Why did Lenovo give up on the ultrabay?

Just as the title states. When the y400/500 were first announced and then released, I was so excited. Using the concept of removeable slots,, as found in business machines, to augment a gaming machine seemed like a brilliant idea. And it was, they sold like hotcakes. The y410/510p made some incremental improvements, like activating the iGPU with Optimus and increasing the resolution on the 14" model. As expected, they were popular as well.

Then came the y40/50 and now the y700 series. Lenovo completely designed their gaming lineup, removing the ultrabay and cutting fuctionality. Why? I can have 2 full sized HDD/SSDs and a 42mm M.2 installed in my 14" y410p, but the 15" y50/700 only has 1 full sized bay. Just what. Then instead of 850/860M SLI we get a single 860M in the y50, which was updated to a 960M in the y700. Yes the 860M is a decent card, and beats the 755M handily, but it's practically on par with 755M SLI.

I just find it strange that such a great concept on such popular machines was cut. I'm sure there were issues, but removing the ultrabay just makes Lenovo's newer laptops just another crop of mid ranged machines. They lost a lot of what made them special, and what I feel made the brand take off after the y580 generation.

 

Great topic and I don't think we will ever get a real answer. I really thought the ultrabay extra gpu was a great idea. Acer did something similar in their Predator line with the cd bay being removed for an extra fan, but if they only went one step further and put in a second GPU.

I am going to guess that they did away with the ultrabay to focus on being thinner and lighter. Also I doubt they were making a lot of money on ultrabay cards and a majority of games can't even benefit from SLI anyway. I doubt we will ever see another implementation like the ultrabay additional GPU, but I would love to see it again.

 

Cooling issues, probably.