***Yoga 2 Pro Owners Thread***

Hey guys!
I'm typing this from my new Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 2 Pro. I'm really loving it so far.
The release thread is getting very cramped and rather insane, so I felt that an owners thread was necessary.
I will post a lengthy review on here later!
Post tips&tricks, hacks, ideas, hardware mods, etc!
~Jay

 

Waiting for my 512GB model. Really hope to see somebody successfully swap a 5GHz wifi card

 

Known tips so far:

1) To address the poor yellow color situation, you can open the Lenovo Energy Manager and select the Performance profile. This is a temporary fix, and it will reduce your battery life. Hopefully Lenovo has an update for this soon.

2) If you're like me and love Google Chrome, you might be upset that the task bar and menus are so freaking small, and webpages don't always render well. Here's a fix: enter chrome://flags in the chrome address bar. Find and enable the following keys: Enable Touch Events, Touch Optimized UI, and HiDPI Support. You will need to restart Chrome for the changes to take effect.

3) When playing video games (or any full-screen non-native Win8 app), select 1600x900 as your resolution. This scales perfectly to the display, so it looks great while at the same time improving performance within the game and fixing UI elements that are too small in many cases.

 

Before I post a full review, just a quick question
Is anyone else getting very strange battery estimates (not that this tool is known for it's accuracy)?
At one point I was getting over 10 Hours!!!!!! That would be so fantastic. Of course, this was without the color fix.
With the color fix and about 40% brightness, wifi on, and many apps running in the background, it looks like I'm getting around 4.5 hours. Which is really pretty disappointing.

Also, while it never gets hot, the fans to seem to kick in at seemingly random times. Quite odd.
~Jay

 

Good to see this thread finally

I'm really loving my Y2P. I got a samsung ativ book 7 a few days prior to making the switch to the Y2P and got a chance to compare them side by side. Comparing the displays is absolutely no contest. The Y2P display is just gorgeous, despite the overstated color inaccuracies everyone's buzzing about. It's super sharp and super bright pictures and movies look incredible. I don't want to start the yellow discussion here already but it doesn't concern me in the least. It would if it affected skin tone or the overall experience of the display but it really doesn't. So while lenovo irons out the issues with yellow i'm happy to be an owner of the y2p. After using the Y2P for a few days i can't even pretend like the 1080p screen on the samsung satisfies me.

I got the i7 256GB model from best buy for $1200 which is an absolute steal. The 4th gen i7 leagues ahead of the i5 3337u on the samsung ab7. Not quite the difference in power consumption i expected between the haswell i7 and the sandybridge i5, but with the performance boost taken into account battery life is about the same. I was a little concerned about the single RAM stick vs the dual in the samsung as i haven't gotten into any performance demanding tasks yet. The processor upgrade more than makes up for it but we'll see when i start running a VM. Hard drive is very spacious i would of been more than happy with a 128GB. When it dies i'll probably opt for a 128gb replacement unless prices change by then.

Comparisons aside this is a hell of a machine for the price and i'm very happy with it. Build quality is great, it's super light almost half a pound lighter than the samsung ab7. Track pad and keyboard are great. Speakers are pretty great, though the samsung had better ones, sound quality is still above average.

I don't see any other devices that give the Y2P a run for their money in this price range. I was looking into the sony flip series but the higher res 1620p is only available in the 15", and with an i7 starts at $1700 and that doesn't even include a SSD.

 

I got CRAZY battery estimates my first day with the unit - at one point the system told me I had over 400 hours of battery life remaining. I'm thinking it just needs time to "learn" as the estimates lately seem to be getting more accurate.

I have not noticed the fan at all. I was even playing some CIV 5 for a while. The issue you're describing seems to be hit or miss with a few people, but hopefully not wide spread. We should probably compare load and idle temps/vcore to see if there's a relationship.

My battery life on day two has been acceptable so far. I've been on this thing with mixed usage (web browsing to gaming to virtualization) for the past 3 hours on "Daily Mode" (not performance) with the brightness at 50%. Currently windows is estimating 2hr 12m remaining.

I imagine with light usage you could probably get the claimed 8 hour battery life, but I think under most mixed scenarios, we're looking at 6 hours. Not great, but not terrible.

 

As was I. Don't be. The memory is in a dual-channel configuration, confirmed in CPU-Z as well as memory benchmarks. I benched 17GB/S under "Daily Mode" while running on battery power last night - that number would not be possible on a Single Channel configuration.

Plugged in and on high performance mode, I'm sure the memory bandwidth would be even better.

Memory benchmark attached:

View attachment 103538

 

Hi I just joined this site. I got my Yoga Pro 2 i7 model on Friday (birthday gift). I wanted it for the light weight, power and the ability to play games like Final Fantasy 14, Diablo 3, X-com, etc on the go. Now, I got FF14 to run and it's gravy.... but I can't get it to run in "Tent mode"..... is there a reason why? Also, Diablo 3 was performing very poorly in tablet mode, otherwise is runs good on notebook mode.
Please help.
Thanks!!!

 

So if anyone wants to compare, here are my temperature results.
My average is mid 60s, but it sometimes goes as high as 80

 

You're running Diablo 3 on this thing?!?!?!?? How? At what FPS? The graphics card shouldn't be able to handle that at all!
Let us know details!

 

low settings mixed with some medium full screen .... fps 15ish-30ish with razer game booster....
everything on low fullscreen i go from 30-45ish......

its not exactly eye candy but it runs.

 

I've had the Y2P for a few days and it's great, but I'm not sure if I have a problem. If the display brightness is set to the lowest setting is it normal for the display to be completely off?

 

I noticed that too and I see it as a great feature. Basically it makes it easy for me to turn off the screen if I'm playing music on battery (and can use motion control to control without seeing the screen at all). I often use my computer as a jukebox, hooked up to wireless Klipsch speakers, so turning off the screen means it will have more juice for long dinner parties or extended periods in the kitchen. All laptops should do this.

 

Ok, glad I don't have a defective one. I see your point that this is a nice feature, but it would be nice if it had one more dimmer setting.

 

Mine is on order (the orange i7) and is estimated to be here 11/5. I did see the silver i7 at BB and would have bought one there but they were out of stock. It looked great (I knew about the color issue but for my use it didn't really matter).

I will be using this mostly when I want to use a notebook while watching TV or if I go out of town. I have a desktop that I use most of the time. Has anyone tried using it with World of Warcraft? I know I will need to turn down settings to low (not ultra like on my desktop) and I assume I will need to change the resolution but I wondered if the performance was minimally acceptable at all. I wouldn't plan on doing anything really demanding on it but it would be nice to be able to at least do AH stuff or daily quests.

 

Not a yoga but the same graphics proccessor and an i5 vs our i7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKcjTAVmwtg&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

did the comparison and it makes a huge difference with chrome. thanks for the tip

Left is with the settings enabled ; right is default

http://i1.minus.com/ibcflptgHIdKk7.png

 

Does anybody know why my Chrome tabs do this?

// http://i.imgur.com/JE7sehi.png

Switching to HiDPI mode causes a lot of glitches when opening up windows like hangouts or google keep, so I'd rather not use HiDPI mode.

 

I get that too in canary. Not sure why all the tabs get crammed up like that. You'd think with the Chromebook pixel having a 2560x1700 resolution touch screen we shouldn't have all these dpi compatibility issues with chrome.

 

Interesting..I'm unable to replicate that on my machine...the tabs appear across the whole width of the screen as they should.

 

I ordered mine Orange i7 256GB yesterday through lenovo chat agent for $1199.
He told me the coupon "SCOUTS" had already expired but was nice enough to have his manager give the approval to give me the same discount.
It is supposed to ship on 11/6, though.

Here's my question. Other than the Slot-In case, can you guys recommend a case for the Y2P? Want to keep my baby safe and secure! :thumbsup:

 

looks like high DPI is only supported in ChromeOS for now

 

That's not what I'm seeing:

 

Anyone having problems with Chrome extensions and hidpi? When I have it enabled, everything works fine except the bubbles that popup when you use an extension. The bubble outline shows up but there's nothing in it. When I disable hidpi support they work again. I've attached a screenshot.

The issues is illustrated in the upper right hand corner.

thanks

 

Can anyone confirm that changing from notebook mode to tent or display modes triggers the cpu to slow down ?

 

So I had to struggle through the torture (just kidding, I love it) of using this machine to determine its battery life. Looks like a strong 5 hours with pretty light usage with brightness at 40%, balanced mode (w/fix)
The interesting thing is the standby times. I also left it alone for a couple of hours, and barely got any battery drain at all. That's pretty fantastic actually.
I really hope the come out with a permanent fix for the color issue soon

Also, my hinges appear to have bubbles on them. Does my unit have a faulty coating, or is that just plastic that I can rip off?

 

its plastic - rip it off, it was the first thing I did

 

Found it

a-13-Throttles-CPU-when-in-Tablet-mode-set-to-Portrait/td-p/914043

 

Confirmed over here as well..darn..

 

Anyone going to try swapping out the wireless card for a 7260 a/b/g/n or ac? The 2.4Ghz only card is the one thing keeping me from buying this.

 

what exactly are the issues with the stock network card?

 

There's nothing really wrong with it, but AC wifi is faster and has better range, and the main concern is that it is not a dual band card (2.4/5ghz)

If any of you successfully swap one out, let us all know. I think that everyone on here is curious.

 

Anybody performed a clean install yet?

 

Hi guys,

Glad to join the club here and the forums. I am loving my Y2P, major upgrade over my five year old HP laptop.

Had three questions for you guys...

1. My prior laptop's battery began to have problems quite quickly. I was wondering on what things you guys would suggest to extend the battery longevity of this device. Since this is my first Ultrabook it would be hard to switch out any of these internals and was just looking for some input. I have a tendency to charge the laptop to 100% and then wait until it discharges to 10% or so before plugging it back in. From reading a few things online, apparently this is not the best way to go, rather it is better to charge the batter to lower level and run with that. Am I correct in that assumption? At this time I am using the Conservation Mode on Lenovo Energy Manager along with having the laptop plugged into the wall for majority of the time.

2. In tent mode, has your touch screen ever timed out? I had mine lying out (running on battery) and after 15 min or so of inactivity I began to use it again to find the touch screen not responding. I was only able to use the Windows logo key. No amount of swiping made the screen active again. I turned the device into laptop mode and everything began functioning once again. Going back to tent mode presented no problems and touch was working just fine. If the touch screen does time out, how can I get it active again without having to switch modes?

3. Again a question about touch interface. I was trying to navigate the metro apps (weather and settings) side by side with my desktop apps and I found that the touch screen was not responding on the metro side. Desktop side presented no problems. Turned metro full screen and it worked like a charm. Desktop mode did not present any problems in the 1/3, 1/2, or full screen mode, it was just the metro side of things. Has anyone experienced this problem?

I appreciate your time in reading and replying to this post.

Thank you.

 

No wonder it had problems. That's probably the worst thing you can do to a lithium battery. Lithium-ion batteries are rated in cycles. Every time you run the battery dry and then recharge it again is considered one cycle. The more cycles you go through, the less maximum charge the battery will hold. My advice is to keep it plugged in whenever possible. The battery doesn't get used when you're fully charged and plugged in, so you don't waste any cycles. I have a 4 year old Asus laptop that I leave plugged in almost 24 hours a day. The battery wear is only 16% according to HWMonitor. There are more steps you can take to prolong the battery, but they're impractical/inconvenient.

 

They probably did that because of all the issues with the 7260AC cards..just go into the Sony Pro thread and see..others too, pretty much anything with that card won't stay connected from my understanding. You would think it was only a driver issue but it must be one that is taking Intel a while to get resolved.

 

That plastic was a tad difficult for me to rip off. It involved a lot of moving the screen around to get access to the plastic!

 

My guess is that the hinges came covered from whomever manufactured them and the guy putting them together never bothered to remove it. I had the same problem, one was coming of on it's own and the other is still intact.

 

As others have stated I think there have been performance issues with this card in other laptops.

Personally I had 3 wifi drop outs in the first 4-5 hours with the yoga pro 2 - I updated the wireless driver and I haven't had a single drop since so I am happy (knocks wood)

 

The problem isn't with the card that comes with it, it is with the card everybody wants to put in it..the AC version.

 

I have seen a posted image in the Y2Pro release thread that it has a 54Wh, 7400mAh battery sealed inside. What's bothering me though is that, based on owners' reports of its battery life of 6~hours, it is just the same as the Sony VAIO Pro 13, which in comparison, only has a 4740mAh battery. Is it because of the Y2Pro's 3200x1800 res? If so, has anyone tried a battery rundown test at 1080p res?

 

OK a couple of things. First WiDi works very well on this device actually. Keep in mind with Windows 8.1 WiDi is built in so you just need to go to the Display section of the charms bar and you will see a hyperlink at the bottom that says "connect to a wireless display". Once you connect once you will see an option in the devices menu to connect and so far it is working flawless for me.

Next is the whole battery life thing. Remember that during the first few days you have ANY system with Windows, there is file indexing going on, so people who get a new laptop need to STOP posting things about battery life until they have had the system at least a week. Honestly I wish that would be a rule here..... would save a lot of people from getting a lot of misinformation. Also we have people loading up the "High Performance" profile on this thing which by default turns off ALL power management of any kind and that will chew through any laptops battery. If you are going to use this for the Yellowgate issue, you need to go in manually and adjust the settings once to turn power management functions back on. There are SEVERAL place to tweak power management. also the Intel program has settings for using video on battery that need to be adjusted back to normal. Once you do that, you get most of your battery life back.
Additionally, I am tracking some Lenovo specific things they added to this laptop that appear to be using some battery function on a regular basis. Specifically "Yoga Picks" "Yoga Transitions" and Yoga Phone Companion". I have not uninstalled those yet as I am looking to see how much battery they use first for a week and see what they all do as well. I will most likely uninstall at least a few of these but keep in mind there are things here that are not on other laptop devices.
With all that said, now that I have finished indexing and have a stable system I have been using this laptop so far today in my office for work. Right now I have a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard attached, and streaming Widi to a 27" monitor running full res. along with my laptop monitor as well. I have been working solid for 2 plus hours doing email (Outlook), web surfing, and a couple of business apps. I have 72 percent battery life left according to the system. I keep my screen brightness on 100 percent by the way.
Last night I ran 3 plus hours (probably really closer to 4) of watching football on the internet full screen on this again with screen brightness on 100. When I stopped I had 28 percent remaining. I do not see this system as having battery "issues" and it will get better as we figure things out. Lets all take a chill pill until we get through a week here and work on some tweaks before we start making assumptions on things like this.

 

Correct. It doesn't have to be AC. I just want something with a dual band radio.

 

Has the dual band version of the 7260 (non AC) also been problematic? I'm not so sure I want to try to upgrade the wireless card if the AC version can be problematic. Lenovo may have selected this version for a reason other than to just save manufacturing costs.

Anyone know which Lenovo apps can be uninstalled without affecting functionality? I've only uninstalled the phone companion so far. I'm not sure if the apps that signal different modes it is actually doing anything?

Also, is Bluetooth 4.0 low enough power drain that it does not need to be disabled? I dunno if I will ever use any Bluetooth devices.

 

World of warcraft works fine! 30-40 fps on low settings, not even the lowest! It's a almost 10 year old game, it'll run fine on low settings and fast on the lowest settings. Edit: Oh but to make it work well I had to turn the resolution of the laptop to 1600x900 and trim down the resolution of the game to 1440x900 (i think).

 

From Lenovo's thread


Re: Yoga 2 Pro 13 Yellow Color Issues
Options
‎10-21-2013 09:52 AM

All,

Thank you all for the continued feedback. I'm glad the change to max performance in the energy manager produces improved results. For those just joining the discussion, I'd like to share a bit of information on the particular LCD display panel used in this, as well in some competitor models.

Yoga 2 Pro incorporates a PenTile panel, which uses a modified RGBW grid that differs from standard RGB in two ways: first, the physical pixel layout is different, and second, it uses a white sub-pixel (hence RGBW). The white sub-pixel is actually a clear pixel that allows the backlight to come through without any color filter, resulting in a brighter screen at much lower power consumption rates.

As demonstrated by temporarily changing the Lenovo Energy Management to Performance mode, the yellow brightness can be increased considerably, with the result of shifting closer to a brighter yellow, rather than the somewhat olive tint with the default settings.

Some have suggested that the default settings on other systems that incorporate this panel may appear closer to a true yellow. We compared side by side with a Samsung 940X this morning

This first photo shows the systems set at same brightness level with Lenovo default energy management settings:
The Yoga 2 Pro produces a yellow that has a green tint and appears a shade or two more green than the Samsung. Please also note that the Samsung also displays yellow with a green tint which suggests that this is an aspect of the panel across the industry.

Y2P vs samsung 940x - 2.jpg

Then, here is the same comparison showing the previously suggested energy management setting changes.
It is now comparable to or perhaps one shade brighter than the Samsung.

Y2P vs samsung 940x - 1.jpg.png

Apologies for the quality of the pics - taken with my camera phone.

So, the greenish tint is an artifact of the specific LCD panel technology and is fairly consistent with other systems using the same panel. That said, it appears that it is possible to affect the displayed color, and so I believe we are exploring what optimizations we could make via a potential update.

During our testing, we also confirmed a glitch reported in this thread by Jrcbandit, that when the screen dims (due to power management) or when the system sleeps and then resumes (power management) that the default brightness levels return, necessitating an re-toggle of the settings. I would expect that to be addressed in a software update.

We'll pass along updates as available.

Best regards,

Mark

 

One screenshot is of a Thinkpad T430s and the other of the Yoga 2 Pro - you figure which one is which - I am blown away with this display. Who cares about yellow being yellow or puke green.

I only wish the keyboard wasn't as poor, I will give the right shift key 14more days and it's back to BestBuy

 

I did some testing at both 1080p and also 1600x900. There was a gain of about 3% on 1080p and an additional 3% on 1600x900 . My tests were only performed on a 30 minute 1080p video playback to get those results. Screen was set to 45% brightness and power profile to power saver and I also had the cpu set to max of 40% cpu (movies still play smoothly at that setting)
To be honest, the battery is the most disappointing aspect of the Yoga 2. I have the original Yoga 13 and it ran 5hrs 30 min on a charge, so the extra 30 minutes is not too impressive (although my Yoga 13 was an i5 4gig 128gig model vs. the Yoga 2 I got is the i7 8gug 256gig model)

 

Thanks for the reply. You mentioned a 3% battery gain when on 1080p in a duration of 30 minutes. If Y2P runs 6 hours on 3200x1800 playing a 1080p video, running it at 1080 would yield an additional 3% x 12= 36% battery gain correct? 6hours x 1.36 = 8.16 hours. that makes sense now.


So we can assume to get 8 hours battery life on the Yoga 2 Pro at 1080p + your suggested various power settings. It would be a shame to only get 6 hours battery life considering it has a huge 7400mAh battery in it (same as MBA 2013).

 

Anyone noticing some strange scaling when extending to a second monitor? Seems it's trying to apply the hidpi scaling to the second monitor but that is not good since it's a 1920x1080 display. Also I can't get the taskbar to show up. From googling around I'm supposed to have some extra settings under Display or Taskbar to extend taskbar, etc. But it's not there.

One thing that may be the issue is my second monitor only has DVI in. So I'm using a micro-hdmi to hdmi cable and then a hdmi to dvi adapter. Could this be the culprit? This is a Viewsonic VX2450.

And here's my gripe list:

1) The keyboard layout and auxiliary button sizes are not for serious typists. There's an inch of room on each side that they could have used to address this. At least I could revert the Fn keys at the bios or this would have been jettisoned back to Best Buy in a second.

2) The screen bezel is so huge I don't see why they couldn't fit a 14" screen at a minimum and I'm missing my 4:3 aspect ratio.

3) Battery life is pretty mediocre. I just can't put my head around how Samsung Book 9 Plus is getting several hours more out of what seems to be a pretty similar spec sheet. I don't think a couple unique hinges have anything to do with battery consumption. And it's not an indexing issue. I don't have anything on here to index and don't see any processes that are running heavily that could be associated with indexing.