The Lenovo Y500 sucks thread!

Searching for no buying reasons i guess...

 

Yeah I'm getting this laptop. It's either this or the Samsung new series 7.i want to game more. Don't care for touch screen. So this will be my choice. And it's cheaper

 

Isn't the Samsung around the same price as the Y500 with SLI? Notebookcheck.net says that the 8870M in the Samsung has thermal throttling so it performed even worse than a single GT 650M. So SLI GT 650M will walk all over it then.

 

My y500 is still being shipped. I got the i7 without any bells or whistles for 863.73. After reading the comments I tried finding a replacement but for that price not much luck so far. Should I chance it and in the event it malfunctions return it or will they slap me with restocking fees and make me jump threw hoops until I lose my will to use technology and move to an omish village? (I had a bad experience with HP)

 

I grabbed an open box Y500 on eBay for about $800, added an SLI card and 170w PS for about $200 more, and although my laptop has the Elan trackpad issue, it is not a big problem, cause I use an external mouse.
These are great gaming laptops for the price, and I am glad I got mine...

 

It is true that the SLI Gt 650's will completely destroy either configuration that are optional in the Samsung Crhonos laptops be it Hd 8770m or the Hd 8870m and with those laptops you will have other pains like constant throttling even at lower temperatures. No one could figure out if it was due to not enough power from the brick (which is only 90watts) or due to temperatures...largely because both were in the red when tested. Also you have to contend with unofficial ATI drivers and Enduro. Check it out at "Introducing The 2013 Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M". So near as I can tell no perfect laptop exists....well, for a decent price anyways.

 

Having got mine now a week ago, I love everything about this laptop except for the large bezel and 16:9 aspect. I've hammered out all the niggling software annoyances, and I have no hardware issues. It's solid, well built, nicely spec'd, affordable, and sleek.

 

My mouse is jumpy even after installing the latest driver from the lenovo site :/. Actually, it only happens if I drag the mouse towards the right or the top side of the screen. The cursor will keep moving after I stop my finger, and it keeps going past the edge of the screen. !? Doesn't happen to the left or bottom edge. Has anyone else noticed this???

 

I have found many complaints about the touchpad problem in this thread, however, you could try other versions of driver from other makes of laptop with similar specs of your laptop( Elantech really bad). Lenovo Ideapad Y500 Touchpad Not Working - Lenovo Community

 

Yea, I have the synaptics hardware installed with the newest lenovo drivers, but I was wondering if there are any laptops out there with similar enough hardware and drivers that might be compatible with this laptop. Any ideas?

 

I have posted the same question in the Q A thread, but thought I might try here cause you folks seem to be more demanding of your machine So if you seen this post, please bear with me.

I have searched around for a bit and could not find this concern I have.

Just purchased the Y500 yesterday, everything's good, trackpad is tolerable, but I have one concern.

The POWER BUTTON is fully functional but seems loose. Loose meaning when I touch or press on it lightly, the plastic button
have a bit of play in it. It can be moved around (slightly) laterally and can hear the plastic rubbing against plastic noise. When I press it (lightly
not to turn off the computer just sorta play with it), the power button has a bit of a play vertically as well.

I do not know the inner construction of laptops much but I wonder if anyone else's Y500 power button behave the same or am I overly concerned?
I have been a macbook pro user for centuries and this is scary step for me back to PC hardware, perhaps I am over reacting but any opinion
is greatly appreciated.

Howard

 

really this wifi card in my y500 pissing me off.. its disconnecting frquently
but now its gone serious..not connecting at all..
updated drivers
but no luck.
can anyone plz help me out

 

reseat it ?

 

Sorry but I had to respond to this. The problem of the trackpad may well be fixed in the U.S - but over here in the U.K, people are still receiving machines with defective trackpads.

And the only fix - well there are two. Either send it back for a refund and order another if you bought from somewhere like Amazon, and hope the replacement has a synaptic trackpad. Or send the thing off to Lenovo, who seem to take anywhere from a few days to almost a month to get peoples machines fixed and sent back to them. Pathetic.

I want one mainly for use in the bedroom in the evening and so won't be able to use a mouse. So the whole, "well you can use a separate mouse" argument is not valid, and frankly a poor excuse anyway.

I could order direct from Lenovo. But you know what? Over here they charge more than Amazon, and don't even fit the 1080p screen, they come with a 720p one. Amazon sell the better spec machine - unless you pay Lenovo ridiculous money for the 16GB model with the small SSD drive.

So yeah, some of use have good reasons for being wary. I am desperate for a laptop at the minute and am looking at all alternatives because Lenovo can't do something as simple as sell me a machine with a working mouse pad.

 

I own the Y400 and this pisses me off too. I'm going to buy a USB 3 wifi adapter until the bios for the 750m get whitewashed.

 

Hello Guys,
here is my experience with Y500 model.
I bought it a month ago. Used it in 1 week for programming and 3 of the keys have erased. A, S and space, also some scratches started on the others. So i can say - keyboard is the cheapest chineese ****.
Also i am having problems with typing. When i type very often it duplicates some letters, which you know is annoying. You try to do some work and its full of mistakes and you have to correct them.
I called support and they took it for repair, so i received the repaired (replaced keyboard) but still the duplicated letters continue to appear, even now while i was typing i had that few times.
I callled again , they took it again for repair, but this time it took them 3 weeks, i had to call them 2 times and finally i got it back with report: No issues found

So excuse me but for laptop that i owe for 45 days, its been in service for 4 weeks. Sorry Lenovo, but tomorrow i'm going back to the reseller and will want my money back.
Take the rubbish and use it by yourselves.

16GB ssd - also useless.

Otherwise - nice look, good performace, but the keyboard is the most important for my work, so laptop is useless if it makes me nervous every minute..

Regards.

 

Sorry to hear about that, and I hope that things work out with the repairs or refund.

Though the 16GB SSD isn't useless; you just can't use it as a storage drive that you can read/write directly. It's a SSD cache and is meant to speed up certain read/write operations to your mechanical drive. Mainly the OS and some of the programs you use most often.

 

Perhaps it's the user not the product?

 

Just got a Y500 last week for my son for graduation from Best Buy and it has the Synaptics trackpad. Works fine. No issues so far.

 

so now the y500 got synaptics touchpad, but if you get the other touchpad then u got a lappy with problems..
does the GT 750M (single card) model comes with synaptics touchpad ?
and does the modded bios makes optimus work ?

 

The Y500 has had the Synaptics touchpad since December of last year which is a full 5.5 months ago and well before the updated models with the 750M were introduced.

The unlocked BIOS does not enable Optimus. As far as I know Lenovo has left out some hardware required for Optimus to work.

 

Once Optimus is available for y500s could we manually get it? I our model wasnt released w/ it.

 

Form the Wikipedia page for Optimus:

It looks like there needs to be hardware support for Optimus in order for it to work, so I doubt that a software fix would even be possible.

 

Hm what if your laptop broke and you have a 2yr warranty? Do you think the replaced laptop would have Optimus

 

I wouldn't hold my breath. ***IF*** Optimus was somehow enabled in the future, then it would be a **GIFT** existing Lenovo Y500 owners got it. nVidia, Intel, and Lenovo all haven't said anything about future Optimus support for the Lenovo Y500. So I wouldn't count on it ever showing up for us.

And even if future revisions of a Lenovo Y500 were to get Optimus support, we wouldn't get it. If your existing Lenovo Y500 were to be come defective at some point in the future, then they would just replace it with a refurbished Lenovo Y500 of the same hardware specifications. And that refurbished unit may have other problems with it (scratches, dents, dead pixels, etc) that actually put the laptop in worse cosmetic condition than your original unit. A warranty is a 2 year future-promise against potential defects, not a 2-year free upgrade program.

 

I made an account here just to post on this thread.

Let me just mention here I am a computer engineer with 15 years of experience in the field and I know what I am talking about. None of my issues are due to user errors or incompetence.

As of May 15th, 2013, the Y500 still has the same problems it always did. And more!
I received mine on May 9th, 2013.
Synaptic trackpad - having problems. You cannot click the button w/o moving the cursor to save your life! Cursor will randomly move half an inch sometimes. On its own.

Webcam died 2 days into me having the laptop. It died right after I plugged in a USB mouse. The camera is not recognized by Windows anymore. It is physically dead. There is no fixing it. It has to be replaced. I am afraid to put anything in the USBs now. They have the wrong voltage.

Windows updates made my Bluetooth not work anymore. I reverted the updates and it worked again. So if you want all your components to work "simply" don't upgrade your windows. LOL.

The mSSD cache is borderline useless. Intel rapid storage technology is installed but not working because it only works for drives in raid 0, which y500 does not have and due to the completely locked BIOS (which you can only unlock after flashing the BIOS which voids your warranty!!!) you cannot enable RAID 0. They have ExpressCache installed to manage that but that caching is waaaay slower than IRS and it BARELY making a performance difference. I tested. A lot.

The laptop has great power and good looks but there is a very good reason why they have $550 off discounts going - because it is an untested piece of junk.

Do not buy this crap. I promise you will regret it.

Oh an ultrabay... what a joke. That is NOT what an ultrabay is.

P.S. I shipped mine back today and I am never looking back. Lenovo is nothing like what it used to be during IBM times.

 

Yeah the Synaptics touchpad does that for everybody. The cursor twitches and moves a little on the screen when you click the buttons. It's still usable though and not completely broken like the early ElanTech ones were.

Regarding the Bluetooth not working, does it happen when you wake the computer from sleep? That's what makes my Bluetooth turn off every time and the Bluetooth is gone from the Device Manager too. I have to restart the computer to get it back but as soon as I put the computer to sleep it's gone again. I think this is a very common problem as I've had it on both Y500 units I've used. It could very well be caused by a Windows Update like you said. This was a widespread issue with Windows 7 machines as well and Microsoft released a hotfix for it, but no such fix has been released for Windows 8 yet. I can see this being a huge issue if you use Bluetooth peripherals regularly.

Intel Rapid Storage Technology works perfectly fine for this machine in AHCI. It's simply the official driver for systems using compatible Intel AHCI/RAID controllers and chipsets so pretty much every modern Intel system should use it as it can provide performance benefits over the generic Windows 8 AHCI driver. And it you're using RAID it's required for that functionality. Not to be confused with Intel Smart Response Technology which is their SSD caching solution and requires a compatible chipset with RAID 0 support, which the Y500 obviously doesn't have. The HM76 chipset has no RAID support so even if you flash the unlocked BIOS you won't be getting it. The 16GB SSD that is included is only a cache and you can't expect the performance of a real SSD. Maybe your low performance is due to not installing or setting up the ExpressCache software correctly.

 

- The trackpad issue you describe will happen on any touchpad with built in buttons, I fought it on my last HP DM1Z I had, and this Y400 is the same way but that's just what will happen due to the buttons being built in. Sucks but I'll live with it.

- The webcam thing ya that sucks and I'd likely send it back for that, but just to get a replacement not for refund.

- The Windows update thing isn't Lenovo's fault or the fault of the laptop so can't blame it on them.

- The mSSD cache is definitely not useless, this thing boots up fast as heck, definitely using the SSD cache for faster booting no doubt.

Only thing I don't like about these is the LCD is kinda flimsy, meaning it shakes a bit and just doesn't feel tight like my HP DM4 does, and wish the back was made out of aluminum like the DM4 too. Other than that, this is a pretty incredible laptop. Hope you get something that works out for ya, good luck.

 

Bluetooth is just gone. Reverting windows updates fixed it. It did not only happen after sleep
. How can you say this is not their fault??? It is THEIR product and THEY installed Windows 8 on it and LOCKED the boot to it. This product is completely untested for compatibility issues.
ExpressCache is installed correctly. I see it "caching" but the performance benefit is minor. I get nearly 3 times the burst speed on my new HP dv6t (they use the intel caching, not ExpressCache). The difference I see with the Lenovo was 50% at best.
How can you DEFEND that touchpad? It is garbage. $1000 is not little money buddy. In some areas of the world (particularly the area where they make those laptops) a family can live off that for a year. They would gladly take my money and send me untested garbage? Come on.

It is actually WAY faster to return the laptop and order a new one than to send it back for a repair. Repairs can take over 6 weeks to receive the laptop back. Refund takes 5 to 7 business days after the day of receipt (by their terms of agreement, so it cannot be longer) and you can buy a new one and have it in about a week. So why would anybody prefer a repair? They sent me this junk they should bare the cost of restocking/reselling a refurbished one then. Besides, if you have a brand new laptop and a component BURNS out, do you really want to take the chance and keep it after the repairs? No thanks.

 

I agree on all counts. Their testing and quality control is horrendous. My second Y500 unit just bricked after less than 3 weeks of usage. They're sending me another replacement since there's no way in hell I would go through the long repair process. I originally placed my order at the beginning of March and due to various snafus and delays getting accessories and replacements shipped out I still don't have a keeper. If this third unit still gives me major problems then I'm gonna give up on this machine altogether.

 

The cursor issues are entirely removed when you adjust a few key settings in the Elan clickpad properties interface, and specifically turn OFF edge motion, momentum, edge scrolling, and limit the actual mouse area to the part of the trackpad above the buttons. Then, moving anywhere in the buttons area does nothing to move the mouse, and its almost like having external buttons. This can be done with one of the earliear driver versions as well as the new one from synaptics.

 

I already gave up.
I need the laptop for work aside from fun so I can't wait their ridiculous periods. Replacement ship date was 3 weeks from now..... what choice do I have.
Refund and buy another brand is my only option. I actually tried to work with them but Indian customer service does NOT understand American customer service expectations. A Chinese company using Indian call center for CS... go figure.

 

so it looks like the mouse pad issue have been addressed in the new model with gt 750m.

is it safe more me to purchase the y500 or should i look somewhere else?

 

Mine had a horrible mousepad as of May 9th, 2013.
I would look elsewhere.

 

a few posts back has someone saying that the mousepad can be modified in its settings to get rid of the problems.

is that the only thing you are unsatisfied with the laptop?

 

Don't listen to anyone who puts their emotion into a post.. usually. The clickpad is not only fine, but it actually better than most that I have tried. There are quite a few new options with the Synaptics drivers and you could change the cursor speed and such (like all click/touchpads) and this allows up to two (maybe three) fingers to be registered on it, so there are options to scroll down with two fingers (could shut off) and things like that.. It is an above-average clickpad.

 

Yes, an above average pad with below average stock settings, lol. Seriously, the way it's set up initially is just nightmarish (to me). I too thought it was broken when I first started using it.

 

there is still no side scrolling....

 

Yes there is. Two-finger side scrolling which works fine.

 

so today's new deal is even better.

and after talking with a sales rep i got a student discount bundle -

dual graphics version
2 year extended warranty
wireless mouse
slimcase

for just a bit over 1000.00 after taxes.

i think i'm pulling the trigger.

 

dude, it is a FACT you cannot get such good hardware for that price ANYWHERE else. the machine has beast hardware and horrible QA and zero testing.
if you have the time and patience for it you should buy it.

track pad is ty. my laptop was the 750m card one and it had a bad trackpad. i have owned many laptops and they are all better than that one.
mine had voltage issues with the USB ports and webcam died after i plugged in a USB mouse. completely dead. i dont think that is an often occurrence thou.
the SSD caching sucks compared to competitor's models (dv6t for exmaple has raid 0 and intel caching, it is much better than the 3rd party one Lenovo uses).
battery life is about 2 and a half hours. not more. if you will only game on this machine that wont matter since you should always be plugged in. if you need it for travel, school, etc, it sucks. 2.5 hours battery in 2013 is by far the WORST in the industry right now. that is only due to the inability to switchbetween intergated graphics and nvidia graphics.
the other bad thing is if there is anything wrong with the laptop and you send it for repair it will take close to 2 months to receive it back (and the order time is 2-3 weeks to begin with) so if anything is wrong with your particular unit you will have a working laptop end of august.
i hope this helps.

 

so did you end up keeping the latop?

 

My laptop has a battery life 4hr36min, I wander if you are trying to play games on battery that gives you 2.5hrs. The battery life is not too bad consider it uses a mid-tier graphics card all the time.

 

only reason i'm looking at the Y500 was because my current laptop HP dv6t quad edition's battery died. in a little over 1 year after purchase. which lead me to think that this laptop probably not going to last me that long. HP's customer service sucked big time. trying to charge me $99 for talking with a troubleshooter. pissed me off and went off looking for a new laptop. i did buy a replacement battery off ebay and received it in today and works.

so my main insecurity is that the laptop is going to take a deuce on me again and i can't afford that since i'm going to be working and schooling at nights and need something that can last me.

current HP specs:

i7 2nd gen 2.2ghz
HD 7690M XT 2GB
8GB
Blu Ray.

decisions, decisions...

 

Not a fan of hp. If I return my y500 for some reason I'll look into Asus or Lenovo thinkpad branch. Apple is too expensive and ugly.
But I've read that some Asus has touch pad problem too, it seems like a common problem of windows 8 laptops. Also don't expect longer battery life than y500 if you decide on a Asus that also have a discrete graphics card.

 

not too worried about the battery, just that i need the battery to work. freaked me out when i accidentally knocked the ac plug loose and the whole computer shut down.

anyways, trackpad seems like a fixable issue. hopefully the lenovo keyboard is better than the hp keyboard because the hp keyboard feels so freaking cheap and i hate typing on it.

 

I love the keyboard, feels solid after I fixed the flex issue.

 

no.
i returned it.

right now you can get a dv6t with 150 off + another 100 off + another 75 off and it has free upgrade to hybrid HD (it is slightly better than mssd caching).
dv6t with everything being equal to y500 (except GT 650m) but has a better HD, better screen (matte, not the glossy ) and a way better battery life is exactly 801$ free shipping. you cannot beat that.


to whoever claimed they got close to 5 hours battery life you are a liar!
lenovo lists "up to 3 hours battery life" on their site but I am sure yours went on for 5 hours. bull.

P.S. amazingly good touchpad as well and ships within a week of purchase!

 

I'm on my laptop and the battery status says i have 73% battery left and that will sustain for 3 hrs and 22 mins. Who's liar go figure. I don't like hp because everybody around once had an hp laptop died in two years.

 

Bull? It isn't that hard to extend your battery life.. low settings and only browsing..

I also hate HP. I had one that broke 3 times (same MOBO issue) and had lemon law and got a brand new one and sold it immediately. It sucked. Over $1800 for a laptop and it broke 3 times in 5 months. Also, HP is known for quality issues, too, so how can you bash Lenovo yet love HP? I do not get it.. Every brand will have problems, and I am the first to say the quality control sucks for Lenovo but HP is even worse.