Almost ready to buy a Y470/Y570

Hi all...

After a bunch of searching, I'm almost ready to click go on the Y470 or 570 (haven't figured out which yet...)

Just a couple things I thought I'd ask current owners / Lenovo users:

1. This seems like a steal in terms of performance...is it just me, or do they have some incredible deals for the specs in here. Is there a catch you are aware of?

2. Looking at the owner's forum thread, there's over 100 pages, most of them with some issues right out of the box. I'm not a big laptop user (so far at least), but I'm a little concerned about so many random issues from a system like this (audio, video, crashing, wrong device shipped :| ) Is this a normal amount of issues or should I plan a high likelihood of having to hack/tweak things to get it working optimally?

 

1. The catch is that lenovo has long shipping times and bad customer service. This has nothing to do with the laptop though. Its a great device.

2. Unless its RMA, most units are fine with updated drivers. If problems persist, a quick reinstall will solve most hiccups.

Tip and Warning: Your device will have headphone static noise. I've said this a million times in all the threads because I didnt see it before I purchased. And its REALLY noticeable watching movies and playing games if you use earbuds. With good over the ear headphones its not noticeable at all.

Get your warranty (if you plan to get one) through square trade. Its cheaper if you use the 20% coupon. Google for it.

 

I've read that you can get rid of that by changing the audio mode from Music to Movie (or vice versa, can't remember). Have you tried that?

TBH, constant static noise on the audio output line would be a big problem for me as I'd usually have it hooked up speakers :|

 

Yeah, I switch modes pretty often and the static remains. Haven't tried the audio out jack yet. I doubt theres static there though too though.

 

Don't do it. The support is terrible. They don't respond to emails which forces you to call them... which can be very frustrating.

 

My experience has been quite good with Lenovo with shipping, my laptops arrived exactly one week from order date.

Although I have to agree customer service is not that good and the 15% restocking fee that applies to all returns even on unopened items is totally ridiculous.

If you decide to buy a Y470/Y570 just make sure it's the laptop you really want.

 

@OP, I got my y470 before schedule and haven't had the need to call or email customer service. I was happy with the price I got it for and I'm also quite happy with the performance so far. From reading this forum it's clear that people have varied experiences with Lenovo customer support, so YMMV.

 

Don't buy the Y570. Especially don't spend more than $700 on the Y570. The Y570's screen at 15.6" with a resolution of 1366x768 is mediocre, and the GT 555M GPU is not a true GT 555M. It's gimped with a 96 pipeline core, and is more of a glorified GT 525M.

The Y470 with a 14" screen at 1366x768 isn't as bad, but a 15.6" screen with that resolution is downright mediocre. The 1366x768 resolution really limits how much you can fit onscreen at once because it makes text and UI elements really big. You're limited to one window, and you'll have to do a lot of scrolling. 1366x768 is the ideal resolution for a 12.5" laptop. The other thing is that most 1366x768 displays have awful image quality, the Y570 no exception. Ultra-low contrast ratios cause black to look more of a bluish-gray color, and cause images to appear washed out.

A better gamer than the Y570, would be the HP DV6t with the AMD 6770M GPU. It's also got a 1920x1080 anti-glare display in this config. It's a win-win over the Y570, and a win-win over the Y470 in everything except for not being a 14-incher.

HP Official Store — Buy and Customize your dv6 and dv6t series PC direct from HP
Use coupon code NBET4192 to bring it down to $734
This config has two upgrades:
- 1920x1080 display (don't downgrade to the 1366x768 display, I'm specifically recommending you the laptop in this configuration, not the laptop in general)
- 6770M GPU (it has the 2GB version because the regular DV6t doesn't let you select the 1GB version, but just know that the 2GB version isn't really any faster than the 1GB version. Still, even with the forced upgrade cost of the 2GB 6770M, the regular DV6t is still a lot cheaper than the DV6tqe once the coupon is factored in.)
Consider getting the i5 processor if you can, but it's not 100% essential. Usually the GPU is going to be the bottleneck in games, not the CPU. The i5 is almost 40% faster than the i3 though so for CPU-intensive games like Starcraft 2 you might want the i5.

 

The above statement is very BIAS.

A GT 540M has 96 cores also, why didn't he mention that instead since that would be the slowest a GT 550/555M on a Y470/570 would run.

But of course it runs faster than GT 540M being a glorified one as the BIAS person above mentioned...GT 525M what are you getting at?

Even last gen Y460/560 had a HD 5730M which a almost comparable to a GT 540M how can he go bring a GT 525M into comparison...lay off the crack dude.

PS. BTW, HP is a good a dead...R.I.P.

 

IBM sold off their Thinkpad line to Lenovo. Lenovo still had/has to honor the warranties.

There is only a 12% difference between a 525M and a 540M. They use the same 96-pipeline chip, and they're basically the same GPU except one's clocked a bit faster. It doesn't really matter which one I'm comparing it to, because the 525M and 540M are so close in performance.

 

I didn't mention anything about warranty but if everyone thinks Lenovo has bad customer service, wait till you get a load of HP when their out of the business.

Good luck,