2017 IdeaPad 720s is looking good!

This is a pretty sweet machine so far The only place I have been able to locate them is at our local Microcenter.

Your thoughts? Any fans out there for this particular brand and series? The 8th gen "U" CPU's are amazing!

 

I just bought one today at Micro Center (the $800 version with the i5). So far, so good.

Turbo boost seems to be disabled by default by the BIOS (or you need some stupid software for it? I did a clean Windows install.), but enabling Speed Shift in ThrottleStop allowed me to get the full 3.4GHz turbo.

The GeForce MX150 definitely has a low-ish power limit set compared to say the HP Spectre 15. My guess is that it's 15W on the Ideapad vs 25W on the Spectre, but I can't actually read out the power limit. Without any undervolting the MX150 hits ~1200MHz under load, which is still respectable and resulted in a 3DMark Fire Strike of ~2800. With some undervolting I got that to ~3100 (for comparison, the HP Spectre 15 is ~2100 with 940MX, ~3500 with MX150).

No throttling issues as far as I can tell, other than the obvious power limits.

The keyboard is good; I wouldn't say it's anything exceptional but it's definitely fine to type on. It's better than the Dell 7567 I have, which has a very meh keyboard. My old Thinkpad T530 is definitely much better.

Touchpad is a Precision Touchpad and appears to have a glass surface. It works well, as all Precision Touchpads have in my experience.

The screen is very nice; it's an AU Optronics B140HAN, though the whitepoint is way off by default (~7300K and very green). I measured a contrast ratio of ~1250:1 with my Colormunki Display, which is excellent for an IPS display. After gray-scale calibration the contrast ratio dropped to ~1130:1, which is still quite good (calibration done using DisplayCal). The primaries of the display are a good match for sRGB and I measured 90% coverage, which, again, is pretty good. 1080p at 100% scaling is a bit small in a 14" display, but it's usable enough if you have good eyesight.

Fan control on this laptop sucks. The fans are whiny, and the fan control algorithm doesn't have much (if any) hysteresis, so the fans are constantly changing speed if you have any kind of load.

My SSD is a 256GB Intel 600p. On the plus side, it's NVMe. On the negative side, the 600p is probably the worst NVMe SSD. It's probably a better choice than the random Toshiba OEM M.2 drive that came with my Dell.

The 720s (2017 version) will charge off of USB-C. I've successfully charged it with a bunch of USB-PD adapters, including my Verizon USB-PD car charger (9V/3A), various HP USB-C chargers (one 15V/3A, one 20V/3A), an Apple 61W adapter (20V/3A), and Google 60W USB-C power adapter (20V/3A). The laptop can and will draw 60W from a USB-C power adapter that supports it. The Yoga does *not* appear to charge on USB-C power adapters which don't support Power Delivery, so if you were hoping to use your smartphone adapter, it's probably not going to work (though the Pixel/Pixel 2 adapter might, since it supports USB-PD and can supply 9V).

For $800 I think the Ideapad 720S-14 (with the MX150 and the 8th-gen i5) is an easy yes unless you're bothered by fan noise. I'm bothered by fan noise and even I think it's a "yes". The combination of 8th-gen Intel CPUs and the MX150 is really a slam dunk in laptops this size. The MX150 is something like 3x as fast and 2x as power efficient as the Intel graphics, and because the 8th-gen CPUs are really power limited, you want to be spending that 15W power budget on the CPU cores and not on the graphics.

 

Took the plunge today and ordered the new i7-8550 720S. Lenovo has it on sale for less than the 8th gen i5, so it was a no-brainer. I am coming from an XPS 13 9350, so interested to see how my Ideapad will stack up.

 

I just found out about this model a few days ago and I'm really interested in it.
Previously I was considering to buy the asus zenbook ux430ua. Now that I found IdeaPad 720s, I can't keep my mind off of it!

I do have a question if you don't mind, I can't decide between the i5 and i7 variant, I know all the difference between them, but ram is more important to me than the cpu or even ssd size.
Is it really worth it to pay extra $200 for i7 variant?

Also how is the battery life with dedicated gpu? Can you reach 7 8 hours in normal daily usage? Are you able to like disable the dedicated gpu and use intel gpu instead to save more power?

 

Erfan,

I'm in the US, so not sure if the configurations offered are different in other counties, but here is what I saw when ordering on their site...
There was one 8th gen i7 with 16GB and the MX150, but at that price you would be better off going with other solutions because it reaches price wise GB Aero 14 territory.
The one I picked is the i7-8550U (4C,8T) with the MX150 with 8GB Ram, the PCIe storage card I can replace with something more powerful and larger down the road, the rest is soldered in place, including the RAM.

On the other hand you can go with last gen i7-7500U, but with 16GB ram, however the more antiquated 940MX GPU.

There was no i5 offering when I checked that had the 16GB RAM, but again that may be location based offerings.

As far as battery live goes, I can't comment until I get the laptop in hand. Reviews are a mixed bag, where some say that the battery is sub-standard for a laptop in this category and others state that the battery is decent. It all depends on your usage behavior too, so giving an account on how long a battery lasts greatly depends on many factors.

For me the choice clear. I wanted a laptop with dedicated GPU, but id didn't need to be a 1060 and it had to be price wise in an area that made sense to me. Out the door with the instant discount and a 2 year onsite warranty and an extra 5% of I got the 8th gen i7 model with 8GB ram for under $1000 US, including the dang sales tax ;-).

 

swissarmyknife, thank you very much for your detailed explanation and I really appreciate it.

I'm also in the US and the price difference was from the microcenter prices as you already know and for the image from Lenovo website I already checked it and the price difference from the Lenovo website and the microcenter is a little huge.

I'm a master student so I will use my laptop as all the normal daily usages like web surfing, streaming, etc ... as well as Microsoft Office with some Adobe Acrobat and also some Autodesk applications like CAD. I will also use a few coding applications such as matlab or python. I hope to get atleast 6 hours from it with my usage.

Portability and battery life were my main priorities, I didn't want something extremely expensive which in this case is xps 13. That was why I ended up with zenbook series, but I really love this IdeaPad. My prefered price range was $1000 including sales tax but I could stretch it to $1100 at the highest.

Do you have any ideas about its quality in the long run (including battery, lcd and other parts)? I will keep all my devices in almost mint condition, am I able to do the same with this model? I will keep it at least for the next 2 or 3years and it will be my main computer device.

I'm considering to buy the highest configuration, i7, 16gb of ram and 512gb ssd from microcenter. Any thoughts?

Also any suggestions from other brands are welcomed!

 

From the Lenovo's site I chose option #2 you listed above. That one came in under 1k, whereas the #3 option added over 500 on cost and as said at that price point I would rather buy the Aero 14 with 7700HQ and the 1060GPU for only a hundred more.

I am an engineer and use my laptop primarily for daily office tasks and SolidWorks, Spotfire, Tableau, JMP, etc. I play an occasional game but that has been far and between as I have a desktop that is much better suited for that.

When Lenovo sprung off from IBM they had their fair share of reliability issues, however they are now long gone. The build quality now is very good, as for reliability I don't know yet because this is a new configuration even for them, but reviews so far are encouraging and Lenovo does have decent on-site support, another reason why I chose this one.

So to summarize, if 16GB is really important to you than for sure option #3 you listed is the way to go, however if you can live with 8GB and later upgrade the SSD (BTW, you can do much better on your own upgrading the SSD for lower cost and you get what you want), then I think option #2 above makes more sense as it is over 500 less directly from Lenovo. Also if you use the coupon SAVEXTRA5 you get a extra 5% off the order. If you worry about reliability throw a 2yr on-site contract at it for 69 which is cheap insurance.

Good luck ;-)

 

BTW, I am going by what youtuber BoaT posted here in stating that the DIMM is actually soldered to the MB. If that is not the case and the service manual substantiates this, the DIMM might be removable and that means we will be able to upgrade to 16GB on our own.

Youtube :
Service manual : https://download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles_pub/ideapad720s-14ikb_hmm_201705.pdf


Also, I stand corrected. The MC deal for the 16GB is actually very good and I would go with that. 999 for what Lenovo asks 1400 is certainly a very good deal.

 

Awesome work swissarmyknife!

I just found out that the original poster of this post is the guy from this youtube video you just mentioned! lol

If he would just took of that metal cover off of ram it would shed some light on whether it is soldered or not!

Very nice review! The MC deal for the i7, 16GB is truly good! I'm just worried that the Lenovo would have a sale on Black Friday so I could buy the same variant from them for better support and also added warranty plan ...

 

I wasn't sure if it's the same person, the avatar would suggest so ;-)

In the youtube review it sounded like he confirmed that it was soldered, but like you said, we better check ourselves once we get our machines.

 

I just confirmed it through a the Lenovo sales support, they said that it does not have a DIMM slot!

So that means it is soldered on.

I think I'm gonna buy it through the MC in this week because of it's awesome price!

 

Great work Erfan and I agree, MC seems to be a sweet deal.

 

I have a good news and bad news!

I was talking to another lenovo sale support just now, named Adrian I also have his rep id!, he said that it indeed has a dimm slot. I asked it many times and he checked and assured me that it has a dimm slot and it's not soldered on!
He referred me to this page, http://psref.lenovo.com/Product/Lenovo_Laptops/ideapad_720S_14 , when you click on the specifcation it will show you a pdf file which is stated that,

" Chipset: Intel Soc (System on Chip) platform
Memory: 16GB max / 2133MHz DDR4, one SO-DIMM socket "


Also I checked the part number that MC had for both models with Lenovo, and they said there aren't any devices with this part number and asked me what was the model of that machine!
For the highest config on MC, it didn't specify exactly which type of core i7 it has!

 

Man!! I just canceled my order after I spoke to someone at work advising me to also get the 16GB ram version. Regardless, I think the MC version has to be the 8th gen I7 for two assumed reasons.

1. It clearly states that it comes shipped with the MX150 and at Lenovo that combination is only sold with the 8th gen Intels, not 7th.
2. The spec sheet page from MC refers to the model as the MFG P# as : 81BD..... which is the same as Lenovo shows on their website for the 8th gen Intel's

Short of calling a MC sales rep on the floor to confirm what processor it is, we are only guessing here, but I have a pretty good feeling that the ones on MC are the new 8th gen.

So I have one on order from MC, we will see.

From MC's webpage:


From Lenovo's webpage:


The older 7th gen models all start with 80X....

so lets hope, because I ain't canceling again ;-)

 

You did the best option, because with lower specs you still have to upgrade it in the future. Even with a very good deal you can't simultaneously upgrade both ram and hard drive with $200 in total.

That's my main concern that they may have different parts or I don't know .. Maybe I could even get it directly from Lenovo with a deal on black friday?

I also checked with an in-store sale rep from MC, and she confirmed it's 8th gen intel. So no worries.
When will you receive your precious laptop? As I remember they need a few days to process the order and other few days for the standard shipment, which means it could take almost a week?

 

Well, I canceled today, had to wait for Lenovo to accept my cancellation and then placed an order right after with MC. So if it's actually in stock its suppose to ship by Wednesday and likely get here by maybe Monday or Tuesday next week.

 

Today I talked to another lenovo sale support agent, and she immediately told me that i5 version has a soldered ram, and only i7 version has a dimm slot and it supports only upto 16gb.

I also talked to another agent, he told me that they will have a black friday deal, and with my university referral link, all discounts combined together, the price still wouldn't be $999.

So I decided and placed my order through MC. It will almost take a week to receive it. They have a 14 days return policy.
I then talked to another agent from MC, she said it's a possibility to have a black friday deal on this system but she didn't think this system would be on black friday deals, so I won't open the package and will wait till then to see if I can get it even lower. I prefer to buy it directly from lenovo.

P.S.
I'm also still worried about its battery life. How many hours can you take from this system with normal everyday usage? Can it be something like 6 7 hours?

 

Today I got a quote from a Lenovo sale agent for i7, 16gb ram and 512gb ssd for $1000.99 without tax. Only $2 price difference with MC, but with free shipping! So the only difference would be $20 shipping cost and ofcourse you are buying directly from lenovo!

Does it worth the hassle to cancel my order with MC and place my order directly with lenovo?

 

LOL. Musical chairs.

If you already placed the order with MC I would stick with it. You may just delay the order.

BTW, I have yet to receive a tracking confirmation for my MC order and I had to physically call them to confirm, wow, it's been a long time I had to call a business for an online order to confirm info, that's so 1990's. Anyway, I still hope to order will be here by Wednesday next week, but not holding my breath at this point.

 

Battery live is always a touchy subject because it depends on so many factors. One review of the previous hardware (7th gen CPU/ 940MX) showed a very low lasting test of 3 some hours. Another website showed that with normal browsing it could last 8+ hours and somewhere in the 5-6 hour range with using office suites. Given that the 8th gen CPU and MX150 use the same TDP the battery should last the same amount as the claimed tests on the older versions. With a little CPU/GPU tweaking (undervolting) you might get a little extra out of it.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/lenovo-ideapad-720s

 

I decided not to cancel my order.

I placed my order after business hours on 11/14. My package has been sent today via FedEx and is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow! They told me 2-3 business days for processing the order and then the same for FedEx delivery, usually in one week, but I guess I'm lucky then! Ask their online support team about it.

I think it could be somewhere between 4 5 hours to 8 hours then. For me I reckon between 5 6 hours, I hope! That tweaking part sounds awesome! I will definitely look into that, thanks for the heads up!

Also, should I always leave this laptop plugged to the wall or always use the battery and only for charging plug it in?

 

Well, I have still not even received a shipping confirmation. It's been since Monday and I even contacted them yesterday morning, just stating that I would have the laptop in my hands within 5 to 7 business days. Very frustrated with MC. I make a lot of online purchases and this is by far the worst experience in a long time. I know I am likely the outlier here and not the norm, but just venting my frustration.

 

Today I received my 720s and I'm currently typing from it! It's perfect in every aspect.

However, the only thing that will immediately takes your attention is the very yellowish white that its lcd has. I've read it in the reviews but it's a little too high in my opinion! Overall I'm very satisfied with my purchase.

I hope I don't regret that I've bought it right before Black Friday ...

 

Well done and enjoy! I am about to take the plunge too, but will order from Lenovo Canada. Kinda waiting for a black friday deal though. Did you say you called an agent and they were able to give you a discount more than what is advertized online?

Also, Lenovo has a battery conservation mode which only charges it up to 60 percent when plugged in at all times (easy to turn on and off when you need 100 percent battery). I have been using this with my yoga 2 pro for about 4 years now, and I still get about 4 hours of battery life regular office use (which I think is pretty good for a 4 year old battery!). My wife's 720s (with the 7th gen i5) has it too so pretty sure yours will. So in my opinion I think you can just keep it plugged in, and maybe fully discharge and recharge fully every couple of months to keep the chemistry going in the battery.

Dan

 

Hey Dan,

Thank you! Yes I was chatting with sale agents online many times a day almost a week! Everytime I talked to them I wanted to be a new agent so i could ask my technical questions over again to be sure, because you know sometimes they tell you something that they aren't sure, but will tell you that they are 100% certain about that. That is why I was talking to many of them.

After pulling the trigger and ordering through MC, I wanted to talk to an agent about warranty services that they provide and the difference between buying directly through Lenovo and a third party seller. Which resulted that is exactly the same ... That was the agent who suddenly told me if you buy it today I can give it to you at this price! Because I had my university's perks with Lenovo that I could get a discount on everything. He then told me that it's a Black Friday deal and he will quote it to my email address and today is the expiration date for this approved deal, I attached a screenshot from that quote. I think it was luck, because I talked maybe to 10 or 12 agents in that period!

I have to correct myself, the price difference between Lenovo and MC is actually only $1 !!


And thank you for the tip about lenovo conservation mode. I found it yesterday and turned it on when I plugged it to the wall. I'm using it on battery now, with battery saver mode ON and nvidia graphic turned off through nvidia's control panel hoping to save more battery whenever I don't need the gpu.
Any other tips or stuff like that Dan? I hope you could buy it from Black Friday, but I'm pretty sure that the price for BF is the quote that agent gave me. So I suggest you to keep an eye and immediately place the order because at this price it will definitely run out of stock very quickly.

 

Hello,

I'm considering buying this laptop, but have a question.
Do you know if it's possible to connect 2 external monitors? One using the HDMI port and another using an USB-C to HDMI adapter like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Adapt...D=41gZdUHH%2BpL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

 

That's an awesome price! I will see what they can do for me tomorrow. If I can't get a deal on the i7/16gb/512gb, I might try for the i7/8gb/256gb, if the ram is upgradable. There seems to be some differences in the models though (I think you pointed this out earlier), any chance you (or anyone else) could confirm that there is a dimm slot in these? You would need a torx screwdriver though and there is a metal cover that needs to be removed to see the slot. Seems kind of strange that some models would have soldered on ram and some have a slot.....would mean they would have to have 2 different manufacturing processes, which would be more costly for lenovo for sure....don't really know how these things totally work though...

 

Cool, mine will hopefully arrive by Wednesday next week. I am not too worried about the screen color, but what about the fan noise that several users have been complaining about. Is it really that overbearing as it has been stated?

 

Dan,
The guy who started the first post also posted a youtube review and stated that due to the thickness of the laptop the ram was soldered in. However I believe the when ERFAN was on chats with sales reps several indicated that the ram was indeed up-gradable and the current service manual also collaborates that theory. I just didn't want to take the risk and when I saw that MC sold the 16GB version only for 100 more than what I could get the 8GB version for directly from Lenovo, I decided to pull the trigger and get it from MC instead.

 

In theory this should be possible, other laptops are capable to do this. I can test this for you once I get mine next week, unless ERFAN has two monitors and a USB-C to HDMI adapter to try this out on.

 

Unfortunately, I have neither the cables nor the monitors to try it though ... Sorry.

I highly suggest you to buy the highest config because of the price difference, in future even if you find a good deal to only upgrade the ram, it would cost you the same price as to just buy the highest config as @swissarmyknife stated. That was why I also bought the highest config. I don't have those screwdrivers

According to https://www.laptopmain.com/lenovo-ideapad-720s-disassembly-ssd-ram-upgrade-options/ I don't think you could upgrade the ram, consider that it's for last gen 720s but as you mentioned, it has a low possibilities to have two types of motherboard. Buy the highest one and just get rid of these "ifs" completely!

I also noticed that the yellowish color makes the eye to be more comfortable. I really like it now!
And about the fan noise, the only thing worth mentioning is that it oscillates in short period of time instead of just stay at that speed for a few seconds and then goes to higher or lower speed. For example in 5seconds from off it suddenly goes to highest speed and then again turns off. IMO the noise itself is not that high and it will not stay at that speed for long even 10seconds, unless you are installing or using a high demand software. For my usual usage I don't even notice if the fan turned on even once or not ...

 

Thank you. I am sure over time Lenovo will likely also release bios updates to optimize the fan usage.

Can't wait to get the laptop and set it up to my liking.

 

Hmmm, I just found something which I've attached about ram! @swissarmyknife @earthdan

Notice the "slot used" and "form factor" !

That one sale rep which told me that i5 can't be upgraded but i7 is able to, might be actually true!!

 

I just puled the trigger on one of these, has anyone confirmed that the ram is upgradable? Has anyone taken a look at thermals, does the cpu throttle under gaming?

 

Got mine today. Right off the bat I noticed the fans constantly changing speed which is likely going to drive me nuts, but I am sure over time bios updates will work that out. I'll try intel's tuning tool and afterburner for the GFX - maybe I can change the behavior a little. I remember on the Gigabyte series P34 there was a contributor that was able to change the bios settings and post the updates to the community, not sure if that is still possible, but I'll look into it.

So I can too confirm that the MicroCenter 16GB version is the 8th gen i7 and the new MX150 GFX. It's a great deal and I don't think Lenovo will offer this specific model for less than what they have it currently advertised even with BF coming up, but we will see ;-)

 

I figured that if you set your power profile to battery saver, it wouldn't comprise performance that much but it is definitely reducing times that the fans turns on! Even on battery saver the system is more stable! When I've changed it to better performance, in the middle between battery saver and best performance, it was so unstable that my system twice froze when I wanted to turn it off. The screen goes blank and when it usually turns off it stays on with lcd off and nothing seems to work except that you have to force it to turn it off! (holding power button). I don't what's going on but it is some incompatibly between Lenovo bios and windows settings itself !!

 

I wiped all of Lenovo's partition out so I could start fresh. So far so good. The only thing that is not working out of the box is the touchpad. So far no freezes or other issues, but I have barely begun to test it and throw things ad it. I am sure there will be a few 'ah ha' moments along the way.

 

There is an update for the bios which is for 2months ago (v1.02), mine had bios v1.00. So I updated it last night but I still can't say if anything has changed specially the fan noise.


Go here, enter your serial number, go to Drivers & Software, scroll down, BIOS/UEFI.

 

It seems that the Yoga 720 has the same fan noise problem since release. Since no BIOS update has been issued to solve this, people in the forum are advising to install this notebook fan control app:
https://github.com/hirschmann/nbfc/releases

They say there is a profile there for the yoga. Perhaps it works with the Ideapad!

Link to the thread: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo...s/Yoga-720-13-quot-FAN-NOISE-UGH/td-p/3636187

 

I spoke with Lenovo yesterday looking for more information on the RAM and more importantly the TB3 port whether it gets a fat 4 lanes or the wimpy 2. Unfortunately Marvin didn't have a clue and refused to let me speak with a technician. The conversation was very odd. Poor guy lol. There wasn't anyone there that could seem to help the tech savvy and instead I was repeatedly directed to their forums for assistance. I have since made an account and asked for information on the specific TB3 specs. That thread can be found here

The fella didn't have an answer for the Thunderbolt 3 capabilities and ultimately didn't understand exactly what I was talking about. Of course the RAM is up in the air. Regardless this is a single channel solution even if it's replaceable. I apologize for dropping the ball on not taking the cover off. I was convinced by many beforehand that this was a soldered RAM solution and I should have accessed the panel for further conformation.

I was spending most of my 2 week period with this troubleshooting as my unit had some issues. I was recommended to return the laptop and wait for further BIOS updates before diving back in. That was from the first Lenovo CS rep on day 12 of ownership.

 

Bob, no worries about the RAM. I think most will go either straight to 16GB anyway, especially with the great deal at MC. I am not surprised that techs don't know about specifics about a laptop. They primarily help with setup issues (drivers, some basic hardware troubleshooting, ect). You would need to be able to talk to a design engineer and those are usually shielded from the general public.
I work for what used to be IBM, before Lenovo spun off. We had very close ties to the engineering department then and were able to have upgrades or changes done in matters of hours. As our company morphed into what it is now, a storage solution provider, we even greatly abandoned using Lenovo products. Their start was very rocky to say the least where the hallmark Thinkpad received a lot of negative reviews for sub par reliability. In the meantime I believe Lenovo has a great portfolio and is once again able to compete with the other big dogs.

On my end. My OS is now refreshed with a corporate Win10 PRO version. All the drivers installed without any issues, but it took a little finagling with the USB stick and UEFI (thanks to rufus all is well now). I changed the HUE in the setup tab for the Intel 620 from 0 to 10 which reduced the yellowish tint that ERFAN mentioned. I am sure if I played with the individual color settings I could further tweak the the response, but overall it's not a big bother.
Overall very impressed and happy with the build quality and performance so far. I will install our Solidworks suite next and see how it performs. My Dell XPS 13 could handle single parts that weren't too elaborate but assemblies would be very jerky when I rotated them around their axis. This laptop should do much better, one review even stated that it handles these applications better than a dedicated laptop quadro card.

 

Cool I'll give that a try. I was going to use Intel's CPU tuning software and afterburner to lower the voltages to see if that would change the behavior.

 

May I ask what were those issues that you had with your unit? Because in these almost 5 days, I had dozens of sudden freezes and had to force shutdown it, specially when I wanted to shutdown/hibernate/sleep my unit, blank screen but the system was still on. I googled and found that dolby atoms sound system application is the cause of that, after disabling it from services and windows startup, everything seems to be working great!
Also thank you for the info about TB3, it seems that we had to try it manually to see what is what ...

I was also thinking about doing a fresh windows install but I don't have time for that now ... Did it make any significant changes? Also did you update your bios to v1.02?

I needed a 14inch laptop, I couldn't go with xps 13 because of its size. Now that they have a good deal with slickdeals rebate for $800! I'm still happy and this machine seems to be indeed a very powerful one ...
Fingers crossed that we could get an update in the near future!

 

Please tell us your result if you were successful for a stable under-volting ..

 

According to this https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/5ykwge/to_all_owners_of_thinkpads_with_thunderbolt_3/ if I did the steps correctly.

Ideapad 720s has 2pci lanes for thunderbolt 3 as you can see in the attached file.

 

So far I had no freezes or crashes of any kind. I remember seeing this quote under Bob's youtube video...


When I did a fresh install I only installed apps that I felt were absolutely necessary like device drivers, so battery management apps like the one mentioned above did not get installed.

Yes, I applied the Bios update to 1.02.

Using Intel's xtreme tuning utility I have undervolted the core by 50mV so far. I haven't gone lower yet and I have not really stressed the system enough yet to determine if this is indeed stable.

The fan control app mentioned in an earlier post doesn't seem to be compatible, at least not with the closest preset of an Ideapad 710S. The fan speed showed a constant speed when I could clearly hear the fan slow down or speed up. Anyway, since it relies on some hardware specifics and registry values it would take a little more digging to see what could be done.

I think for now I will keep playing around with the XTU from intel and later with afterburner.

 

I'm not seeing the lenovo 720s-14ikb 81bd on their list. But that thread might ultimately get us somewhere

 

Erfan and swissarmyknife,

Does the brightness change in fixed increments or non-linearly when increased or decreased? I ask because I read somewhere (not sure if it was this generation or last with 7th gen cpu + gt 940mx) a user comment that the screen below 75%-100% was very dim. And I wonder if they if the way the brightness works is similar to the yoga 720 15, which has been shown to have non-linear adjustment. (see: youtu.be/y-sOHZK6Nvs?t=6m24s)

And how is the battery life? Have read some people say 6 hours while others say closer to ~9 hours, so which is it?

 

When I used the FN buttons (F11/F12) the brightness change appears to be linear. So for example when I am on full brightness and press F11 5 times the slider graph shows that I am about have way down and the actual screen brightness appears to be about 50% of original. This is however my own perception.

 

A follow up regarding under-volting and my other observations.

1. So far I am able to stay 100% stable with 50mV undervolt, however crashed during a GPU benchmark test at 100mV. I could further dial into the sweet spot by going binary method here (75, then either 12 up or down, and so on)
2. When the CPU is not under load (<20%) the fans are much more sporadic and change speed constantly. In Intel's tuning utility I can see how the core temp fluctuates as much as 15C (37 to 62) and that suddenly, meaning it can have one data point at 37 the next at 62. However, if the CPU is fully utilized the core temp stabilizes at 50-53C and the fan stays at a stable speed. This sort of tells me that the fan control algorithm was optimized primarily for load conditions and does a poor job when under idle conditions. The could be improved with better PID values.

So for now I will try to research if there is ways to directly affect the fan behavior. I'll keep you guys posted.