Yoga 2 Pro Release Thread

My fans been pretty silent, I noticed it comes on a lot sooner in tablet mode.

Also I noticed some squeeling noise when using during charge. Doesn't happen all the time sort of randomly.

 

Well, the real problem is that you can get better color rendering on a $300 laptop. With that you would think they they would fix it but then I am reminded of Asus who had the worst color bleed problem in history on just about every zenbook they made for two years and they could have cared less.

 

I just heard back from Mark (administrator on Lenovo Community site). They are formally looking into the color rendering issue but gave me a setting that while it does not still render bright yellow does make the screen brighter and does appear to add more yellow to my "Paint" sample that I have stretched across both my laptop and external monitor.

On the Windows 8 start screen, type in and select the Energy Manager. Below the battery gauge, select the last option on the right which looks like a wish bone. This changes your setting to Max Performance. My screen instantly brightened and the green wasn't so puke-y. For me, this was a big improvement. It still may not be acceptable for graphic artists, photographers, etc. On my connected external monitor the Paint sample is definitely bright yellow and that is where I will be doing most of my work so I think this is going to work for me. When I am unplugged and use the power saver plan to extend battery life, I probably am not going to be editing photos or websites so I won't notice the less than yellow coloring.

If I hear more from Mark about this issue I will let you know as long as you promise to not kill the messenger if you don't like their response/solution .

 

Thanks for the updates. I'm going to give the setting a try and post my results with it later.

 

Based upon the feedback, I went ahead and ordered the orange i7. I liked the idea of the i7 with the 512GB but didn't come in orange and was more money so went with the orange. I can replaced the SSD later if I need to.

One interesting thing is that when I ordered online it said the expected ship date was 11/5. However, the order confirmation says the expected ship date is 10/29 and estimated delivery date is 11/5.

As far as the color issue, I have to say that for my use this is a non-issue. I looked at the screenshots and knew of the issue before I saw it at the store. So I was prepared to not like the screen. One of the reasons I went to BB was to see how it looked in person. And, truthfully, it looked fine for me. Now, I realize it wouldn't be OK for some people and some uses. But, I have a desktop for anything serious I want to do. This is just for casual use (sitting on the bed watching TV or when I go out of town), so for that the display looked great to me and I didn't notice anything wrong with the colors (and I hate yellow so I would never use it on anything if I didn't have to). That said, I will certainly take a close look at it when it arrives.

 

Thanks a ton for this! Makes me much happier with my purchase. I still hope Lenovo will do further firmware tweaks, but at least it no longer looks like puke.

 

That made a huge difference, now to see what else it may effect. Now I wonder what the results would be if you completely uninstall that energy manager.

 

I just tried this and have different results than you. I had not tried splitting the video across my Y2P and external monitor (interesting suggestion) but just did and I could not tell ANY color difference between my laptop and my external monitor when it came to video. My external monitor is an old Dell LCD flat panel with just 1680x1050 resolution so that may play a factor in my results. I noticed too though that my so called yellows do have more color to them than the pictures you posted. Yours appear to be a dirty white whereas mine have more green to them.

I received a PM from Mark (administrator in the Lenovo Community) and they have formally opened an engineering case on this but at the same time are not yet acknowledging that is a design flaw. So I thank you Takiat for starting the thread in Lenovo Community because apparently it has been noticed and they are taking action.

 

Wow that made a huge difference...!!

 

It made enough of a difference for me that I am sure in a couple of days I will have forgotten there was a "yellow" problem to begin with. Of course I do wonder how this will effect battery time (not that I care that much about it). It does seem now that it may be a software issue and I will try to totally uninstall it and see what happens tomorrow.

 

Does energy manager high performance mode do anything but set max brightness? That plus set max performance on everything in advanced power options?

 

OK so if you change the Energy Manager to that Wishbone/Performance setting, you can then go into Control Panel and override that setting with the Windows 8 profiles WITHOUT putting back the puke-green yellows. This is looking better by the minute!

 

Uninstalling it brings back the problem. You NEED to be able to pick that profile in the Lenovo Energy Manager software first. Then you can override it in Control Panel with a more balanced plan which does NOT put back the crappy colors, thankfully.. Hopefully Lenovo will fix needing the Energy Manager software in the first place, but for now at least this issue is reduced hugely.

 

For me, I had my Y2P already at max brightness and the change to high performance made a big difference. I had tried calibrating the display, adjusting hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, etc but nothing helped until I changed this setting. This would definitely affect battery life when unplugged but I will either throttle it down or live knowing it will affect battery. I'm going to unplug, set for high performance and see what kind of battery life I get tonight. I'll report back later.

 

Good to know! I'm going to try that tomorrow after tonight's battery test and see what kind of battery life I get.

 

Grrr. If you put the system to sleep or shut it down, you need to switch the Lenovo Energy Management picture mode, and then switch back. THAT'S annoying.

 

People are focusing on yellow, but any saturated color will be displayed incorrectly. Yellow is just a combination of red and green, after all. I think it's just that a dark yellow is more objectionable than other dark colors. Also, yellow is the closest color in brightness to white when only mixing two primary colors.

The only way I can see for Lenovo to completely fix the color issue is by allowing the user to disable (or significantly reduce the brightness of)) the white subpixel.

 

Yep, just experienced this same issue, sigh. Was hoping the easy fix would work without issue.

So what happens if you then edit Windows battery plan to conserve power without lowering monitor brightness, but then you have to re-select high performance mode to get back the yellow color after sleep?

 

Yes, not sure the fixation on yellow. Probably because it's the easiest to see. It's all colors, absolutely. I'm returning mine. I'm glad the prices are now approaching reasonable for this sort of system, but I'm going to wait for a more competent company to release a decent laptop. There's absolutely no reasons the QC should be so poor here.

 

While you are in there, enable all the touch options. There are three you should be able to enable:

• Touch Events
• Touch optimized UI
• Touch enabled drag and drop

 

I just noticed that when I opened the lid.

 

Thanks much for the confirmation & pics re wifi/ssd accessibility -- the manual makes it sound as though they are harder to get to than they in fact are, so that's great info.

One question re said top row of keys -- it looks like the function keys are the "alternates" for that row via the Fn button.. do you (or anyone) happen to know if there is a way to invert or lock the Fn key for a period of use?

The color accuracy issue now seems like it ought to be sufficiently subject to software adjustments to ultimately be made acceptable, if not great (assuming they follow through and do so!) ..so now I'm just hoping I can make the keyboard work for me (better than it apparently has for you, sorry to hear). Risk of buying sight unseen, I guess -- maybe I'll go check if BB does have a floor display model.

 

I think you can disable the hotkeys in the BIOS UEFI settings by disabling Hot Key Function..of course then when you want to use them you have to turn them back on in the bios to do so. Or maybe it just reverses the behavior of the fn key. Try it and let us know.

 

Does anybody know if the keyboard sizes are the same between the Yoga 13 and the Yoga 2 Pro? Trying to buy a keyboard cover for it.

 

And thank you Mark for talking to the Lenovo reps while I was stuck at work. You kept this thing going and got us a temp fix before they even posted it on the forums. Awesome man!
I changed that setting and wow, I actually have a yellow palette now!!! It's still not exactly right but a heck of a lot better. Lenovo should be able to come up with a fix for the remaining difference pretty soon since it was partially due to just a power setting in some software.

Mark's temp fix needs to be stickied since it will need to be done to 100% of all yoga's built to this point.

 

It seems it was a power setting that controlled brightness and when you use the settings Mark described above, you will like your yoga a lot more!

Thank You All who posted over on Lenovo's forum. The push made them look seriously at this issue and I am more confident they will completely fix the issue.

 

Tirilwen,

Did you have any luck with the Intel 7260 ac swap?

 

Sorry guys it seems the package hasn't arrived yet.

 

If it's the card I think it is, it won't fit. Look at my picture from a page back of my opened-up Yoga 2. The wifi card looks quite different (top left of the image). Or maybe the Amazon picture is incorrect. Guess you'll find out when you get it!

 

Thanks everyone for your persistence and quick reaction to the issue. But with the potential fix being some power management setting, how does this affect battery, being that screen brightness is a major factor?

 

Thanks -- yeah, I was hoping to discover that there is something that could be toggled while up and running, not a fixed change in the bios.. Basically, I find the hotkeys are sufficiently nice to have for general use, such that I don't mind hitting the extra Fn key for the occasional F5, Ctrl+F4 etc.; but for some tasks calling for constant sustained function key use (esp. for IDE/debugger use), would be super useful to be able to swap and make the Fn keys primary.. be a shame to have to reboot & make a bios change to do that. (Maybe even critical, so good to know there is probably a bios option as a last resort.)

 

Not sure if this is what you were talking about, but I was just looking at those sleeves/"slot-in" cases on the website.. From what I can gather (the text is sparse), it looks like there is indeed a slightly different one: Yoga2 13" Slot-in Case | 888015541 | Lenovo | (US) for the Yoga 2, vs what appears to be the earlier one for the Yoga 13 ( Lenovo 13inch Yoga Slot-in Case | Lenovo | (US)).

Confusing matters is that when you select the Accessories & Services tab on the Yoga 2 Pro product page, it presents you with (what seems to be) the older sleeve, but if you add the Yoga 2 Pro to your cart, it's that apparently newer Yoga2 version that it includes among the accessories options. Best guess is that linking to the other one in the tab on the product page is a mistake (a shame, since it's on special for $10 off .. and $40 seems pretty steep for a simple sleeve).

Unless you were talking about some other kind of keyboard cover? If so, curious to know what else you were looking at..

Not sure if BestBuy has the sleeves, and if not, supposing no one who's got a Yoga 2 has one yet, since everyone's got it from BB so far.. if I'm wrong, anyone who's got the case, have you found it useful? Does seem like it might be nice to have something to slide it into if you use it in tablet mode a lot (but then maybe it's just as easy to fold the thing back over.. .

 

Actually, it would really be nice on these mini-books if the Fn key operated (or could be configured to operate) as a toggle, rather than a press-n-hold (basically like the F-lock on the keyboard I'm using right now).. personally I'd find that a lot more useful.

 

nah I'm talking about the plastic keyboard covers that prevent your keys from getting dirty. Also, regarding that cover on the Lenovo website, I wanted to buy one of those until I read reviews that while it's helpful, the laptop sticks out slightly over the edge. So it's useful if you're trying to protect your keyboard in the stand-mode, but if you want to use it as a sleeve/case, then it's not sufficient.

 

Exactly.. seems like some impact on battery life will be unavoidable. TCWhite has said he'll experiment and post some results, so that should at least give us some idea, maybe of just some worst case scenarios, anyway (whatever the results, I'd think that with some judicious tweaking a finer adjustment in software would have a lesser impact than simply changing that pwm setting to max performance..).

 

Thanks. Perhaps they got some feedback on the prior sleeve and this 2nd version will fit better, guess we'll find out.

 

For the ones I'm looking at on Amazon, the basic package looks the same ( Amazon.com: Intel Wireless-N 7260 802.11bgn 2x2 2.4GHz Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.0 802.11a/b/g/n Adapter: Computers & Accessories, vs Amazon.com: Intel Network 7260.HMWG WiFi Wireless-AC 7260 H/T Dual Band 2x2 AC+Bluetooth HMC: Computers & Accessories).. but then maybe the first one isn't quite the right one, though it seems to be. Anyway, guess we should find out soon enough, hopefully will work fine.

In a way, I can kind of understand the decision to forego the more advanced wifi -- *if* upgrading the card is not a problem. Decent b/g/n 2.4ghz is probably still the common denominator for the majority of users, so using that keeps costs down a bit, while folks who need it can swap in a dual-band/AC card as needed. Would still be nice to have it offered as an option, though.

 

I don't think this will be an issue when they release a permanent fix. I used the temp fix to make the yellow more yellow, then I tried lowering the brightness. After I did that, the yellow still looked like a dim yellow instead of turning mustard green/puke color.

 

Can you please post a side by side comparison of yellow with a regular setting and performance setting as suggested by Mark from Lenovo? Everybody is saying there is a huge difference yet nobody has posted a side by side comparison. Thanks!!

 

So..Y2P owners..do I buy or not buy? debating...actively..between the MBA or this..I'm OS agnostic so take that out of the equation.

I appreciate your thoughts!

 

MBA advantages over the Y2P:
1) 10~hours battery life
2) MacOS X unmatched trackpad support
3) Sturdier body

Y2P advantages over the MBA
1) 4 awesome modes (think of the things you can do with all those modes, particularly watching youtube, movies etc.)
2) Windows Store Apps you can get for free
3) Convenience of a touch screen especially when a mouse cannot be used
4) Much, much higher display PPI and viewing angles (IPS) so a much, much better screen
5) Legacy apps support of Windows

 

The Wifi card is an M.2 format, not mini PCI-E. You need to look for the 7260NGW and not the 7260HMW. I couldn't find one on amazon so got it from mfactors.com . The picture was valuable to figure this out thanks much!

Update: Just got my shipping notice from the Lenovo website - ordered the max'ed out 512gb version - should be here next week.

 

Using the Performance setting with 100% brightness gave me just 3 hours 44 minutes of battery life compared to the 6 hours and 50 minutes I got last night at 50% brightness.

 

Bro, can you please post a side-by-side comparison between the color yellow at Performance setting with the yellow at regular setting? I would really appreciate it as this will be my deciding factor whether to buy re-order my purchase. Thanks!

 

Here is a comparison:

 

So playing a movie with Airplane mode on and screen at 50% brightness I am only getting an estimated 6hrs. I have the Yoga 13 which I was getting 5.5 hours. I am pretty disappointed in the very slight upgrade in battery life. The Yoga 13 was only the i5 128gb 4gb memory model.

Is there anything I can do to improve this battery life? It seems the Yoga 2 Pro does charge a little faster though. My concern is using the Yoga 2 Pro for long haul flights (6hrs + with 2 hour layovers)

Any advice on battery conservation other than power savings mode at 50% screen brightness?

 

This is non max power:


This is on Max power:


And finally this is true yellow from my desktop:


Hope this helps

 

Here is another comparison shot for you. My Y2P is on the left and external monitor on the right. First shot is regular setting and second shot is performance. Not sure if you can really tell the difference in these photos but IRL it is big difference.


Tammy

 

Power options / plan settings / advanced power settings / lower max processor state to 80 or whatever's an acceptable amount of slowness

 

I think you're right, it won't fit. Oh well, I'll stick it on my Thinkpad that has Intel Wireless 1000.