Thinkpad W550s Owner's Thread

I have just ordered one with the 5500U, win 7, 4gb ram, 500gb HDD, 3k display, 3 cell front battery, 72wh rear battery, downgraded wifi. ($1100 after student discount at this time).

Going to upgrade ram and use M.2 as boot drive /w 256gb ssd. If anyone has experience with either of these, please share!

I will be extensively benchmarking it, and I have a mid 2013 i7 (4650U with HD5000 gpu) macbook air to do direct comparisons on for CPU/GPU. If anyone has any requests let me know. I know its all new, but its crazy how little reviews there are for the 5500U, the K620m, or the w550s in general.

 

W550s Owners - Please can you comment on how long was your Order Status listed at Released to Manufacturing before being shipped? Thank you.

 

What size is the SSD/HDD slot? Take a 7 mm or a 9 mm. I have one 7mm but I think it is only 512GB and I want to use my 960 GB M500 which I recall is 9 mm.

Can you see the fonts at 125% without being Mr Eagle Eye? Can you production type on the offset keyboard. I am one that didn't get the W540 due to the new touch pad so I am very happy to see the old style touchpad but am worried as my primary use for the laptop is on my lap...duh.

How about battery life? It should be awesome, but my Q is how awesome? Do we need the bigger battery plus the internal or is is smarter to keep the size small and get the smaller back battery?

I am coming from a very well used (on my 5th fingerprint reader and 3rd keyboard) W520. I could wait for the Quads but figure the 5500U is about the same performance as my i7-2620 in the W520. So may try the slightly lighter 550S style and see how I like it.

TIA for your answers,

Perry

 

Is it possible to add RAM without having to unsnap and remove the entire backside? Is there an access port by which to reach the memory slots? None of the SODIMMs are soldered, are they?

Same question for hard drive. If I buy the min configuration from Lenovo, is it as easy as it used to be on prior Thinkpads to pull the hard drive and swap in an SSD?

 

I think you can use 7 cmm SSDs only on the W550s.

If you are ok with 125 % scaling, 150 % scaling or even 100 %, depends on your DPI preference.

No soldered RAM, 2 DIMM slots. You have to unsnap the backside.

 

More specs are now available for the Quadro K620M GPU. It should be a significant graphics boost from the intel HD5500, a big leap in performance compared to is successor the K610M, and nearly identical performance in games to the GeForce 840M. It is not going be anywhere near enough performance to play new games at medium-high settings on 1080p, and forget about 3k, but my hope is that it can at least hit 30 fps on Minecraft at reasonable settings!

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-K620M.137424.0.html

 

Does anyone have a list of the resolutions supported for External Monitors?..... I'm currently using a Dell M6500 with external monitors at matching 1920x1200 which is not so common these days...but I'm sick of lugging the very heavy M6500 around...

 

Thank you for the answers. I do recall my M500 960GB may be 7 mm with a spacer. The only thing holding me back from ordering is the I7 5500U. The M3800 Dell has a significantly faster CPU, but then again the dual core 5500U allows for a much smaller power brick than my W520 and much longer batter life. Given that most of our work now depends on SSD and Internet speed, can anyone help me get a reference on how a 30% slower CPU really reacts in the real world of web based work and emails? I would expect my Lightroom 5 or any Adobe software to be much slower (and it is already slow) but I think I might be able to live with that.

 

The i7 5500U will not be noticeably slower in web browsing or desktop experience at all. With my laptops i7 4650U, the only thing holding me back on that front is the 8gb of ram, since I regularly have Chrome/firefox/safari/IE up at the same time for web development. Also, compared to my desktop with an i7 2600K @4.2ghz /16gb ram/ SSD, lightroom is not any slower on the 4650U at all no matter what I do, and Photoshop is only slower when working with multilayered files 500mb+ in size. (it takes so long to do major actions anyway, you probably won't care)

Adobe Premiere, or other video editing is a completely different story... as is any casual gaming.

 

I got the W550s today! I upgraded my default 4gb ram (which is samsung) to 16gb crucial ballistix 1600mhz 1.35v , that went super smooth.

Next I added an M.2. ADATA SP900 2242 format 256gb SSD. I found the easiest way to install the OS on it was to boot into the built in HDD, create a recovery USB drive, then DISCONNECT the built in HDD (or else it will force the recovery media to be reinstalled on it), and boot from the USB drive to install OS on the SSD. All I had to configure to get it to boot was set it to the first boot device. There is room for another M.2. drive, same exact format as the other one, due to I did not get a WAN card. Sadly, it does not appear Lenovo's bios supports AHCI or RAID configurations at all.

As a side note, the rear plate is somewhat difficult to remove, but the screws are designed to not be able to fall out (in other words, dont try to take them out all the way, they don't need to) I'll add pictures of the internals when I give my performance review later.

 

Hi everyone! Ordered the w550s today! I have to admit I was very nervous about the TN 1080p screen as I am very picky about the quality of the screen. Is anyone really sure that the AUO panel mentioned earlier in this thread will fit the w550s? Thanks!

This is the link for it:
http://www.amazon.com/AU-OPTRONICS-B156HAN01-2-SUBSTITUTE-REPLACEMENT/dp/B00JMM89NC

 

If you're so picky, why are you asking after ordering?

 

what's the max ram this can take? Confirmed it will take 1x 16gb sodimms? How is the cpu performance? I've been unimpressed with all the U cpus I've used in the past.

 

W550s is confirmed to take 2x 16 GB RAM modules.

CPU performance is basically the same as Ivy-Bridge Dual-Core M Core i5/Core i7 CPUs.

 

Notebookcheck review is up. Seems pretty favorable.

 

Hi guys, ordered a W550s. What were your guys wait times? Hopefully its not anywhere near the 4 weeks they've projected as being my delivery date

 

I am liking my W550s but something is weird happening. For some reason the backlit keyboard will turn it self on. Is there a setting where I can stop this from happening.

 

And I can not get mine to turn on. It will light up when the power button is pushed but I can not find any other control. On my W540 it is Fn and the upper right hand key for the light. But nothing seems to work and of course there is no manual with the machine. I am working on getting a pdf printer installed so the user guide will be searchable. As delivered it is not.

Also mine came with an inoperable fingerprint reader. It keeps telling me to turn it on in Control Panel but it is on in CP. I suppose I could turn it off and reboot it and then turn it on and reboot it again but I don't have time to wait the time that takes. I will need to get one of my SSDs in pretty quickly. This circus goes on everytime I change machines even within the same mfg to I deliberately wait as long as possible before making a change. In general the size and heft and quality seems LenovoLike so that is a plus. I have the QHD and it works nicely. Haven't tried the touch yet, but will soon.

Sitting here typing in the dark is totally no fun. Edit: It is Fn and Space Bar.

Be well,

 

I've had two concerns with this laptop so far, wondering if anyone else is experiencing this. The battery wobbles a little bit on the right side, it doesn't fit in completely secure... And I've also had video graphics issues where some 2D applications perform extremely poorly, and even simple actions like re-sizing windows in any program has major artifacting/lag. I attempted to update the drivers via the w550s support section, but the file for nvidia Quadro display driver windows 7 appears to be a corrupt file on their website, no matter which computer or internet service I download it from.

Edit: In regards to keyboard backlight, mine works great. It's Fn + Space Bar, and it toggles between off, dimly light and brightly lit.

 

I experienced the same in Windows 10, as there are no drivers from nVidia for Windows 10 yet. The temporary solution was to uninstall the nVidia in the device manager. The ultimate solution for me however was to install Windows 8.1^^

You are on Windows 7 of course, as the driver does exist, unlike for Windows 10. Maybe you could open a topic in the Lenovo forums, where Lenovo employees are who might be able to fix this unfortunate situation: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Feedback-on-the-new-support-site/bd-p/Customer_Feedback

 

Am I being foolish? In thinking that I can take a working SSD out of my W520 (7 mm M500) that is full of working programs and files and install it in my W550S and simply boot up? The W520 and the W550S are both running Win 7 Pro. I suspect their may be driver problems but hopefully they could be worked out in less time than moving 500 GB of files and programs to the Disk in my new machine.

 

Hey guys, just purchased my lenovo thinkpad w550s. I've had 6 different thinkpad yoga 14 machines and each had defects leaving then inoperable, so jumped to the w550s.

As someone else has asked, how bad is the shipping time. O ordered mine 2 days ago, checking my status today, the laptop won't ship until 1st full week in April and won't arrive until 2nd full week of april. I'm hoping this isn't going to be the true time. On a positive note, the extra charger, 3 cell, and 6 cell batteries I order as accessories should be here next week. Almost a full 3 weeks before the laptop itself.

 

Switching drives between machines typically doesn't work. First of all, windows keys are different, sometimes going into settings and changing the keys works, but I've found when it's oem liceanse keys, they're not full on windows keys, and those are also normally tied right into the laptop itself, not the drive. Also, when switching between models, drivers are also different.

Yoy can try and report your outcome, but I'd be suprised if it did work. But either way, you'd have to reformat the drive, so if it works great if not your not really loosing anythung.

One way that might work easier, is make an achronos backup and then try loading it on your new machine.

 

Is that a wobble with the extended 6 cell battery? My luck it is and it'll happen on my model as well. I picked up the extended 6 cell with the laptop and ordered a second as an accessorie, to which later that night found the same battery on amazon new for $100 cheaper.

Please post back with any updates with the windows 7 Nvidia drivers. I'll be running 7 on mine as well, so hope to not have that same problem.

 

So, about shipping. Those that did order their W550s from Lenovo, did it really take the full 2 weeks before shipping and full week to ship? Not that I'm impatient, but I kind of am and 3 weeks for a replacement laptop is a long time to go without a laptop.

And question about the warranty. I keep reading that the W550s comes with a 3 year warranty. But when I went through customizing and buying mine, it only stated 1 year warranty, and then I paid $400 for a 4 year warranty. So is the 1 year correct, and does my 4 year start from day 1 then? or does it indeed come with a 3 year and I bought an added 4 year?

 

The way mine worked was 1 year standard and then I bought Onsite for 2 addtl years. Their was some other word besides onsite that I didn't understand. It said something about the battery. The total warranty I bought was listed at 3 years....starting day 1.

I am liking the W550S. Mind you I am plenty happy with my W520 but it was getting pretty well used up. I do like the QHD, but for my eyes I had to go up to 150% font size. Still a lot of good real estate on the 15.6 in screen. I operate with twin 27 in QHD desktop monitors so appreciate the extra real estate. The backlit keyboard is a huge improvement over my non backlit W520. The keyboard being offset I am getting used to. I guess I understand how much some people need the number pad, so I will learn to hold it offset in my lap. I haven't used the touchscreen yet, but will guess that one of these days W 10 will make that a worthwhile thing.

The only problem now if that it has been years since I have used a machine with 4 meg of memory and a spinning platter. The SanDisk Extreme Pro 960GB and the 2 sticks of 1.35 v 8 meg memory sticks are on the way. And yes mine did take about 10 days to ship but it left China on Monday and got to me in San Diego on Thursday. So it is moving along pretty well.

 

An observation . My W520 and my W550S are sitting side by side and I get 16-18 mbps download on the W520 and 8-11 mbps on the W550S. I have the 7260 Intel in the W520. The W550S has the 7265.

Would the paltry 4 meg of memory til my 16 meg gets here make that much of a difference on a pure download vs my W520 with 32 meg of memory? No biggy yet. I will report next week when my memory and SSD get in.

 

Can I ask what brand of memory are you guys and gals using for the 16 GB's of memory?

 

Intel wireless chipsets are known to give much varying performance and stability on different drivers versions.

Try different drivers versions for the wireless.

 

After an email stating a delay in my order, I called lenovo tech support today. Aparently due to high demand they are waiting for parts to assemble the laptop and that wait time gets added to my wait time.

Also talked to them about warranty. They said it comes with a 3yr, and the 3yr warranty I bought for $300 starts from day one and aparently only changes the stock warranty to include on site vs shipping it into depot

 

Alright, well after another email stating an even longer delay on my W550s, I called Lenovo and cancelled my order.

I then bought one from Amazon.com, which doesn't come with the internal 3cell 4Mah battery. But I called Lenovo Tech Support, got the battery part number, then called Lenovo Parts, and ordered the internal 3 cell battery. I also picked up 2x8gb corsair vengeance ram sticks, a 256gb m.sata, and a 1tb Samsung 850 evo. All but the msata should be here tomarrow by end of day. Wow, instead of sticking with ordering from Lenovo, and waiting until end of April for my laptop, I'm getting it tomarrow and saved about $300, plus gained a 1tb Samsung ssd.

I will be videotaping the installation of the battery, ram, msata, and ssd. Will put emphasis on the internal battery installation.

 

What are you guys doing that requires 16GB of ram per dimm? I'm not being sarcastic as I know there are applications that use this, I'm just interested in the specific programs(aside from video editing) that require the use of a lot of memory, and how the more memory helps you with speed or productivity. I would like to know the types of people and professions that use that much memory. Another thought: I always thought that with the emergence of SSDS, having a ton of ram isn't as necessary as it once was, since you can allot an infinite amount of virtual memory from say, a 1TB SSD. Or are SSDs still very slow in comparison to ram speeds? I think we are all looking forward to the day when Solid State Hard Drives are as fast as RAM

 

Running multiple virtual machines. Nice to have more RAM to allocate.

 

How many virtual machines are you running if you don't mind me asking, and how much memory does your system actually use worse case scenario. Do you see yourself needing more than 32GB of ram for example at times?

 

I think its like this: You can never have too much RAM, and its good to know the machine is ready for the future, when 16 GB RAM modules become mainstream.

 

As a note to the ram and running vm's. With this laptop only having a dual core i7, I don't think that 32 vs 16gb of ram will matter. I run multiple vm's every day, no less than 1 at any time. But with each vm you must assign at least a single core (or virtual core). So this machine means a max of 3 vm's at one time. With 16gb ram that would leave 4gb per vm/running os. With only 1 core assigned to the vm, I don't think you'd need or be able to use more than that 4gb ram.

I get the future proofing. But at $100 I just spent for 2x8gb ram, compared to the $250 per 16gb stick of slower timing ram. I'll stick to my 16gb total, and when 16gb single sticks start getting better, then I might upgrade. But with a ulv processor I can't imagine needing 32gb ram.

 

Got my w550s... Popped in a sandisk extreme pro 240gb ssd, Kingston 16gb ram.

Also getting a LG LP156WP4-SPU1 1080p LCD screen to replace the stock TN 1080P panel (the replacement panel is glossy though not matte). I'll put up some pictures when done.

My computer came with a 68+ (6cell) external battery. Anyone want to swap it for their 68 (3cell) external?

 

Yeah, tbh, I was just giving a "for instance" on why you might want more RAM. That CPU is definitely a bottleneck on resource distribution when it comes to multiple VMs. I do that kind of work on a desktop where I have more cores available, etc. Tbh, I don't see the need to really go over 16gb on a laptop, and if you are going beefy, giant workstation class laptop, I would just go desktop (due to weight, battery life, etc.). 16gb lets you run a reasonably powerful VM ( or 2) on your system, and you can always remote into your desktop if you need more.

 

Canceled my lenovo configured w550s yesterday and bought one off amazon. Recieved the amazon one this morning, as well as the 3 cell 44wh internal battery, 2x 8gb corsair vengeance ram, 256 msata, 500gb samsung 850 pro, and 6 cell battery. Due by friday I have a 3 cell external and 6 cell extended coming, as well as a 2nd 256 msata. I found out this morning while adding the 3 cell internal battery that there is a total of 3 msata slots. 1 for the wifi module and 2 empty. Filled one with the msata I ordered because I knew there was 1 open slot for it, but just bought a 2nd for the second msata slot. I took some notes and pictures as well as part numbers of the adding of the internal 3 cell, swapping out ram, adding msata, swapping out 2.5 ssd. When I have time I'll type it all up nicely and post on here along with pictures.

I'll also be running some benchmarks via running games and programs and posting results. I know as of now borderlands the prequel plays on 1080p just fine, and Sony Vegas pro 13 does a decent job. But I'll post more usable figures once I get a chance.

 

I must say though, 5 hours of usage time, it's footprint is big, but it is slim and weight is nicely distributed. Keyboard is phenominal, and the new track pad with buttons is 100 better than the w540 was. But overall very impressed with the machine.

Other than having to go 3k in order to have recieved it so quick, and then it being non touch, there are no complaints from me at all.

 

Scratch that, ups just dropped off the 6 cell extended 72wh battery. Now short only the 3 cell external and 2nd msata

 

Ah should've told me I would've swapped my 6 cell external for your 3 cell external

 

I ordered the extended 6 cell when I first configured my laptop through Lenovo over 2 weeks ago. I just got it today. The 3 cell I ordered off Amazon and is the battery I will probably use all the time. The regular 6 cell I received with the laptop I purchased off Amazon.com is the same size as the extended 6 cell, but half the capacity which is really retarded. So More than likely will be using 3 cell and keep high compacity 6 cell for when I run out of the juice with the 3 cell.

Noticed while typing up a report tonight, that the keyboard while great but the space bar is pretty loud, all other keys are pretty quiet. Also noticing some hesitance and lag/studder while just typing this reply which is annoying. Probably some background tasks, but I'm getting sick of Windows 7 so I'll probably be upgrading to Windows 8 tomarrw.

 

What you can try regarding the space bar... Remove the space bar key... Look on the keyboard (not the back side of the space key) and you should see two black metal hooks that are bent upwards (this is what accepts the two metal pins on the underside of the space key). If you bend ever so slightly the metal tabs up or down, you will notice that the key bounce back will decrease or increase... Try playing around with it til it becomes more or less what you want.

 

This is a difference in number of active antennas. The W52o has a 3x3 MIMO radio while the W550s S has a 2x2 MIMO radio. Even though the W550s supports 11ac I assume you are connecting both to an 11n router and this is your difference.

 

Hi, could you please send me a link of where you bought your 3 cell battery? My laptop also came without internal 3 cell as well and I would like to install it myself, just like you Thanks in advance.

 

Got my 960GB SSD today and the 16 meg of memory. Question: I have Acronis 2013. With the W520 I would put the drive to clone in the UltraBay and the drive to be cloned into the normal HDD slot in the W520. Don't remember where I read that cloning out to in was better but I did read it.

Now with the 55oS I have no ultrabay. Can I use the Acronis to do a full disk partition backup to a USB 3.0 HDD I have and then replace the platter drive with the SSD and then restore from the external HDD by restoring from it to the now freshly formatted internal SSD?

Or any other suggestions?

 

For FRU changes and maintenance, it is very different than the earlier Thinkpads. There are 6 screws holding the back on. You loosen them but they do not remove from the base cover, they just need to be loosened. They will stay with the base cover when it comes off. So battery out, 6 screws loosen and then a small flat driver from your miniature screwdriver set and you start at one corner prying the base cover from the top cover. You gently pry 360 degrees and it will pop off and needs to be moved slightly in the direction of the removed battery to come off completely. Do use a quality small driver set. The two screws farthest from the battery (front corners of the machine) have some torque on them. Cheap drivers could cause a problem there.

Then the straightforward removal of the 4GB DIMM and the replacement with your two 8GB DIMMs. The drive is easy to get to once you are there, but I need to do some more thinking on how I am going to get the OS and programs on my SSD before I change that out.

 

That is a difference. I hope it didn't account for the full 50% download speed differential I was seeing last week. Now that I have 16 meg of memory in the W550S the download speed difference is less than 10%. 16 in the W550S and 32 in the W520. Again I don't know if that makes a difference or even has an effect but I no longer see double the download speed from the W520. If that continues the W550S would be passed on to a family member.

 

As for the internal 3 cell battery. You have to call and order it from Lenovo Parts. It was something around $110 including next day delivery. Not sure how much it wouldve been without. As for the part number, i dont know offhand, but early tomarrow i plan on writing up a whole shebang on the battery, ram, msata, 2.5, ect.

As for achronos. I just used acronos 2015 to backup my stock 256gb ssd in my Lenovo, and then recovered it onto my 256 m.2. Worked like a charm, just make sure you backup every partition.