Recommend the W520? How's it holding up?

Forum = FUBAR

 

My original post that I gladly saved..as I see that the friggin forum seems to have some issues:

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I've been going back and forth between the thinkpad W520 and Dell M4600. I'm pretty aware of the specs, offerings, and prices of both.


However, what I want to know from W520 users is, are you happy with it? Has it been reliable, "trouble free", and overall good to you? Would you buy it again if you could do it all over...or are there known bugs/issues that you would say Lenovo hasn't addressed with this model?

I skimmed through the W520 owner's thread and of course I saw people posting issues and quirks but I'm assuming many are isolated issues, not sure if they are well known bugs, etc..

I know the W530 is on the verge of release but I rather have something that is "tried" and "true".


Thanks in advance.


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Between my & my wife (I maintain her laptops), we've owned 3 Dells, 1 Samsung and 2 Lenovos over the last four years (I like to upgrade ).

I personally use a W520, and it's the best laptop I've ever had. My previous daily driver was a T61 (or maybe W61?), and that followed a Dell. I got mad at Dell because I kept having piddly problems. Lots of them. So did my wife's laptop. I bought that first Lenovo, and loved it. So when I wanted a new one this year, I bought the W520. I am thrilled with it. Rock solid, no problems. None.

For my wife, I bought her a Samsung from Best Buy. She doesn't have the needs I do, so an off-the-shelf worked for her. She's been happy too. For a sub $750 laptop, it does its job well.

I will probably buy another Lenovo in a year or so, when I am ready to fly faster.

 

Very happy with mine. It was a bit disappointing initially because of the silly issues, like original Ultrabay HDD adapter having a huge gap, wobbly battery, just 2 external monitors even when docked etc. But black electric tape, full-height Ultrabay adapter from ebay, and USB video adapters do wonders

Would have bought it again too. Keyboard is great (and I like the fact that there is no numpad, so it's centered), FHD screen is the best TN screen I've seen, it's fast, lives very long on battery, fingerprint reader helps to keep drives encrypted w/o massive inconveniences etc. No problems so far.

 

Thanks for the replies guys!

I forgot to mention, I'm a serial Thinkpad buyer. Writing this from a T500, used a T60, and still have a T41.

I appreciate Thinkpad's engineering and attention to some details(though like you guys mentioned, there are some quirks). I had serious battery wobble in my T41, fixed it with layering tape on the sides, haha... also it had the weak spot in the corner...which ultimately led to the death of it.

My T500 has been pretty solid overall... one of my USB ports seem to have a weak connection(goes in and out when a device is plugged in, pretty annoying, I wish I sent it in during warranty but didn't want to bother with it). Of course if I was really picky I can find things...like the body creaks, the keyboard flexes near the "W" key, I wish the lid latches on top of the screen were metal and not plastic(though mine are holding up, my T41 corner latch hook snapped off...also bumped into other T-series users who had the same problem)... things like that.

But was just wondering about the specific W520, if there were any "known" issues or bugs with the model that perhaps were not addressed and are on-going (example... gpu overheating, stability due to poor drivers, or say..."weak spots"..like the T4x series had).

THings like that.... I've gone back and forth with this model and the M4600 from Dell..I know, it's a Dell, but their precision series is pretty decent(at least at first glance)...the only problem with Dell's in general is...they don't build it in house...so they don't pay as close attention to the whole process of their products being manufactured(just contract it out to ODM's while giving them initial designs, etc.)..which tends to lead to some quality assurance issues, as well as attention to detail in their drivers and say BIOS/mobo's....where as with Lenovo they not only overlook the whole process with what seems like more care..but they build it in house with clear communication between designers and manufacturing. ..which is the reason why I keep going back to Thinkpad's(even after they were sold off to lenovo, at least they kept the same design and engineering team...according to the blogs, which I haven't kept up with)...I almost went with a Dell E6510...but when I heard it had some stability issues(not saying everyone, just enough from the community here where I was deterred to getting one)...I went back with Thinkpad Well that's my speculation at least.

 

The only reason I can think of to get the Dell is the fancy IPS panel they offer as an option. The M4600 is thick and heavy.

At this point I would not buy anything. I would wait to see what Dell announces for their Ivy Bridge refresh.

Then you'll have a decent view of what is coming from HP, Lenovo and Dell.

It would appear Apple might disclose something 6/15 at the WWDC. If they disclose the MacBook Pro plans, you'll have a pretty good view of the 15" market by that point.

 

I think overall the W510/W520 and (keyboard exclusive) W530 platform is seriously good. I have one of the early W510 and there is still nothing broken, scratched, loose, shaky, unstable, or whatever. And I use it every day (gaming incl.) and it often runs 24/7 with elevated temperatures (relaxed thinkfan settings).

 

hi pal - I bought the W520 back in March, then sent it back for a refund after a week and bought the M6600 (I was going to get the M4600... but that 1920x1080p multi touch screen got the better of me. heh).

Anyway back on topic - the W520 is a great machine, being a consultant that travels a fair amount I wanted something that was physically solid - and I wasn't disapointed. It is rock solid, however having now got the M6600 and seen the M4600 in person - imo the Dell is actually built better and has the edge. Shocking I know, but these are the best built Dells I have ever seen and I've seen most models since about 2002.

The screen in the Lenovo is slightly better than the M4600/M6600, not much in it though. Just seems slightly better colour.

The main reason I sent the W520 back was the throttling. It was unacceptable. I do a lot of VM work, I had 24GB installed in it along with dual solid state drives. I would often run with 80%+ RAM used so it was getting fairly hammered - as a result it would just throttle its socks off.

Lenovo have confirmed (in another thread) that the shipping power supply cannot handle maximum load when the CPU is maxed and the discrete GPU is in use. With Optimus enabled its a pain to keep checking that some IE/Firefox page hasn't loaded an addon that activates it or some random app isn't using it - so without constant attention it would just throttle even when plugged in!!!?!

Why someone in the design meeting didn't put their hand up and say "erm chaps - lets use a bigger power supply?" I just don't know.

Sadly that isn't the end of the story, when it is running on battery it is even worse I was on the train running a couple of VMs and it took 20mins to install SQL server.... got it home, plugged it in and performed the same test on a clean VM and it took 10mins.

When I got my M6600 I did the same test (same CPU and the same SSDs) and it did it in 5mins plugged in and 6mins on battery.

Anyway - just go for the Dell. You won't be disappointed.

NOTE - Remember the M4700 is due to be announced in the next couple of weeks...

 

CPU throttling may be annoying, and Lenovo goes a bit too far with it on battery, but ThrottleStop fixes the issue nicely in one mouse click making performance on battery exactly the same as when AC connected.

The other issue sounds like hardware/configuration issue. On my W520 CPU performance is identical whether GPU is used or not. I suspect with GPU active it won't run a few seconds less in Turbo mode than it would with Intel only, for thermal reasons, but it's hardly critical.

 

I'd personally wait and get a W530 if I were you. I've had my W520 for over a year now, I purchased it about 4 weeks after it was released. I haven't encountered any major problems with it. Though, I did have to clean out the heat sink with compressed air last month because it was throttling in SCII, after doing so, my temperatures were like 15C lower.

 

Hi Power7,

How do I make ThrottleStop fix the CPU issue with one mouse click?

I've downloaded ThrottleStop but don't know what to do on my W520

 

My buddy has the W520 and never had a throttling issue. Weird. for heavens sake I use my T420 with a 2720QM and nVidia card all day long on a 90 watt with no problems. My buddies M6600 is full of problems. Dead scree, dead touch screen, overheating.. sucks

 

No throttling on my W520 except on the one known instance (battery, discrete GPU active). The 170W power brick will allow full speed on GPU and CPU. Not sure about the 135.

 

My wife could care less too. Unfortunately, she prefers to use my x220 rather than my Mac, which I plan on giving to my father-in-law now. So we essentially use one laptop at home full time. I bought a new 23" screen because she likes to edit photos, and the x220 is docked a third of the time now. I never intended our x220 to be our only machine, but it is and we are very happy with it.

Unfortunately, I just don't like sharing my laptop with her. Hence, I plan on buying another desktop replacement or small desktop for her (really me) in the next six months or so. We really need a second machine for when I go on business trips, but even then, I could probably borrow a laptop from work. In the end, I just really need an excuse to buy a W520, W530 or desktop other than to play Diablo III. Any recommendations (for an excuse) are of course welcomed.

 

Run it, and set "performance" mode as below:

http://i50.tinypic.com/291gs1z.jpg

Then, when you need to have full performance on battery, switch ThrottleStop to "Performance" mode (can do it via its tray icon too). There are many configuration options available, can assign hotkeys etc. etc.

It also has help (F1), and there are many detailed guides on the Internet too.

 

I would wait for a W/T530, if you can. New keyboard may or may not be an improvement, but Dolby sound sure will - sound is mediocre on the 520's. New internal gpu in 530 is big improvement on 520, and for many will finally be adequate. T series now has USB3 as well.

 

Dolby sound on your current Thinkpad:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/657971-dolby-home-theater-your-thinkpad.html

We'll see how much the GPU improves but I'm not expecting that big a difference... if you want more, DIY ext GPU solutions have been posted in NBR.

 

Thanks, sgogeta4, for info re Dolby! At the moment I go back to my old W500 for watching DVD's, the T520 sound is so poor. I will read the blurb and give it a go... (by the way, the Lenovo site mentions Dolby v2 for the T-series and v4 for the W series. Maybe you could enlighten?) As for the 530 internal gpu - it won't satisfy those who need very serious gpu grunt, but it is about twice as good as the 520 internal gpu. Not a bad upgrade at all...

 

Thanks pal. This what I was looking for, I should've mentioned that I am planning on going 32GB with RAM and SSD. I plan to run virtual OS's and do some server testing. I've heard of stutter/throttling issues that may or may have not been resolved.



I'm excited to see what the M4700 has to bring as I haven't seen leaked photo's of it yet(W530 is posted everywhere however, with..err chiclet keyboards). Only other thing is... with Ivybridge, there has already been initial reports of bad thermal temps...rumor has it that it's due to the IHS, but we'll have to wait and see...not all new product launches are perfect, it's why I usually wait towards the middle or end until I purchase, haha.

@everyone who mentioned the W530, I'm well aware of it, and personally I'm weary to jump in on it... for two reasons, 1st, being a new model, first buyers risk being the "guinea pig" of their initial release(W520 being an example, it's why they ended up shipping with larger power supplies after finding out that the initial ones would not suffice). 2nd, I've been used to the Thinkpad's keyboards for so long that I'm not sure how I would feel about the new chiclet keyboards... basically I rather not be an early adopter... looking for tried and true.

 

Was W520 ever shipping with anything less than 170W power brick?

 

I don't believe so. At least not the quad core machines.

 

I've written a nice review of my W520 already.

Loved it since I received it last June, and I've only had one problem with the laptop so far (original battery stopped charging for a about two weeks, but then suddenly started working again...odd). Considering how little I baby it, and the minimal maintenance (I just wipe it down every so often; haven't cleaned out the fans yet), it works great.

When the W530 comes out, you should be able to get a W520 on discount, since Lenovo will probably want to clear its shelves of "outdated" Sandy Bridge systems.