posted on the Lenovo forums all you have to do is goto the sound card settings and mute PC Speaker and you will not hear the beeping sound when battery is low!

 

But if you did that, aren't you just disabling/shutting off the audio. If I find another way I'll let you know.

 

No that only disables the PC Speaker sound aka the sound used by the internal speaker (which is router to the normal speakers in this case) also I have run Intel Burn Test and the MAX temps after 5 passes are as follows:

Chipset: 84C
Core (ALL): 85C
GPU: 77C
HD: 36C

During the previous test the proc was only 50% utilization so i did the next test below and it pegged out to 100% constant

Edit: that was with AUTO threads

I now specified 32 threads and these are the temps:

Chipset: 89C
Core (ALL): 89C
GPU: 81C
HD: 36C

Second Edit: At those temps I noticed the CPU down throtteling itself to x11 muliplier going below 1.6GHz to try and lower temps...which makes sense but it means if pushed this thing can get HOT i believe 100C is the max i7 temp

 

Also from the Lenovo forum:

 

another i7 throttling machine...

 

Edit:

nevermind I found them @
http://consumersupport.lenovo.com/en/DriversDownloads/drivers_list.aspx?CategoryID=818067

Original post:

I would like to ask a question in here instead of starting a new thread.

I just got my Y550P (liking it so far) and did a clean install. But I cannot find any drivers on lenovo.

I am currently installing the GeForce 200 M series notebooks drivers.
In Device manager i have the following yellow ! marks

1. Ethernet controller - LAN is missing. I saw on a website I need to get Broadcom driver.

2. I have 2 unknown devices. I am wild guessing one is my card reader since in my experience that is usually one that doesn't get detected on a fresh install.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Right the annoying Beep lol. thanks guys.
oh well some damn hot air comes out the side... but least the top and bottom isn't quite as hot.

ohh err anybody had the disk check freezing at startup, im trying to fix that.

 

Quick question:

Is the fact warm air exits through the side vent a good sign that the inside is getting cooled (heat goes out), or a bad sign that the insides are more in danger of being fried or dying early?

Thank you.

 

The CPU/GPU temps are on par with what they should be so do not worry about the inside temps. The beeping issue was resolved with a BIOS update that came out earlier this week.

 

Fair enough.

But is it on par because of the specs (I'm assuming), or normal for a laptop to be this hot on average?

Also, does this Y550P allow VT to be enabled? With the proper Win 7 Pro, of course.

 

How bout the sound of Lenovo y550p, is it good?