Updated Lenovo Y460P Data or Review?

Hi Everyone,

I've been looking to get an game capable 13-14" laptop. One I've had my eye on is the Lenovo IdeaPad Y460p Core i5-2410M 2nd Gen, Radeon HD 6550M 1GB 439523U. With a coupon / cashback I can get it for around $670 so the price is right, but I can't find any good reviews of the Y460p let alone this particular model.

I'm sure it can game better than my current x100e, but I'd love to find out how good is its screen, keyboard, and battery life. (Btw, I love the x100e matte screen and keyboard... best I've ever had). Can anyone with a y460p either provide me some actual hands on data or point me to a good review? Thanks in advance!

MXD

 

I had i7 2630QM version with rapid drive & BD Reader for 1 week till it died from memory failure thank god. It felt cheap, the plastic around the LCD was cracked at each screw hole. The plastic around the LCD is sharp feeling and flexes like cheap thin plastic when you hold it. The LCD was poor and washed out looking. There was a large scratch on the aluminum lid near the hinge from the factory and the black chromed plastic hinge cover near that scratch was scratched as well like someone slid it across a table covered in sand.

ALSO!! The "Black/grey" aluminum lid is really a dark purple paint that is slightly sparkly in bright lighting... Also, the nice dark grey keyboard in the photos is really a dark sickly brown tinge in real life...

I wanted so much to like that laptop, but the cheap feeling was just a bit tooooooo much for me to take so I returned it when the BSOD and memory tanked. I'm still waiting on my refund... Seeing as it took over a month to get the laptop in the first place, I estimate another 2 months before I get my money back.

When I opened the box I was excited beyond belief, but the first thing I noticed when I unwrapped it from the plastic bag was how utterly cheap that plastic LCD bezel felt. My excitement turned to regret in a matter of seconds. I probably would have bought new ram and kept it if it werent for the purple lid paint, cheap plastic LCD bezel and typical washed out 1366 res LCD panel that every manufacturer seams to be addicted to.

Motherboard hardware wise, the laptop is great! The layout for CPU and GPU cooling is one of the best I've seen. The IO chipset has its own heatsink so it's not connected to the hot CPU heatsink with a foam pad like in most laptops. Because the IO chipset only dissipates about 4 watts, it never gets that hot so having its own little finned heatsink keeps it much cooler than "cooling" it with the hot cpu heatsink. Also the mSata port is nice for a dual drive SSD system. Battery life was on par at around 4 hours with power saving features turned on. The keyboard FEEL was OK, not great but not bad at all. Some reviews talk about keyboard flex on this unit and it wasnt an issue for me at all with this laptop although I did notice it somewhat. The laptop size & weight are the perfect balance for mobility / power. The audio is great for a laptop and every laptop I've heard with those same JBL speakers sounds equally great. The sound doesnt go really loud, but really it doesnt need to.

Lenovo could have had a real winner with the Y460P, but they cheaped out on the small stuff and I will never buy from them again due to the quality of the received product and the even more horrendous sales and technical support I received. I'll be suprised if I actually get all my money back without having to spend another 3 hours on hold only to talk to someone I can't understand whatsoever. Every person I talked to I had to make repeat what they said multiple times syllable by syllable like a baby in order to understand what they were saying.

EDIT: The memory failure I don't blame on Lenovo's cheap cosmetic quality for the y460P. It can happen to any laptop and any memory. In actuality, I got lucky that it happened so I could return the laptop for a full refund. I swapped out the failed memory with Kingston HyperX DDR1866 memory from my other laptop and it booted fine. Also, this laptop ran at DDR1866 speeds with the HyperX memory which according to Intel it should not. This is a good thing

 

I had a Y460p also with the 2630QM but with a 500 GB HDD and DVD-RW. I experienced similar build-quality issues. The plastic on the back of one of the hinges kept coming loose, as did the lid. The system was a serious disappointment as it otherwise had absolutely everything I could want in a machine that size.

 

It's odd to hear about the drop in quality from the y460 to the y460p. I thought they only changed out the internal components, while keeping the same chassis/parts.

NBR assessment of the y460 - "Build quality is very good for a consumer notebook with durable plastic panels and strong screen hinges. The paint and plastic finishes seem to resist scratching from standard abuse and the unique lid texture does an excellent job of hiding fingerprints. The palmrest and touchpad sections have good support with little or no flex."

Seems to be nearly the opposite of what people are saying about the y460p.

 

Having had the y460p for the past 5 months, I have found the build quality to be tolerable. Technical support, on the other hand, is subpar. It took a month for Lenovo to repair my laptop after they sent me a defective one as part of the Sandy Bridge motherboard exchange. The repairs only took place after escalation of the case to Customer Relations. This problem is seen numerous times with different customers on the Lenovo's IdeaPad forum.

It currently has predictable audio glitches, but only with the battery installed. I have hesitated to call technical support again as they would likely recommend sending it back to Texas without actually repairing the actual problem (in the BIOS?).

 

In my experience dealing with Chinese Manufacturing through my work is that the first samples and samples for review are great, then after the initial few production runs they swap the good for cheap and act as if you are stupid when you stop production due to obvious changes on parts/materials that specifically say "DO NOT DEVIATE". I've had to fly to China on more than one occasion due to this where I've seen everything from talc filled poly prop being substituted for ABS or Poly Carb to parts being washed in a mud puddle in the back of the facility...

Another issue is that in China it is almost impossible to keep tech staff around long enough for them to become competitent. Their economy is booming and employees have little employer loyalty. They go to the highest bidder and their law says you can only be on contract for 6 months or else you're automatically a full time emplyee so employers lay off a lot of the low level assembly line "techs" every 5 months. After Chinese new year, it is doubtful half of your employees will even show back up which makes it so a new round of learning must happen. Assembly line techs will be fired if they move their hand in an arc instead of a straight line to keep as efficient as possible. To stop the quick moving assembly line because of a mistake you made or caught is basically telling your boss I quit.

The photo's on their website and the photo's of the samples sent to the very limited amount reviewers were obviously of different finish and materials than what I received...

 

SPL15- I think you hit the nail right on the head. I got one of the very first y460's to come out of production and I'm starting to feel extremely lucky. The build quality isn't that different from how my T61 feels and is still going strong. I noticed that in the Fall people were saying that the y560 at Frys were awful. (Flexed like crazy and felt "cheap.") Maybe that is when production took it's downturn? It is really sad if this is what happened.