***Yoga 2 Pro Owners Thread***

I had the same problem. Someone responded to my griping and advised me to turn off the power saving feature in THREE different settings otherwise it will still dim. That's right, there are three different settings and all of them have to have the power savings feature disabled for it to turn off. Retarded.

One of them is in metro settings, another is under adaptive brightness accessible via the power icon in the taskbar. The last one is in Intel Graphics Properties. Once you get all of it turned off it stops dimming. HOWEVER, if you want to dim the screen further than the lowest brightness setting via the F11 key, the flickering will still be there if you drag the brightness slider between "off" and the lowest setting. It's the kind of flickering that makes you want to shoot your brains out. So I downloaded "PANGOLIN SCREEN BRIGHTNESS" and now I have to go into that setting every time I want to take the screen to a lower brightness setting then the F11 key will allow. It's a lame solution but it works and I'm a happy camper with a heavily dimmed, comfortable to read screen in a pitch black room with no flickering.

 

Day 2 with this machine.

Windows 8 has been a big adjustment for me. My friend saved my life though, with the suggestion to install Start8 and ModernMix at $5 each; as it turns out, you can get them together for $8 and I consider it very well worth it: https://store.stardock.com/product/ESD-SDS-W1225 Restores your Windows 7 start menu (you can still access Windows 8 interface if/as you wish), and bridles the Metro apps into controllable windowed apps (otherwise they're fullscreen-like-it-or-not).

I'm experiencing some quirkiness where sometimes the touchpad only half responds (I can move cursor but can't click anything) and in a couple of apps I got to windowed screens where I could not, for life of me, click a button -- neither with the touchpad nor the touchscreen, nor navigate with the keyboard even though the keyboard was working fine. I figure these are app compatibility issues largely tripping over the resolution. I really like the screen real estate with all these pixels BUT some of my favorite apps load super tiny (Winamp, several of the panels on that cannot be double-sized and so are super small) and Launchy; I just sort of operate from memory, but wish I didn't have to "just deal" with these things.
I really liked the keyboard although I'm a little confused why the Fn button is between the Ctrl and Win keys, when on my Thinkpad the Fn key is to the left of Ctrl; luckily that has not been tripping me up (although it feels awkward and I have to really think about it and look at the board everytime I want to hit a function key combo). What *is* a problem for me is that "close app" (should be alt+F4) and refresh (always F5) are right next to each other!!! I go to refresh something and accidentally hit the Close button and frustration ensues.

I love the smart rubbery texture all around framing the keyboard and palmrests, smart matte comfortable-feeling texture on the back of the screen/top panel, and good on the bottom too. So why the ridiculous touchpad SO prone to showing oil from our fingers? Why?

Also, when I press the Rotate On/Off toggle button, there's rarely any indication for me to know whether I've just enabled or disabled rotation, until I move my screen. Silly.

Wish it were a tad lighter, and 12 hours battery life would make me considerably happier. Other than all that, I think I really like this computer.

Btw, the Lenovo slot-in case ... it's nice, feels good, but a bit overly grippy--slotting the Yoga2Pro in and pulling it out take a bit more effort than I would like... They are a perfect fit, though... I just haven't used it much--yet. Maybe if I'm carrying it about and putting it on foreign surfaces I'll come to rely on it. So jury is out on that for now. What I need is some convenient place to carry around a little electronics cleaning cloth because all the oil/fingerprint smudges are rather disgraceful--a bit on the keyboard, the screen naturally, but epecially the touchpad.

 

Bluestacks is a great call. For what it's worth, I also run Windroy because Bluestacks drives me CRAZY with not being able to manage the files except from within the app (have to use a file explorer within Bluestacks to copy/move the file to a local Windows folder, and only then can you get to it) -- with Windroy, if you download something inside it, you can find it through Windows Explorer.

 

Btw, I would have very willingly paid more for a more powerful graphics card; why hobble an otherwise very fast and smart and reasonably powerful machine with a simply adequate graphics card? Plants v. Zombies should not be stuttering, but it is.
Besides that, it's keeping up very very well, and moves very fast.

 

This is what I did, and it helped me out. No more flickering:
I had the same issue with the screen brightness/backlighting. The first thing I did was to make sure that the automatic brightness control that uses an ambient light sensor to adjust the brightness was turned off. I did this by going into the control panel on the desktop and selecting Power Options. It will display the different power modes and on the right is an option to "change plan settings." Click on that for the power mode that you are in and then click "change advanced power settings" at the bottom of the window. Scroll down and click "Display" and then "Enable adaptive brightness" and turn it off.



Doing that kept the display from changing due to the ambient light but the backlighting would still change by itself, especially when switching between light and dark images, which sounds like what might be happening to you. I found a fix for the Yoga 13 that seems to fix this problem. Right click on the desktop and select "intel graphics properties." Select the "on battery" tab and turn off "Display Power Saving Technology." It seems like this attempts to reduce power consumption by adjusting the backlighting depending on what's being displayed but I found it extremely irritating.

 

When is there going to be a professional review of the y2 pro? What are they waiting for? Apple came out with a new PC, and they reviewed it like a day later!

 

Has anyone tried installing linux? The installation wasn't difficult, but now I'm pulling my hair out trying to get wifi to work. Has anyone been successful? Thanks!

 

I get that too. Its a windows thing. Happens a lot in ie metro where it just freezes and is unresponsive. Just Microsoft trying to hide quirks by making the app unresponsive instead of the screen going white like in w7. Usually fixes itself a few seconds

 

From the other thread. I have shortened the edit to match info you could use.

 

Dont know if it counts as a 'professional review' but here are a few vids
Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 2 Pro Ultrabook Laptop Review - YouTube
Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro Update - YouTube
Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro Review with Yoga 13 Comparison - YouTube

 

The answer is because of heat and power. A discrete graphics chip (or a more powerful integrated graphics chip) would require significantly better cooling and would inevitably draw a lot more power as well. Upping the graphics would result in a thicker, heavier, and noisier laptop. In the end, this machine does not claim or strive to be a gaming machine, and most users that Lenovo is targeted will not try to use it as such.

 

Having a discrete GPU doesn't mean it gets used all the time, only when gaming. The Zenbook UX302LG shows how well a gaming Ultrabook can be done.

 

There is absolutely no reason why Lenovo can't make an i5-4250U, i5-4350U, i7-4550U, or i7-4650U available as an option that we pay extra for. These are all 15W TDP rated parts with HD5000 graphics.

Given the average battery life, screen color issues, and non-optimal graphics selection, I'm leaning more and more towards returning the Y2P within my window and replacing it with a 13" MBA. Over a week in, and 99% of the time I'm only using it under the standard laptop form factor, so I'm starting to think that while this is an awesome idea in concept, there are a few deficiencies that I would prefer to not have to deal with. Perhaps if the Windows store were more developed I'd use the other "modes" more often and this would make up for the deficiencies (as I see them), but for me this is turning into a Lumia 928 situation all over again - I want to love it, but perhaps it's just not ready to be loved.

 

They probably don't because they know there is no profitable market for it in doing so.

 

Thanks Gazz. I've read about the kernel version issue from other sources, but thankfully Ubuntu 13.10 includes the 3.11 kernel and is able to recognize the Intel 7260 wifi/bluetooth hardware. The issue seems to be my inability to turn the hardware on -- Ubuntu says, "WIFI hardware disabled". I checked BIOS and the hardware is enabled. Other people in the linux community who have experienced a similar issue always seem to fix the problem by simply turning on WIFI with FN+F2 or FN+F5 or the wifi switch on the side/front of their machine. Does the YP2 have a wifi switch?

 

See my post below about unlocking the thermal limits on the GPU. Thanks to Lenovo that they left these settings tweakable (most ultra books have these settings locked) we can achieve gaming performance to that of an Intel HD5000 while still maintaining the battery life of 20EU when not gaming. Now if you were able to unlock the thermal limits on a Intel HD 5000 I bet you would have an even greater increase.

 

Thanks for the heads up. That's pretty awesome - I'll have to see what kind of battery life and GPU improvements (separately, not together obviously) can be achieved. Very nice find!

 

Thanks, I lowered the sensitivity, but I'm still having the same issue! When I'm working on a window, and try to scroll down with two fingers or just touch the touchpad to move my cursor, it keeps zooming in, which is very frustrating! the touchpad on my other laptop is much more accurate and less touchy with this Y2pro, that I'm about to return it just for that! Also, when I scroll down or up, it always feels so jerky and inaccurate! I wonder if it's a windows 8.1 or a yoga2pro issue?

 

Just saw this posted on the Y2P website. What does this mean? If we got our laptops in the first batch, are we stuck with this bad yellow color issue, while all new Y2Ps get better screens?

 

How can we tell if we're part of first batch or part of second batch? I don't think order date and receipt date are practical indicators because there were many factors that determined when we received our machines.

Edit added: Well I guess we tell based on whether or not we have the color issues. But then 1st batch people, are we supposed to return ours and get replacement?

 

Considering what has been said so far by the Lenovo techs participating in the discussion, I doubt they will fix the hardware. Sounds like they will try to fix it with a firmware patch and/or an update to the energy management app.

 

Not to worry. See previous posts quoting Mark at Lenovo saying that a fix will be pushed through an update. That will take two weeks minimum. I doubt they have fixed it on the new batch of machines since they haven't done the update yet but I could be wrong.

 

I ordered mine on best buy's website last week. was suppose to pick it up on friday but have yet become available for me to pickup. anyone experience this problem?

 

If you are going to get a mb air, perhaps you should wait till they upgrade it to a Retina screen because I checked out the current one screen, and to my eyes, it sucks, specialy the text!

 

The Wi-Fi issue is definitely not hardware, so it probably means they're just going to pre-install the latest Intel driver for the N7260.

Chances are good that if they're doing anything to address the "yellow" issue that this too will be a software/firmware fix and most likely available to all other Y2P owners at the same time (if not earlier). They already said they would be fixing the bug that prevents changes to the power management settings from being persistent, and there's a chance that that's *all* there is to this "fix" for the display.

I really don't think there's a hardware problem. It's just the inherent way that the PenTile RGBW display works in its lowest power modes, which it looks like Lenovo chose to use by default in order to boost battery life rating. Even a permanent "fix" will likely just be tweaking the PenTile controller firmware and/or power management to give a better default result and chances are good that there will be a battery life trade-off to be paid for this.

These PenTile technology displays are just *different* than traditional RGB-stripe LCD panels, and they have behavior that varies radically based on the power settings and potentially even the saturation level of the image currently being displayed. You get higher "line" resolution but lower color resolution (only 2/3 the number of addressable elements of a traditional LCD at the same resolution). A 4x4 "pixel" area on a traditional RGB stripe LCD contains 48 color elements in 16 groups of R, G, and B). The same 4x4 area on a PenTile RGBW LCD contains only 24 color elements (plus eight transparent "W" elements).

This all lets them have more effective lines-per-inch resolution hence the justifiable (according to the VESA standards for such things) claim of 3200. But there's a lot less color information in there I think than a traditional display would have at the same resolution. And for power saving when you don't need really saturated colors, they drop the LED backlight to ~50% power and open up those transparent "W" elements to provide equivalent image brightness at the cost of washing out the saturation of the colors because of all that added white light.

Read up on the technology here if you're interested:

PenTile Technology - What Does It Do?

I doubt that the hardware is going to change from what it was for the fist batch.

PF.

 

That would be great if it is just a firmware update and not an actual hardware update. I wish the Lenovo staff member would have said something more to that effect rather than addressing only the new batches as problem free.

 

Can someone please do me a favor? Preferably the younger crowd (no offense! but our ears change with time especially when trying to hear high frequency noises). When your fans are running (say watching a 720p youtube video) and you put your ear up the right and left fan. Do either exhibit a high pitch frequency noise? Put your ear not up to the exhaust but where the fan would be on the bottom panel.

Thanks!

 

2 questions:

1. have one of the first from bb....can this drive 4k resolution on a 4k external monitor, kinda like the rMBP can be tweaked to offer that resolution
2. has anyone figured out for sure if you can get 16GB ram onto this for adequte voice recognition through dragon?

thx to all for the great readings!

 

Same happened here, but Best Buy emailed me again with a UPS tracking number. It supposed to arrive from MN on Oct 31 now.

 

I just picked up the i5/4GB/128GB model from Best Buy, hot off the truck. While I tried to get the salesdroids to yank one off of the truck and give it to me, I spent some quality time looking over their demo unit. I brought an SD card full of my own camera images, and I really really didn't see anything amiss with yellows or any other color. I haven't even opened my box yet, but we'll see how it goes -- I'll report back.

Meanwhile, I really struggled with the high resolution, and it really begs one question:

Is there anything really "wrong" with just setting it for 1920 x 1080, and just using it there? I really don't have any need for higher resolution than that, and trying to adjust things with the display settings wasn't very satisfying at all. Meanwhile, I didn't see anything amiss when I set it to 1920 x 1080. Of course, I'll play with everything once I get mine unboxed and set up, but I'd be glad to hear what any of you might think about it.

Thanks!

thoots

 

Really, when you go to Excel or even Paint and select the "yellow" color, it does not appear off to you? Not picture but the actual color selection in those programs. If not then maybe they solved the color issue with this "new batch" then.

I also put my resolution to 1080p and am happy using it like that.

 

It would also make sense if the display/demo unit was plugged in and running in Maximum Performance mode where the color issue is greatly reduced (as in, the solid yellow color looks more accurate). This issue is most obvious when running on battery power and in a power saver mode. When I bump mine into Maximum Performance mode, it is a lot harder to pick out the color issue. I've done some side-by-side comparisons with other devices, and the colors are really pretty close.

 

I don't have the bolded. My Windows8 is 220.60GB. The rest looks the same.

 

That's for a different battery type -- NiCad I think, or maybe it was NiMH, or maybe both, can't recall.. but it is *not* the case for Lithium-Ion or Lithium-Polymer batteries (the YP2 has the latter). See batteryuniversity.com for details.. upshot is that it's a bit of an art, it seems, but in general it's better to keep the Lithium based batteries from getting too low (though an occasional discharge to low power is useful to help maintain accuracy of the battery meter in software).

 

I picked up my Y2P I think the second day that Best Buy had them available, so I've had it a good couple of weeks or so. I'm completely happy with it. I have a Lenovo T-510, which I loved as well, but it's a heavy beast and not touch screen. I went from that to a Surface Pro, which is nice and small and touch capable, but a bit too small of a screen and an odd form factor - really hard to just sit in your lap. The Y2P is the best of all worlds.

It's a traditional laptop that you can actually use in your lap, but beautifully light and thin. The keyboard is OK, not as good as my T-510 of course, but better than the Surface's type cover. The track pad is one of the best I've ever used on a PC. Sadly, Apple still rules in this area, but this is the first one I've seen that even comes close.

I've had no wifi problems at all. I had the Bluetooth mouse cutting out, but I figured out the power settings on that.

The screen is beautiful. Like everyone else, I freaked out about the yellow stuff for a day or so. Then started doing the energy manager thing, then that was a pain in the neck so I stopped doing it and honestly I've never once looked at the screen and thought, "oh my god, the yellow is off." If you are looking at large swaths of yellow, yeah, it's not yellow. If you sit there and watch the same movie or look at the same pictures side by side with another monitor, yeah, you'll see a difference - as you will with ANY two monitors that aren't professionally calibrated. But day to day use, it never, ever crosses my mind. Unless you NEED to have accurate colors (you're a designer or something) or you look at a lot of stuff that's very predominantly yellow, it's just not going to be an issue for you. Unless of course you make it one. And there's a fix in the works anyway. Yes, I know people are pissed off about it and one viewpoint is that we should all scream our lungs out until it is fixed and if we just accept poor quality then companies will give us poor quality. So feel free to carry on your crusades if you feel that's what you need to do. For me, it's a tempest in a teapot.

Battery life, I think I'm getting around 6 hours of general use including some video. I don't pay much attention to it either. I unplug it after dinner and take it into the living room and use it throughout the night until bed time, and again in the morning a bit and plug it in during the day and never have a problem. It's not a battery that's going to blow your mind, but it's adequate. I'm sure with setting the right power saver modes and turning off this and that, I could easily do a cross country flight without a charge, so that's good for me.

So all in all, very happy. Two thumbs up. Would buy again, as is.

 

Has anyone asked lenovo how they get 9 hrs of battery life on a Y2 pro? I can only get 6hrs with light use, balanced mode, 40% brightness, web surfing, using office and nothing else much (a couple of hours with the keyboard light on). I have yet to hear from anyone yet that they got more than 6hrs.I have the I7 256/08 gb model.

 

So where is the best price to purchase now? BestBuy has it listed for $1200 but it says shipping not available and I can't find any stores with it either! Is there a Lenovo coupon to get the same price with them?

I have seen lots of talk about the WiFi AC but may have driver issues, was this resolved by getting the newest from Intel's website? (I only made it through page 30/36 so please forgive me if already discussed)

Thanks

 

Thoughts so far: Day 2.

1. I'm happy with 1920 x 1080 resolution. Everything seems to be perfectly sharp and precise.

2. Messing around with "scaling" to make things bigger has been a bit frustrating. Essentially, if I choose one of the overall scaling options, it wipes out all of the settings I had previously set. So, it has been "back to square one again" a few times, but I'm getting things close to how I want them to be.

3. Oh, here is one REALLY REALLY BIG frustration with Windows 8.1: The initial Windows 8.0 setup on other machines allowed me to log on with a "local account" -- "not logged in with my Microsoft ID." But, I sure couldn't find any way to do that with 8.1 on the Y2P. So, then it was back to Google again to figure out how to switch to a local account. I DO NOT WANT TO BE "LOGGED IN" EVERY MINUTE I USE A COMPUTER. SHEESH!! Bleeping bleeping bleeping Microsoft bleepheads.

4. Further clarification of my thoughts about color: I sure don't think it's just "yellow." "All" of the colors are definitely "off" compared to my desktop monitor. Though, I think you can make some improvements by tweaking the color settings in the Intel HD Graphics controls. I'm relatively happy now, with Brightness at 0, Contrast at 47, and Gamma at 1.0, but that doesn't mean that I'm done tweaking yet. I think this tends to take care of my "saturation" issues -- mainly, bringing the contrast down so that the existing saturation kind of "fills in" the pictures, rather than the pictures having just a ton of brightness and contrast, instead. I think these settings are a tiny bit "muted," but single steps of adjustments can make pretty significant changes, so I may try some very slight changes. In the end, especially with a bit of tweaking, I think it's pretty hard to see anything amiss if you just "look at pictures" -- the colors may not be exactly accurate, but you may not notice anything odd at all unless you're looking at the same pictures on a different, trusted monitor at the same time.

5. Overall, I'm pretty happy so far, as I continue "building" my Y2P. I want a reasonably-sized, reasonably-speedy machine with an IPS screen, a backlit keyboard (and a decent keyboard at that), and the Y2P seems to be delivering on all of that.

6. Finding a case for the Y2P has been a little challenging -- it seems to be a bit wider than the average 13.1-inch notebook sleeve. Or at least the "interesting" 13.1-inch notebook sleeves. I wound up getting the Incase "Sling Sleeve" for the MacBook Pro 13" -- here:

Sling Sleeve for 13" MacBook Pro by Incase

A bit of a cross between a sleeve and a shoulder bag, you can stuff quite a bit into it if needed, or keep it down to just the notebook itself, and then it's not much more than a sleeve with handles.

That's it for now, and hopefully I haven't bored you too much!

thoots

 

For cases, I really like the quality of the custom made WaterField products, though they are on the higher end of the price scale.

PF.

 

What's the ship date on all of your orange i7/8g/256gb yoga pro 2's? Mine says 11/05. Wondering if it is earlier for anyone else?

 

I love this laptop, my biggest complaint so far is the touch pad, with the stock drivers it is very unpredictable, goes all over the place. Scrolling with two fingers moves then trying to locate where the mouse ends up to click on something really irritates me. I switched to the Synaptics driver from their website, set everything up, loose two finger tap option, even if you change the registry settings, but I can live with that. The really annoying part is that the touchpad doesn't get disabled wen in tablet or tent mode. I will live with it for no until there is a driver update for the erratic motion of the mouse after using two finger swype, anyone else experiencing this?

Has anyone gotten WIDI to work? Heard their are issues with 8.1, didn't know if the Y2P is confirmed working yet. I have a media box with it enabled and have yet to successfully connect to it as a display, it will connect as a device, but doesn't see that device as a display.

Add - F6 will not disable touchpad after new driver install from Synaptics website.....

 

Yeah, I pretty much hate the touchpad too. I tried adjusting the sensitivity level, but it's still not accurate and it's jerky. I also disabled pinch to zoom because it kept doing it by itself! Today in class I was frustrated because you have to be quick to follow the professor and I couldn't!. Hopefully an update on the driver should help. The touchpad, keyboard and case are also a fingerprint magnet. But where can you get an I7 256GB/08 GB for $1279? Nowhere!

 

I also want to know how to get WiDi working, doesn't work with my LG smart tv.

 

Can someone please help explain the settings I should be using for connecting the Y2P to an external monitor or projector? Due to the high resolution and DPI scaling of the Y2P, I am seeing huge icons/text on the lower resolution projectors for work.

 

No, I do that often and it is fine. Gaming in tent mode (why would you ever even think about it) would not work

 

When did you order and does your say 11/5 right now? Is that arrival or shipment?

I ordered on 10/18 for the same one you ordered. At that time it indicated that it would ship 10/29 and should arrive on 11/5. As of last Friday I think, it says ship on 11/14 and arrival on 11/21. Not happy here.

 

Hey guys, has anyone done any serious gaming pi n Y2P? How does it handle it?

 

hey guys... When using CHROME....

i get this annoying thing that says "Downloading Proxy Script"

Though I am not using any proxy settings etc in networking

any input?

 

Guys, I don't have the patience to go through all the pages here....but, can any one please tell me about these questions......
1. Does Y2P support Wacom digitizer pen input?
2. Is it the Gorilla Glass on the display? How does it perform against the minor scratches?
3. Any color issue on the display? Heard that there is some in the yellow color.

 

Is auto detect turned on in your LAN settings? If it is, you could try turning it off and see if it helps.

From within Chrome: Customize and control button > Settings > Show Advanced Settings > Network\Change proxy settings > LAN settings > Uncheck 'Automatically detect settings'.