Y50 Thread

Any reviews of it yet? I was wondering if the AMD chip in it had been benchmarked yet and what the Nvidia equivalent was. Otherwise it looked like a decent alternative. Good luck with your purchase.

 

I noticed Lenovo has removed all references to the 4K display on their Y50 product page. Earlier it was prominently advertised. This is what lead me to place the order for the Toshiba P50T last night that also ships with a 4K display. I would have preferred Lenovo but I can't wait around especially when there is no time horizon for release and what little info they had about the 4K display has been removed from the product page.

 

Hey guys, I've been reading this thread for a while and decided to finally make an account here and get posting rights.
I spoke to several Lenovo representatives and it appears that the screen on all Y50 models (including the non-touch ones) will be a glossy screen despite being advertised on the site as "Anti-Glare". At least 2/3 reps told me this; the second one I asked just kept repeating that it is 1920x1080 FHD AntiGlare backlight instead of either glossy or matte. I don't think he knew what he was talking about, haha. Anyways, if they are all indeed glossy, I am a happy camper! I watch a lot of movies, pretty much always use my laptop in the dark/at night, and love the colour vividness and "pop-out-edness" on my current laptop (which I think looks good despite having a 4-year old TN panel). The only thing making me still kind of confused is that the first rep said that Anti-Glare on the Y50 refers to a special anti-reflective coating around the edges of the screen, although the rest of the display looks like regular glossy. Is this a thing? With all the conflicting info it's hard to make a sure decision: I can't wait for official reviews to start coming in...

 

These clueless reps are really starting to get on my nerves -.-

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One of the reps also confirmed that the 4GB Maxwell GTX860 requires more processor speed and thus releases more heat and drains battery life more than its 2GB counterpart. I've read on forums that the extra 2GB of RAM is pretty much useless because any games reliant on 4GB can't be properly run on an 860 card anyways. And so the extra 2GB only comes into play if gaming on multiple screens, which I won't be doing. Is this true?

If it is, I think I'll start leaning towards the Y50 Touch instead of the top Y50 Non-Touch model. Upgrading to an SSD sounds like an annoying hassle and buying 8GB more RAM is an extra expense (though I've heard they're cheap?), but it seems worth it to make sure I get a glossy screen and to get a smarter graphics card choice. I don't care about the touch functionality; there are both slight pros and slight cons to it, and I probably wouldn't use it much to avoid covering my screen in fingerprints. But a glossy screen is a must for me, particularly after seeing the terrible looking matte screen in the Bulgarian review (which admittedly could just be a prototype and completely different from Y50 models here) and comparing it to the nice looking, bright, glossy screens in other videos (not the 4K ones though, which have IPS panels and are unrelated).

 

Oh, and one more thing: I asked a rep to check when the Y50 is getting released in Canada (as the Y40 just came up a little while ago), and he said the release date is unavailable right now...So us Canadians have to wait in uncertainty for some time longer. What would be totally ideal for me is if a Canadian Y50 model was released with 2GB GTX860 Maxwell, a non-touch glossy 1920x1080 display, 512 GB SSD, and 16 GB RAM. Preferably tomorrow.

 

what are you talking about? what I am saying is that these aren't even targeted for the same type of people and giving an 860M to G550JK will overlap with the purpose of g750 series. what makes you think g750 is 17" version of g550 when these two are completely different?

If you are comparing n550jk/y50, sure, i don't understand why people are discussing about how different g550 is from n550 when this is a y50 thread. what else are you going to talk about? anything relevant to y50 rather this g550jk spec when it's pretty ludicrous that people are bringing up 860m to g550jk

 

anti-glare means a glossy screen that is added with a special finish to make it look like matte. so yes in essence it is glossy, but it's just specially treated and it will have the same effect as a matte screen

 

Thanks heibk! The coating will cause colour muting, fuzzinness, and lowered vividness like on matte screens even though the display is technically glossy, right? I think I've read that the effect is even worse than it is on traditional matte displays?

 

that makes no sense, more vram doesn't have anything to do with more processor speed. as many people including myself have said before, 4gb of vram will only show benefits when you go above 1080P which you really can't with the current models. you will be benefited, however, if you are doing video editing and stuff or if you get the 4k display with more vram.

8 gb DDR3 ram is decently priced, but y50 comes with the ddr3l ram which costs about $70 for 8gb on amazon, although it would still be cheaper if you buy your own. you can use ddr3 ram too, depending on your choice.

the panel for the 4k display is still unconfirmed, although since it's a samsung screen, it's most likely TN, but there's a chance that it uses PLS which is equivalent of IPS.

you can ask reps for stuff like this but you have to take their answers with a grain of salt.

 

For those choosing between the Asus and y50, I feel the decision should lie between whether you are okay with the 850m, which is around 35% weaker than the 860m. If you are, then the Asus is likely a better choice. If you want the 860m, get the y50 or look at some other options that have the 860m. It is NOT a negligible difference between the 850m and the 860m. I'm assuming if your getting these laptops you are going to do some kind of gaming. You ARE going to see that difference when gaming.

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Not to contribute to off-topicness, but I enjoy N550JK/G550JK talk too. I am 99% decided on the Y50 and will get it unless it turns out that the Touch display sucks somehow and the Non-Touch displays are all ugly matte. But the N550JK looks like a good computer too and more info is always nice to have; the main things turning me off the N550JK are the weaker graphics card (not a HUGE deal for me since I don't really play modern games yet and will mostly be running Gamecube/Wii/PS2 emulators - which are very CPU-heavy but not too GPU-heavy - for now, anyways), the useless DVD drive (it adds bulk, reduces solidness of feel, and isn't any better than the external one I have for the very rare occasions when one is needed), and the silver keyboard coupled with white backlighting (which makes the keys almost unreadable unless one is in very dark conditions). And I'm not sure how I feel about IPS glow, having always used a TN panel on my personal computer. Nice looking screen though.

 

heibk, so the 4GB card won't be any more power-hungry and hot than the 2GB card?

 

I actually like to read about the laptops that goes on par with the Y50, I dont read other topics than this one and its nice to have comparision to be sure if Y50 is a good buy or not. I would not even know of those other options if not for this comparisions.

 

As far as I'm concerned, we were here first. I welcome every "what should I buy?" post because I know it's at least in reference to the current Y50 or upcoming one. I say bring on the comparisons, they only better inform my own decision.

 

Too bad the asus is NOT on par with the y50. It has significantly more weight, includes the obsolete optical drive, and a much weaker graphics chip.

Sorry, but it is ridiculous to have to read through 2 pages of people talking whether or not some ROG logo on some asus notebook should be a sticker or not.

 

Well, that just, like well... your opinion man. Some people have clearly seen an optical as a bonus for numerous reasons.

I don't care about about the logo stuff, either. I also don't care about someone's opinion of TN vs. IPS. I just don't worry about it and read on.

 

My assumption is the 4GB is based off Kepler, not Maxwell. This is why the rep said it would run hotter.

 

I think both 2 and 4 gb versions are Maxwell, it wouldn't make sense to have two different motherboards. Also the user manual posted some pages back only lists Maxwell as graphic core

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Yeah, both chips should be Maxwell. It seems reasonable to me that a card with more memory would have to do a bit more work and so could run a bit hotter and use up a bit more battery life. But I'm not knowledgeable about the subject. In any case, it seems preposterous that the difference could be big at all, both in terms of performance and power consumption. So I'm back at being totally unsure between the Touch and Non-Touch models, lol. At least I can discount 4K, as FHD already looks crystal clear to me, 4K is sure to be more expensive, some icons and programs are likely not going to be optimized for 4K for a while still, and most importantly there's no way I'm waiting till July.

 

yes but this leads me to a question

can't u just have the 4k screen and use it in such a way that...
you actually use 1920-1080 resolution for desktop but when you play a movie with 4k resolution that the display will automatically adjust for just the movie, right?

that way you really only use 1920-1080 but have better movie experience

 

i cant think of a reason why anybody would want such a high res for web surfing and desktop

 

If you need to use 4gb of vram yeah of course it's gonna take more power, but that's like adding another strip of ram, will it drain energy? Yes. Will it make a significant difference? Of course not. Vram doesn't contribute much to heat, so it shouldn't matter, but if you are using that much vram, typically your gpu is likely to be under load too, so that may go hot

 

These two will have around the same effect, but this is subjective. If you like matte you should have no problem with anti-glare, if you don't like it then neither is better or worse than the other

 

Clearly we're talking past each other and I'm not understanding what your point is. I understood you to say that if Asus put the 860m in the 550 series, they'd be cannibalizing sales of ther G750 series. Am I correct that this is what you were saying? If so, then my response is that since the G750 series is 17", Asus shouldn't worry about whether their 15" models will cannibalize their 17" sales. The market for 15" laptops is much larger than that for 17" laptops, so if Asus is trying to protect the sales of their 17" models by not putting the higher-end hardware in the 15" models, that's going to do exactly the opposite of what they intend. Instead of driving people to their 17" models in order to get the hardware they want, most buyers will likely just switch to another manufacturer that does offer the higher-end hardware in a 15" (or 14") chassis, such as the Lenovo Y50 or the Razer Blade 14.

In fact, how many people in this thread are champing at the bit to buy the Y50 specifically because it's a 15" laptop with an 860m. Most in this thread have expressed disappointment with many of the decisions Lenovo has made, such as with the TN panel, pricing, etc., yet many are still interested because of the combo of quad-core i7 Haswell, GTX 860m, and 15" chassis. So my point is that Asus would be smart to offer something similar, and not expect people to move up to 17" in order to get that hardware, since the percentage of people who are willing to purchase a 17" laptop is miniscule compared to those who want 15" or smaller.

 

I fall PRECISELY in this category. I'm in the market for a thin, light 15" laptop, with a Maxwell 860M, IPS panel, and with the ability for 2 storage drives. Both the N550JK and the Y50 tick some but not all of these requirements.

While both are thin and light (enough for my liking) 15" laptops, the ASUS has the IPS and multiple storage bays, at the "cost" of an 850M. On the other hand, if I want a little more GPU power with the Y50, I can get the Maxwell 860M with the Y50, but lose out with a TN panel and a single storage drive. I'm hoping XoticPC is able to get their hands on the Y50, allowing me to tweak the storage drives. The question I have to ask myself (and hoping some of you can provide some input) is how big of a step down is a TN panel from an IPS panel?

 

I hate 17" laptops, a friend of mine bring one of those huge things (and very bulky too) to our LAN parties and I feel kinda ashamed just by looking him with that. He takes it to his classes around university too, poor him.

 

Yeah, I messaged XoticPC twice in the past 2 weeks for the Y50, turns out Lenovo is slow on getting it to resellers. I don't know how long it took them to get the Y510p, but we can expect them to get the Y50 sooner due to the high want for it. My build will probably be a IPS Touch Panel (If they have it for customization), a 500GB Samsung SSD, IC Diamond Thermal Paste, and a Intel® Dual Band AC 7260 network card.

 

I think that the Maxwell GPU, good pricing and dimensions/weight are the only advantages of this laptop because the blinded "cool" exhausts are childish, it's hideous lid around non-touch display is very bad and a TN 4K panel is absolute fail. But still it's in my wish list Both Asus notebooks but looks nice to me but GTX850 is weaker, G550 isn't available (and won't be in a near future... at least in my country), G750 is nice but way too big for me and MSI GS60 has Kepler and it's expensive. But maybe the Kepler GPU isn't so bad...


Sorry for my English!
Sent from iPad.

 

Wondering this as well, if I don't really care about viewing angles, how much of a downgrade is the TN from IPS?

 

Clearly you didn't get my point. What I'm saying is that the 550 series and the G750 are made for the completely different group of people. G750 series is strictly RoG, which means they are for people who care more about PERFORMANCE rather than the general aesthetics, while the N/G550 series, is for ENTRY LEVEL gamers that use laptops for more entertainment purposes rather than hardcore gaming. Having 860M would be nice, but these people don't need it and wouldn't feel necessary to add a couple hundred more to get it.

As we all know, there is a significant gap between 860M and 850M (don't give me that OC bs, what makes you think people can't oc 860M also?) and such difference determines whether you get premium gaming experience or decent gaming experience. From a marketing perspective, the N/G550 series is NOT for hardcore gamers, even though it is marketed as a "pseudo-gaming" notebook. You are saying Asus is lacking competitive products in 15"? Yes and no, yes because indeed the g550 is barely even a gaming notebook, and no because Asus simply isn't going in that direction. Asus's premium gaming series is strictly focused on the real RoG series and it's worrying less about what's happening in 15" as long as they have their share in the 17" high end gaming notebook market.

Giving G550 an 860M is pointless because it doesn't need an 860M for the people it's targeted for, and Asus doesn't need another 860M notebook because it has the RoG series already. Just like Razer's relatively tiny market, Asus's main market for gaming laptop is 17" premium models, whether you like it or not.

In reference to Lenovo, would you give the Z series an X60M when the Y series already have it? Probably not. People who are getting the Z series surely know what they need and consider it b/c of its price level & performance
Realistically, with $1100 you think it's possible?

 

so how do you know anything about the cooling when no one has gotten it yet and without any reliable reviews? how do you know the 4k panel is tn (indeed samsung is usually 4k but it still has PLS)? and what makes you think a tn 4k panel is an absolute failure? dude, you are making too much speculations on something that you don't know until when either you got it or reviews come out.

 

OK, let me speak to this one part at a time:

Who are you to say what N/G550 buyers want or need, or whether they'd be willing to pay extra to get it? I don't think anyone is saying that Asus should offer only the 860m INSTEAD OF the 850m. People are simply wishing that the 860m was an option. And the fact that such a wish has been expressed multiple times in this thread would seem to indicate that you (and Asus) are wrong if you think there's not a market for a 15" laptop with true gaming specs.

No argument that the 850m is inferior to the 860m. Hence the reason for this discussion. And nobody claimed that the G/N550JK is a true gaming laptop for hardcore gamers. But what some people have wished is that it could be configured that way. Do you really think that if Asus offered an option to upgrade the G/N550JK to an 860m that they'd have zero people take them up on that config?

A laptop doesn't have to be targeted at a finite group of people. It can be offered with different configurations that appeal to different groups. Sure, the majority of people who are interested in the N550JK will be perfectly happy with the 850m and the $1100 price point. But as this thread shows, there is at least some demand for a laptop of that size, with that screen, with a better GPU. Can you not at least admit that? And given that there is some demand for a 15" laptop with true gaming specs, it seems kind of strange that Asus is basically saying to customers, "If you want true gaming specs in a 15" size, you'll have to take your money elsewhere, because we're only interested in selling to gamers that want our behemoth 17" laptops." Why wouldn't they add a 15" model to the RoG series (and not just in cosmetics like the G550JK)? As you can see from this graphic:



while the market share for 15" laptops is shrinking and the share for 17" laptops is growing, the 15" size still has the largest market share of any size. So why would Asus completely ignore that part of the market and essentially force them to go elsewhere?

You're comparing apples and oranges. There's no need to offer a 15" Z series with the 860m when the 15" Y series with 860m exists. But Asus isn't offering a 15" option with the 860m. That's the difference. But to answer your question, sure, I'd have no problem with Lenovo offering the 860m as an option on the Z series. Presumably, the cost to upgrade would put the Z series into the same price range as the Y series, so it wouldn't really make sense for anyone to do that, but I'd have no problem with Lenovo making the option available.

 

Not entirely true. I was playing Skyrim at my old m17x r3 with 6990m with bunch of mods that apparently ate up all my 2gb of VRAM. Hence, whenever it hit the 2gb VRAM ceiling - it stuttered. I did a lot of test to confirm that the VRAM was the culprit and indeed it was. I haven't seen any head to head benchmarks but I think 860m (especially Maxwell) can compare to 6990m.

 

ok you are mixing up supply and demands. I'm not saying what G550 buyers want, I'm saying who Asus made it for. As I said before, Asus made this laptop for entry level gamers that don't do much gaming and if you want better experience then go get something else. It's not about what you are demanding, it's what's being supplied.

Regardless of whether there's market for what you said or not, it's Asus's choice to enter it or not and the trend as of now is that it's ditching it and going for the 17" premium gaming notebooks only.
For example, Razer can start making premium business models with unbeatable performance on the market (if they take off the razer logo and made the blade more professional looking, who's there to compete with it for performance in the business notebook market?), but it chooses not to get in there and stay strictly in gaming notebook market, despite there's a much larger market and undoubtedly higher demand for the former.
Asus doesn't have to get into the 15" market and its main focus still is the real RoG series (when I say real I mean the legit ones not just some rebranded marketing bs).

there's no need for Asus to add that 860M. sure there will be some people getting it, but that's what the model is made for and having such will only increase the cost. think about it this way, g750jm costs $1300, g550 starts off $1100 already with an 850m, adding an 860m will only jacks the price up closer to the RoG and defeats the purpose of high performance multimedia laptop with affordable price. Instead of having an awkward model like this that will get questionable sales and awkward pricing, and btw your "some demand" is probably not enough to get a desirable margin, Asus would just think it's better without all this mess and get a clear line between RoG and pseudo RoG

 

Just an update for everyone, I was asking questions tonight & a couple sales reps noted that the "instant savings" on the Y50 expired at midnight tonight, EST (so, 46 min?).

Don't know how much you can trust them, but figured I'd give people the heads up if they weren't aware.

 

Hey guys

Ðевю на Lenovo Y50 – наследникът на една геймърска легенда | Лаптоп.БГ – Новини и ревюта за лаптопи

A review

Edit : The screen has good side viewing angles! but miserable vertical angles
Impressive battery life ! :O why isnt anyone discussing temperatues!! :-/

 

that probably just means new sales are coming out... usually these reps are not bad with pricing and stuff, it's the tech specs that they really suck at

 

I can't read Bulgarian, but judging by just the acronyms and graphs, it seems he has a Y50 with an Intel Core i5-4200H CPU which seems really odd as the y70 is only offered with an i7.

Also, whats with the weird double cooler integration? http://news.laptop.bg/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/bottom-opened.jpg

 

It's a pre production unit.. There are no i5 models..

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well in china the i5-4200h are available for pre-ordering.

 

Oh?? The first review that had come out.. Said that there won't be any i5 models.... Maybe it's only for china..... Or the reviewer could've been wrong too

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Thanks Kinro! The battery life indeed looks amazing, and the screen doesn't look as bad as it did when I saw the video review on my phone. Plus this is some weird early model with an i5; the finalized i7 models being sold are sure to have better screens. I would be surprised if Lenovo heavily downgraded the Y510's screen (which seemed to be praised) for this newer edition. They know screen is important. Nevertheless, I'm still tempted to go for the glossy multi-touch model to upgrade my current computer's colour coverage and appearance. I can see myself upgrading to SSD at some point, but will definately not be replacing the screen.

 

I'm also looking for a thin and powerful 15" with a great screen (ideally IPS, otherwise PLS), with SSD+HDD. So far, the Gigabyte P35G still tickles all the boxes. I'm waiting for a review though.

 

Well, if the battery lasts 6h in web browsing as they say in this review, I'm sold

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Lenovo is releasing 4 new models of the y50. They are currently viewable with Corporate Perks. They are NOT purchasable however. Even going through a rep, they are not able to add any of the models to your cart.

These are the prices with the Corporate Perks discount (you can expect models on the normal lenovo website to be ~$100 more):

$1,069
4th Generation Intel Core i7-4710HQ Processor (2.50GHz 1600MHz 6MB)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M 2GB
8.0GB PC3-12800 DDR3L SDRAM 1600 MHz
Hybrid 1TB 5400 RPM+8GB SSHD

$1,149
4th Generation Intel Core i7-4710HQ Processor (2.50GHz 1600MHz 6MB)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M 4GB
8.0GB PC3-12800 DDR3L SDRAM 1600 MHz
Hybrid 1TB 5400 RPM+8GB SSHD
**Optical Drive: Blu-ray/DVD-RW**
(I spoke to a rep and they claimed it was an internal drive. I doubt that's actually true)

$1,259
4th Generation Intel Core i7-4710HQ Processor (2.50GHz 1600MHz 6MB)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M 4GB
16.0GB PC3-12800 DDR3L SDRAM 1600 MHz
Hybrid 1TB 5400 RPM+8GB SSHD

$1,359
4th Generation Intel Core i7-4710HQ Processor (2.50GHz 1600MHz 6MB)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M 4GB
16.0GB PC3-12800 DDR3L SDRAM 1600 MHz
512GB SSD

Basically, they released the y50 with an updated processor. And on one model, are giving it more VRam and an (supposedly) internal Blue-ray drive.

 

I hope this is true. I'm aiming for the one with optical drive..

 

I hope this is true. I'm aiming for the one with optical drive..

 

I cannot find a reasonable location for an optical drive, unless they move all of the ports on one side forward - which I don't expect. Either way, it would probably get my extra $100 thrown at it.

 

I'm assuming all models listed are still just FHD? And did they mention if any of those models would be touch?