Y40 Thread

hey guys, just got my y40 yesterday. previously had y410p. im having problems with it as it seems a LOT slower than i think it should be in general. it just feels that loading times takes too long to load. what do i do guys? do you think theres something wrong with my maching?

for example just right clicking the mouse takes like 1.5 - 2 sec before showing the strip menu. and i feel that for this kind of specs response is just too slow.

hope you can help.

 

First thing I would look at is anti-virus, and making sure you are running a faster anti-virus than what is loaded, as well as eliminating any of the bloatware that you don't want.

 

check task manager and see whats taking up all the resources

 

Shouldn't be running like that, the one I had was loading programs pretty much instantly. Does your model have an SSD? And definitely try getting rid of all the bloatware, Lenovo seems to put on a decent amount of that, but even so, mine was loading things instantly.

 

So I set up an order for this laptop last week on the 19th, and subsequently had my projected arrival date jump from 7/10 to 7/25. I'm not very pleased with that kind of service for such an expensive investment, but they are freshly released so I'll give 'em that. That being said, I'm crossing my fingers that I don't get a defective model and end up having to through it all again!

The only qualm I have about the device itself is that the model I ordered only comes with a 5400 RPM HD, but at least it's a terabyte... What would be a good choice for me to invest into as far as SSD's go? I likely would be interested in a 512 Gb model as I tend to store a lot of stuff on my computers as far as media and games are concerned.

Thanks in advance for any help :thumbsup:

Also, if any of you lucky folks that already have your device could, please start reviewing, photographing, or just plain telling us more about them! Not much can be found online as far as hands on experiences from users .

The wait is killing me and I want to know what I've gotten myself into

 

so for performance, a y50 would be better? I really want a light weight gaming laptop and was considering the msi gs60 stealth but the price is super high. I did want the y40 but I want the ability to play games pretty well.

 

yeah, what bloatwares do i remove? everything lenovo put in here? so far i did a refresh and it actually seems better already. ill try to remove stuff like you guys said.

i was also puzzled why this happened, checked taskbar and my memory was ok. i really dont know why. i was playing cs go and fps were going as high as 100+ then dropping to like 10 in a second.

thanks for the advice guys. hope this fixes though.

one more thing: i noticed that notebook check has r9 m270 but we have m275. is there a big difference between the two? i cant seem to find much info about our 275.

 

Hey everybody I got my Y40 three days ago and here are my thoughts so far.

The build quality is amazing, coming from a chunky Acer 15.6 inch this baby is sleek and wonderfully light. A+ for portability and B+ for design.

The heating situation is pretty fine, it runs cool doing everything but playing intensive games, even then their is little to no throttling and the cores run under 75C almost all the time. The keyboard does get warm though, specifically near the WASD keys. It can get hot to the point of being slightly uncomfortable. There is little to no keyboard flex, the aluminum hand panel is slick, smooth, and comfortable.

My performance gaming so far has been anywhere from great to exceptional, I can run League of Legends, at Ultra, on 1080p, Vsync enabled, at get 60 frames consistently. I played around an hours worth of Bioshock Infinite and it gets 40+ frames at Ultra at 1366*720 and it runs well on high at full 1080p, must of what I've played aside from that doesn't push the laptop and they've run well. I get crap frames on Marvel Heroes 2015 though, which is odd.

The battery life is great, I've been running this thing on powersaver since about 11:30 and I have had dozens of Chrome tabs open and been playing video constantly this whole time and it still has nearly an hour left. Windows 8.1 is okay, nothing much to say there.

The screen is most assuredly a TN panel, and the viewing angles are good enough, a little better than my old Acer. The color saturation isn't as good though and I'm wondering if there is any way to improve that. I'm not missing the extra screen real estate on my old laptop, in fact this seems to be the perfect size. The screen fuzziness that others mentioned was solved pretty quickly with a short Google search. It was the fault of Windows 8.1, not the screen.

Those are my thoughts so far, and I'll be happy to to answer any questions people have.

 

Similar to the 755M I think the 275 is just an overclocked version of the 270

 

My y410p had more issues than a mgazine rack, so Lenovo offered me a new Y40 instead. Looking at it in depth, I fear that the Y40 will be much slower by comparison for the one thing I care about: gaming.

Maybe I should sell this thing when I get it...

 

Compared to the y410p, the y40 is an overall downgrade in terms of gaming performance. Since it has such an anemic CPU, any processor intense game is going to suffer. That said the R275 seems to be on par with the 755m so.........

 

the screen fuzziness? what did you do??? i thought it was just my eyes. ) lol

 

Here's what I did: Blurry Text in Chrome After Windows 8.1 Update (Beta) | Simply Advanced

 

I was about to pull the trigger on a Y40 and I see it doesn't have a backlit keyboard, and not even a ThinkLight? Booooooo.

 

somehow i think i may have made a mistake. i previously own a y410p and now im giving it to my brother, thinking that y40 is a better deal than the former. . smh. any thoughts anyone?

 

Well I only had mine for about a day before I sent it back (screen defect, it happens to me a lot, 7 of my last 10 electronics have had defective screens), but I will tell you my observations:

Build quality seemed solid, the outer shell of the laptop is faux carbon fiber, but still nice, not glossy at all like some of the early pictures made it seem, its actually a matte finish.

Screen quality seemed fine to me, granted I am coming from mostly TN panels. Compared to other TN panels I have used and/or owned it seemed pretty decent, not gonna hold a candle to a high end IPS or color calibrated Apple screen, but its not bad.

Sound quality on the speakers was surprisingly good for a laptop, loud and clear, lacking a little in bass obviously, but for laptop speakers I was impressed.

Touchpad seemed pretty good, no issues with it. Keyboard was pretty good, 8/10 I would say, a little bit of flex around the HJK keys but not enough to be an issue, typed well, good key travel, quiet.

A bit much bloatware for my liking but easily removable, still loaded fast, took about 16 seconds to go from being turned off to being logged into windows in desktop mode even with the bloatware.

Very sleek design, looks nice, feels nice, only design element I didn't like was the plastic around the bezel and the hinge area, it was glossy and felt cheap compared to the other materials on the laptop.

Overall I'd say it seemed like a solid machine, if mine hadn't been defective I'd have gladly kept it.

 

Thanks for your input! I'm glad to hear that the build quality isn't poor and the performance is on par as well.

EDIT: I have found a somewhat thorough review over the laptop posted recently on an Amazon listing.

http://www.amazon.com/product-revie...ie=UTF8&filterBy=addFourStar&showViewpoints=0

 

My Y40 is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. It better not be defective or else I'll be pissed off.

 

I don't know if my y40 is wrong, but I cant play dota 2 at highest settings with steady 30+ at 1080P. Tried playing Orcs must die 2 at high settings and it just could not keep up... 15 to 20 fps. Seriously, I am very dissapointed at this laptop, I mean, its over a thousand bucks. Does anyone else have problems streaming netflix? The video lags and audio loses sync, and already tried different browsers, different internet connections, updated silverlight and video drivers.

The blurry text is also super uncomfortable. Firefox has better DPI scaling than chrome if you want to give that a try. I seriously hate this laptop. I want to return it so bad. I hope there is something wrong so I can get my money back and get a y50.

 

When you're gaming are you 100% the laptop is using the R275 and not the the iGPU?

Regarding Netflix maybe it's the WiFi card. Do a test on Speedtest.net and see how fast your connection is.

Also there's some sort of fix for Chrome's DPI scaling. Just google "Chrome DPI fix Windows 8.1" or something similar.

EDIT: Just a few posts above yours is a link to a fix regarding Chrome.

 

Problem I had with my last lenovo, the y410p, it refused to kick on the dGPU. It didn't matter what I did. I was still impressed by what the integrated graphics could pull off, but I was angry that I never got my full performance out of it. Then the screen died...


And guess what fellows? My Y40 arrived yesterday aannnnnnd.... It's bloody defective too. The fan made a loud high pitched whine whenever it was on. It was ridiculous.

I must say though, I rather liked the build design and quality. I would be a bit bummed about the lack of backlit keys if I were keeping it.

3/3 defective laptops. Forget Lenovo. Getting my money back and saying goodbye.

 

So I have had my Y40 for 5 hours now and here are my first impressions.

Negatives:
-there is a lot of bloatware which I uninstalled.
-I'm not a fan of Windows 8.1 which it came with.
-the headphone jack has some white noise which can be resolved by uninstalling the Realtek drivers and using the Microsoft drivers
-underwhelming screen; the contrast was off originally, fixable with calibration but the pathetic vertical viewing angles are not; horizontal angles are decent
-keyboard deck is a fingerprint magnet although not the exterior of the laptop
-some keystrokes are missed if you hit the keys at the very corner. I think that once I get used to the keyboard layout it won't be a problem for me.
-windows 8.1 scaling while displaying to another monitor sucks, you have 3 choices, either the monitor is blurry, the laptop screen is blurry, or the scaling for the monitor is too big. I chose the latter.
-the laptop can't go 180 degrees, it's like 130 degrees max

Positives:
-No defects for me
-great build quality all around
-very light and slim imo
-fan is quiet
-very fast response time for loading windows, opening applications even though my model is the 500gb SSHD
-gaming performance is adequate for my purposes. I can get >60 fps on high settings for League of Legends with the latest drivers and catalyst 14.6 rc2


Overall, it's a great laptop imo. The bad vertical viewing angles may be a deal breaker for some though. The Y40 isn't as powerful as the Y50 but I that is fine for me.

I haven't done any benchmarks and I don't plan on doing so. I will probably undervolt the cpu and see if I can overclock the gpu.

 

Anyone test if the Y40 can run Civ5 at ultra settings?

 

If anybody could run some 3dmark, that would be nice, I'm curious.

 

Nvm the screen is just bad. I can't find a good balance for the gamma. Either I bring it down to make it look better and suffer crushed black levels OR I keep it higher to retain detail in darker shades making the screen look washed out.

 

For those that have Y40, we need customer pictures. I haven't seen anyone post them yet.

 

Well, I replaced my Y400 (with the NVIDIA 650M card) with a Y40 a few weeks ago. Overall, I am disappointed. Let me explain.

First, I added a SSD to my old Y400, and then re-installed Windows 8 on that new drive. That computer flew. Even with the old NVIDIA card, I had sick performance doing pretty much anything. Boot times were >10 seconds. This computer feels very sluggish by comparison, despite having a hybrid SSD + HD combo. Scrolling through Chrome is choppy and jerky. Applications take some time to load. Perhaps this is to be expected, but I am a bit disappointed.

Second, the high resolution plays very poorly with apps. I get that you can disable high DPI scaling; however, this fails to correct the lack of proportion for some apps (especially older ones). Again, this may not be Lenovo's fault, but it makes the user experience less than desirable.

Third, build quality is actually quite good. I had an old Y470 which had a broken hinge, my Y400 came with a broken "P" key and the replacement had a weird squeak on the wrist rest (very annoying). This shares none of those issues, and has no immediate defects. Good job Lenovo.

Fourth, you really do need to mess with the AMD and Intel graphics settings. There are way to many "Power" settings in too many applications. I removed all the bloatware I could, but still had to adjust my power consumption in three different places. Application-specific performance settings need to be tweaked as well. Way to much screwing around just to get the system optimized.

Fifth, the trackpad "loses" two-finger scrolling after coming back from Sleep mode. I tried reinstalling the hardware, which didn't fix the issue. The only driver available on the Y40 support page is for Windows 7, and the package won't let you install. Rebooting is the only fix.

Sixth, the speakers are very quiet. Headphone volume is fine, but otherwise you need to crank it up to 100 just to hear spoken word. I have tried re-installing Realtek drivers to no affect.

Finally, and perhaps most troubling is the lack of a back-lite keyboard. For nearly $1000, this should be included.

I guess I will grow into. I really hope my credit card extended warranty agrees to pay the cost of fixing my old Y400. I miss that computer already.

P.S. - Does anyone else find this website really jankety?

 

What do you think about the screen?

 

Screen is ok. I haven't had any problems aside from the DPI Scaling nuisance. It is annoying that I have to increase the size of everything in Control Panel so I can see it, which means when I connect a second screen everything is oversized. I think it actually is a better experience as a laptop; you can have two windows side-by-side reasonably.

 

I've been going crazy trying to decide if I should pick one of these up now that the price is $850. It's pretty killer value...1Tb storage, 1080p display, i7 chip...and I really like the 4510U. People keep complaining that it's not as burly as the HQ but it's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be efficient and cool, and it is. It's a battery saver. Plus I don't care about running Crysis 3 or whatever crap...I'm just interested in being able to crush TF2, LoL, and DOTA 2, as well as all the retro games I haven't been able to play on this damn MBP (Deus Ex, Max Payne, Descent 3, Unreal Tournament, etc etc).

So for the peeps who have one, have you kept it? Would you recommend it? How bad is the screen, really? Is there a superior alternative bargain out there?

 

MSI ge40 with 850m Gddr5. Kicks the r9 m275m to the curb and back.

 

I need help with my Y40. I used to get over 100 fps constant in League of Legends but now the fps is dropping to 50. Any advice/solutions guys?

 

hey guys, quick question. i have a headset with mic that has two different ports. but the y40 only has one. i tried using a converter, bought it at office depot, it doesnt work. do you guys have this issue?

 

had the same problem. Was not able to find any headset with a single port. I ended up buying a Turtle Beach USB headset

 

Maybe the graphics card did not switch to Radeon? Manually add LoL to AMD CCC and make the graphics setting to High Performance

 

The problem with LOL is that their updates affect the frame rates quite a bit so you might want to check their forums there; and it's happened more than a few times too. Despite the simple options in game there's a more complicated config file for the game in there somewhere.

 

damn, i dont want to buy another headset. anyone tried a different solution to this???

 

the single audio port is a port that combines both microphone and headphone jacks, you simply need a converter, google search for 3.5mm audio 2 in 1 or 2 in 1 audio converter~

 

so i bought an audio converter in radio shack and !@#$%^&* pisses me off that it still doesnt work. -_-

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2qVNypl95I Great video review of the Y40; really helped me decide.

 

Hello guys, I just got a Y40 I bought tomy father from Amazon. Question is it does not have a backlight keyboard, it has an i7 4500U not an i7 4510U cpu and has a R9 270X and not a R9 275X gpu. The model number is 20347 besides what I have written it has a 512GB SSD, 8GB ram and same screen, I also cant find this model on Lenovo website and paid 1099 before tax. What do you guys think? Should I keep it? What is the performance dif from the cpu and gpu, and how is the backlight keyboard on this model?

 

The Y40's all do not have a backlit keyboard. Also, I would double-check your graphics card on the system itself - Lenovo originally said R9270X, but the systems sometimes came with a 275X - you should check to see if yours has the 275X by checking the system itself. Performance difference in the CPU is negligible - .1GHz is not going to be noticeable at all.

 

Oh really? I thought I had seen it was backlit. I will ask him to check on the system info what video card it has. Thank you.

 

They were originally going to be backlit, and early test models that were sent to reviewers in January had a backlit keyboard .. But it turns out that they removed the backlit keyboard from all models.

 

I'm looking at buying a Y40 and was wondering if the hard drive is easily replaceable as I can only get a 5400 rpm drive with SSD here in Canada and want to replace it with a SSD if I can. Is the RAM replaceable and accessible or soldered in?

Thanks

 

Check out the video i linked to as it'll answer a lot of your questions. There are two rams slot and it comes with 1x8gb so there is another one empty slot. As for the harddrive yes, it looks accessible enough; one cover and then u have full access to hdd and ram slots. I had originally ordered the Y40 but a local computer store had the Acer Aspire V7-482pg and when i checked it out i fell in love with it, absolutely gorgeous screen and feature packed; just a horrible time to buy it right now, poor pricing.

 

It's easy to replace the HDD and it's easy to replace to screen. You better get the 500/1TB SSHD version and get an SSD for $100[/QUOTE]

Is it? I posted a question about that on the Ideapad forums ( here), but could not get a response except that the hybrid drive was one solid unit. I would like to replace the HD with an sole SSD if possible. The maintenance manual is unclear if there is an msata port on the motherboard.

 

Also of note...always on USB is disabled in the BIOS by default. At least it was on my Y40.

 

Hello All,

I received my Y40 last week and it runs a lot slower and with inferior graphics than I would have thought it should.

Lets take Civ 5 for example, this runs not much quicker than on my 5-6 yearold AMD CPU piece of junk i have. I struggle to run this on higher than minimum settings, and with 2gb of graphics, an I7 processer and 8gb of RAM I am pretty disappointed to say the least...

How do i make sure that the games are running from the dedicated graphics and not the integrated chip? Does this switch automatically when playing games?

 

Have you tried AMD Catalyst 14.6 rc2? It seems that worked for people earlier in the thread.