Y500 Touchpad Issue

Looks like Lenovo switched the Y500 touchpad from Elan to the one from Synaptics. I've never heard of Elan before and I'll make sure my next laptop doesn't come with one. Glad to hear the new Y500s are delivered with properly working touchpads.

 

Add another one to the pile... Manufactured November 21, 2012. I've tried several drivers, including the ones mentioned here.

Does anyone else notice that the LED back-lighting seems inconsistent as well? Similar to what happens when a bezel is pinching down too tightly on an LCD; there are dark and light patces. It's subtle, but there. Luckily, I use it with monitors and a wireless mouse 99% of the time.

I'll be putting in for one of the new ones with a Synaptics touchpad today.

 

I'll give the drivers a shot as well. I already gave up on the touchpad and got a wireless mouse.

 

My full review on the Y500
Lenovo Y500 Full English Review and Benchmarks - YouTube

 

Finally after some extensive testing, I'm confident to say that my Ideapad Y500 with Synaptics touchpad is working completely fine out of the box. A recap of the laptop specs:
i7-3632QM Processor( 2.20GHz 1600MHz ), Windows 8 64, NVIDIA GeForce GT650M 2GB Sli (2x), 16GB PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM 1600 MHz, 15.6" FHD LED Glare Wedge 1920x1080, 1TB 5400RPM+16GB SSD. I also have BIOS version: 6BCN34WW (v.1.05).
I have been using the laptop for 12 straight hours each day for the past 7 days. Every feature/function of the touchpad works the way it was designed to. Corner tapping feature worked as well as 3-4 finger gestures. All of Windows 8 gestures worked fine with the touchpad. The touchpad was used during long HD Movie sessions, long web surfing sessions, light and heavy game sessions, and long Photoshop sessions. Everything functioned exactly the way it should. I have found no issues with the touchpad so far. It should be noted that I have no intentions of even using the touchpad whatsoever. I have always used an external mouse with ALL my laptops. The only reason I tested out the touchpad was to make sure I didn't pay over $1000 for a defective product and also to help out the Lenovo community who is suffering from this "Touchpad Crisis". Based on my observations, the combination of a Synaptics touchpad and newer BIOS may be the reason why I don't have any of the bad experiences that those with the Elan touchpad have. I'll keep testing then post my updates as they happen. Good luck to those with Elan touchpads.

 

If you could back that BIOS up with the universal bios backup tool (worked for me with 1.03) and upload somewhere, I would be forever in your debt, good sir. I'd really like to take a look at that 1.05 BIOS. May I ask, is your HD4000 active?

 

So what's the verdict? Has Lenovo stopped shipping Y500 notebooks with Elan touchpads?

 

I can't actually answer that question, but for what it's worth my Y400 (which I ordered last week) was manufactured 1/5/13 and does not have an Elan touchpad. In fact it works great, there are no problems with it whatsoever.

 

I've been actually eyeing the Y400 too.

Does it prevent random palm swipes by turning off the touchpad by typing? Does it allow for two-finger scrolling and pinch to zoom?

 

If you're asking "does turning off the touchpad prevent random palm swipes?" then yes I suppose it would. So far I haven't needed to disable my touchpad however, like I said it works perfectly and hasn't registered any accidental swipes. Also it has two-finger scrolling/pinch to zoom in and out along with a whole host of other inputs. I believe it was designed to work like a touchscreen would, hence the variety of inputs.

 

Good to hear that they got that down.

Sorry to be drilling ya, but how's the keyboard? Does it offer nice feedback? The reason I ask is my current E15 has a decent touchpad and form factor, but the keyboard feels a bit "mushy" to type on.

 

Keyboard preferences are more polarized than trackpads; someone's mushy keyboard is comfortable for another. My best description of the keyboard is that the keys feel soft to the touch, have little, but ample, giveaway and are silent (non "clicky"). I might find them a bit "mushy" because of those attributes but I find it to be one of the most comfortable keyboards I've ever used, laptop or desktop, so while I recommend it its really a personal preference.

Don't worry about asking questions by the way, I don't have a problem answering them.

 

Thanks a lot, the feedback has been much appreciated. I think I may just say "YOLO" (I'm told kids used to say this until just recently) and pull the trigger on a Y400 and see what comes about.

As early as 2010, I was one of the biggest critics of PC notebook touchpads. I'd been a Windows kid since my early days with the Pentium I, but my heavy detail-oriented tendencies led me to noticing issues with touchpads by both Synaptics and Elan. I can see HP did an alright job resolving most of the issues on the most recent Envy 15, but I'm not all that happy with the keyboard. Compared to my friend's 1st generation Envy 15 and my Envy 14, they took a step backward in tactile feedback.

 

Ah I see where your criticism of touchpads comes from; years of having to deal with them exclusively. While most touchpads fulfill their duties (giving you usable pointer controls on a laptop) I have never been completely satisfied with them myself. Luckily usb/bluetooth mice are commonly found nowadays and I always have one with me for any laptop.

 

[ELAN touchpad issue appears to be solved by repositioning silver tape]
I bought a lenovo y500 somewhere in January this year. Unfortunately I experienced the same problems with the touchpad (ELAN) and keyboard, as reported by many users on the Internet. The keyboard issue appeared to be easily solved by disabling the 'always-on USB' option in the BIOS. The touchpad problem appeared to be harder to solve. After about 15 min of notebook usage, the touchpad usually starts to go crazy (mouse goes everywhere and is not usable anymore). After having tried several drivers, a fresh windows 8 installation which didn't solve the problem, I followed the method as described by n1smo.
The good news is that this method actually seems to solve the problem! Indeed, the silver-coloured tape was not fully covering the copper-coloured plate on the touchpad. Interference might be a plausible explanation. I repositioned the silver tape and also placed the electrical tape on the places as indicated by n1smo. I will report here when the problem returns, but so far the touchpad works flawlessly and is very responsive. Thank you n1smo for the great guide!
With the touchpad working again, this y500 is a great notebook!

 

I'm glad it worked for you but if the issue comes back or the touchpad doesn't feel quite as responsive sometimes you can try the final adjustment I made to mine. I posted this workaround in the Lenovo forums a while back but forgot to update it here. The issue came back for me after I took the laptop apart to take pictures of what I did for the guys in the Lenovo forums but after playing around I realize that it had a lot to do with a grounding issue as I could feel static electricity building up. So I search for a better grounding point. Here is what I came up with:



I moved the silver tape off the normal spot, which is the green circled area and moved it directly to where the red circle is. So, one end of the tape is still on the copper portion of the touchpad and the other end is grounded directly to the aluminum top. This has solved my touchpad issues completely and it is working better than it did before on it's best day. Gestures are much more accurate and the touchpad itself just feels smoother. Sorry I didn't update this earlier but it might be worth a look if your issue ever comes back.

 

I have a question about n1smo's fix; Do you have a final photo of the tape in the "correct" position. I am very interested in doing this, but have limited knowledge regarding touchpads. (Ex: not sure how much to overlap the silver tape, etc I am assuming that you have changed the tape from a horizontal position to a vertical position.)
Thank you for your help, I am looking forward to getting this touchpad working!

 

Are your touchpads loose near the bottom of it? or where the near the red line is?

 

My whole touchpad is loose...

 

My touchpad is really loose at the bottom only, but at the top it isn't loose at all.. Also on my top right corner there's an issue with the lid. the top right corner is bended so it doesn't make a flat contact with the body when I close the lid. Jesus christ, I will try to get a RMA...

 

just got this laptop 3 days ago, the touchpad isnt loose but sometimes it becomes really irresponsive and moves/clicks by itself which is really annoying, is there any solution for this or do I have to send it back??

 

This is how my touchpad is like...

 

I believe you have the ELANtech touchpad, thats why it has this issue. Your laptop should be one of the models which were made before november 28. You should return it for another one!

 

yes it uses ELAN touchpad, so there's no fix for this? how long will it take for them to give me another one?

 

Does anybody know if the touchpad issue has been corrected at the manufacturing level?

I'm thinking about getting one from Amazon.com and they do not have it in stock, although it says

they will get it in 2-5 weeks.

If I buy this, would I be safe from the touchpad defect?

(Since Amazon will likely get their stock directly from the Lenovo factory?)

 

A week to a month... Depends how lucky you are.

 

I just purchased a new Y500 yesterday. I came across this forum (in addition to others) while doing research on it, prior to my purchase. With the employer discount I get on Lenovo products, and the configuration of the system, the Y500 almost seemed too good to be true. Once I started reading reviews and came across the trackpad issue, it seemed like that may be the case. However, after reading the reviews of folks that have purchased machines manufactured after Nov'12, most of which seem to have shipped with the Synaptics trackpad versus the previous Elan unit, they seem to not be experiencing the problem. Prior to making my purchase, I chatted with two different Lenovo customer service reps and confronted them both on this issue. Since this forum was so helpful to me in my research, I felt obligated to share what they said with you guys, in case it helps. They both provided pretty much the same response, which was that they acknowledged a "previous" issue with Y500 trackpads (erratic behavior, particularly after warm-up / longer operation, etc.). They both said that they were given a pass-down just after Thanksgiving 2012 in which they were told that this issue had been "addressed" and that if any customers asked about it the reps should tell them it's been "fixed". Of course, I drilled them for more detail, but neither of them seemed to have it. So, while it's not the kind of recognition I think Lenovo should have given this near epidemic, it does seem like they've at least acknoledged it, albeit not openly. So, given everything I've read, the info from Lenovo RE: this issue, and most importantly, the 21 day return policy, for which Lenovo pays the return shipping, I went ahead with my purchase and figured I'd give the Y500 a try. Wish me luck! I'll post back up after I receive my laptop to let y'all know if I experience any issues with it. The estimated ship date is March 9th, so I probably won't receive it til mid March. Then, I'll put it through the ringer for at least a week before I post.

Thanks to this forum and all the posters for all the info you provided. It was a great help with my research.

 

n1smo, I just wanted to thank you for the insight into the grounding issue.

I received my Y500 towards the end of January 2013 and was rather disappointed when I realized that my laptop had an early Nov. 2012 build date despite the fact it was ordered during the third week of Jan 2013. Fortunately, my touchpad seemed to work well although it was not nearly as smooth as the touchpad on my MBP. So fast forward to last night when the touchpad decided to go crazy on me. If I looked at the touchpad monitor on the task-bar you could see that the erratic behavior is clearly due to interference in the grounding. So I cracked open my Y500, took a look at your pictures and decided to take it one step further. I pulled off the silver tape and replaced it on the copper pad making sure that the whole pad was covered. Instead of repositioning the tape so that it made contact with the aluminum case, I added some aluminum foil tape that runs from the original silver tape ground point to the nearest non-anodized ground point. I added some electrical tape to make sure that nothing moves in the future, reassembled the laptop, turned it on and was extremely surprised that the touchpad is MUCH more responsive and accurate than it was before. Although the touchpad was never erratic except for last night, I always noticed that it seemed to have low resolution. By improving the grounding and eliminating any electrical interference, the touchpad is perfect.

I recommend anyone who is having problems to simply open up their laptop and modify the touch pad ground points. It takes all of 5 min and surelely beats sending it to Lenovo.

 

mine seems a bit loose as well especially after yesterday when I was trying to type and E-mail and my trackpad started acting up and pressed the back bottom by it`s self and ruined everything which pissed me off and caused me to pound on it hard which resulted in it being even more looser through the edge of the keyboard where is right and left clicks are located. so it kinda sunk inside a bit. does anyone here has his trackpad flushed with the rest of the chassis ?

 

How do you check manufactoring date..?

 

Unfortunately, the problem showed up again some weeks ago. I followed the advice of n1smo to ground the touchpad to the aluminium casing (maybe it gets charged with static electricity by the movements of the wrists). In order to properly ground it, I decided to buy some proper 3M tape (Scotch 1181 3M, with conducting glue). Using my multimeter, I found that there is a non-conducting coating over the aluminium case. I scraped of part of the coating and placed the tape (starting from the silver tape towards the red circle, which is part of the casing, as in n1smo's post). Up to now, this seems to solve the problem, hopefully it stays like this. I'll keep you guys posted.

 

Did you take any photos of how you sorted this out?

 

FYI, I have a y500 single 750M have no touchpad problem. I like the gesture in windows 8, it makes switching between windows so much easier. I like windows 8 more and more, it works fine on this on touch screen laptop.

 

here is how i fixed mine according to the other thread in lenovo forum. and it has been ok with no issues what so ever for more than a week now. there is a silver connecter from the lower middle of the trackpad connected to the chassis. simply remove it completelly and apply electric isolating tape, u know the black or white all over the underneath of the trackpad, remember to remove the metal bar that is holding the trackpad in place. apply the tape completelly and then replace the metal bar. the process is explained in details in lenovo forum. i will send the link.