Anyone looking forwards to the ThinkPad yoga 14?

Any ideas when BB loses exclusivity and we can start customizing models? I like this laptop, but I don't want to waste money having to add an ssd if I can get it pre-installed.

 

Couple more annoyances.

I decided to try the Intel Smart Response Technology SSD cache instead of ExpressCache, see if it would perform better or use less RAM. I went through the steps to install it and... there is no way to switch the Yoga 14's SATA mode to RAID. The SATA mode option is missing from the BIOS (presumably hard-coded to AHCI).

Maybe they added it in a later BIOS revision. So I downloaded the latest BIOS from the Lenovo website. Ran the installer and... it says it's older than the BIOS currently on the machine. I checked the BIOS the Yoga 14 shipped with and it's version 1.06 dated 2014-09-05. The version on their website is 1.03 dated 2014-09-22. Ooookay...

I noticed the same thing when I was updating Bluetooth drivers. The "latest" version on their website is older than the version the laptop shipped with. And their wifi driver and showed the same version number as preinstalled on the machine. But I installed the wifi driver anyway, and it fixed the problem of wifi being unable to reconnect after suspend.

 

Keep checking out the Lenovo website. They already have the broadwell drivers in the support section so you'll likely start to see a full range of customization options similar to what you can get on the Thinkpad Yoga.

 

Broadwell Update for ThinkPad Yoga 14 includes:
- Broadwell U (of course)
- Wacom ActivePen (optional)
- Anti-Glare Screen
- New ThinkPad UltraNav TrackPad (with TrackPoint buttons)

 

Lenovo said the updated Yoga 14 will be available in May. Not sure you'll see any customization options before then.

 

I'm curious what the holdup is, since the Yoga 12.5 and Yoga 15 are supposed to be available in February. The Yoga 15 is actually more up my alley than the 14 (sold that to a friend) since one of my uses is displaying piano sheet music (bigger is better). And from what I could find of the specs:
http://www.lenovo.com/psref/pdf/ttcbook.pdf

The Yoga 15 is basically the Yoga 14 in a bigger form factor and a extra memory slot. Same GPU (pity, I would've loved a 850m), same ports, same M.2 + 2.5" drive, same standard camera, same thickness, same power brick. Well, ok the battery is bigger too (66 Wh, vs 56 Wh for the 14, 47 Wh for the 12.5), but they're targeting 8 hours for all three size models so you'd expect the battery to be different in size for all three.

So since the Yoga 15 is for most part a clone of the Yoga 14, why the 3-month delay in the Broadwell Yoga 14 models?

Anyways, you can look through the Yoga 15 specs in the above link for a hint of the customization options that'll probably come with the 14. Offhand it looks like:

• Choice of i3, i5, i7 (last two misidentified as quad cores)
• Integrated graphics or nVidia 840m (1GB on HDD models, 2 GB on SSD)
• Matte or glossy screen
• Optional Wacom Active pen (may restrict screen type)
• SSD or HDD or combo
• Intel N-7265 or AC-7265 wireless (2x2)
• Optional WWAN (may take the M.2 slot)
• Optional TPM (trusted platform module)
• Optional fingerprint scanner
• No OS, Win 7 Pro, Win 8.1, or Win 8.1 Pro
• Yoga 15 also has an optional 3D camera thingy

 

I'm guessing the holdup is the contract with Best Buy for exclusivity. Lenovo has really taken the Thinkpad line down the drain lately.

 

Hey is anyone facing these really random powering off issue?

So I turn on the laptop and as soon it is airborne or i lift it up from the left side when its open it seems to automatically lose power and the entire thing shuts down as if its lost all source of power! what could be the reason for this issue? Has the battery connection come loose? I just don't get it! Its brand new and its giving these problems! I barely have had it one week!

 

Yep, this is a huge problem evidently and noted on Lenovo's own forum. Mine is currently in the shop having the system board and battery replaced because of this defect.

For me, it seemed to turned off faster and more regularly if I lifted it up from the right corner. However, when I finally took it into customer service it was turning off immediately no matter how the support guy would lift it up.

 

Why is it that the Yoga is available in up to QHD+ (3200 x 1800), but the Thinkpad Yoga maxes out at FHD (1920 x 1080)?

I'd wait for the Thinkpad Yoga 15 with the dedicated graphics and 16GB of memory, but then I'd have to settle for FHD. I'd get a non-thinkpad Yoga, but I want dedicated graphics.

I bought my Thinkpad X220 because it basically had "everything". But now it seems that with Lenovo every laptop requires some compromise.

 

The 3200x1800 panel (also used on the Samsung Book 9) is actually a pentile RGBW panel. So its color resolution is actually equivalent to 2263x1273 in R, G, and B. (It's not an exact comparison because the pentile arrangement is diagonal.) So there's really not much difference from a FHD (1920x1080) display.

If they'd gone with a RGBG pentile display, that would be 2263x1273 in R, and B, but 3200x1800 in G. Your eyes are have much higher green resolution than red or blue. So a 3200x1800 pentile RGBG display would've looked substantially better than FHD.

But they went with a RGBW pentile layout, which is really a power-saving trick. When plugged into AC, the white subpixel remains black and the backlight is cranked up. When on battery, the backlight is turned down and the white subpixel turned on as necessary to make the display brighter. But this comes at the cost of more washed-out colors. This is what led to all the complaints about "mustard" yellows on these displays. The "fix" was to turn off the white subpixel all the time. But that means 25% of the subpixels are always blocking light even on battery. So the backlight needs to be brighter than on a RGB or RGBG display to achieve the same brightness. Honestly I think the FHD display is better.

(As for pentile RGBG vs RGB, pentile is superior when you get to extremely high pixel densities. Because your eyes suck at blue and red, the high-ppi RGB subpixel displays are actually wasting a lot of subpixels on color resolution your eyes can't see. RGBG more closely matches your eyes' resolution using fewer subpixels.)

 

Thanks for the explaining pentile and actual vs apparent resolutions. But 2263x1273 is still 17% larger in both the vertical and horizontal dimensions than FHD, right?

 

I'm sitting on a Yoga 2 Pro right now, and I'll tell you, its obvious that its a pentile display. It has trouble doing hard lines and if things aren't anti-aliased correctly, it looks very weird. I'd take an FHD screen over this for sure, for that reason and because scaling has serious problems in Windows.

 

Since this is my first post, hello everyone!

The yoga 15 has become available in the Netherlands. I'm planning on ordering one but need some help.

The only reason I'm still hesitating is that the 15 version is perhaps somewhat big to work with, for example in a restaurant. But on the other hand, I don't want to wait till May when the 14 version comes out (which I believe is about 50 mm narower.

Anyways, I was hoping to ask about the configuration:
- You have the choice between a Core i5-5200U Processor (3MB Cache, up to 2.70GHz), and a Core i7-5500U Processor (4MB Cache, up to 3.00GHz), which costs an additional 100 euros. Do you expect a performance difference between these two processors?

- With regard to RAM the options are:
8GB PC3-12800 DDR3L (2 DIMM)
8GB PC3-12800 DDR3L SDRAM 1600MHz SODIMM[€0,00]
12GB PC3-12800 DDR3L (2 DIMM)[add €56,87]
16GB PC3-12800 DDR3L (2 DIMM)[add €114,95]
I was wondering what the difference is between the first two, and which one is the better choice, since both come at the same price?

- With regard to the power cord there is the choice between:
65W AC Adapter - EU
Country Pack 65W Slim AC adapter EU Generic
Both come at the same price, but there's no explanation about the difference between the two.

- The RealSense 3D camera and ActivePen are not mentioned anywhere in the configuration. So I guess this means that these options are not yet available.

- Although it's of course a matter of personal taste, would you agree that in general the silver model (costs an additional 10 euros) will be looked at as the better looking model compared to the black model?

Thanks a million!

 

Yes, but the layout of same-color pixels is diagonal in pentile. When displaying vertical and horizontal lines (like you find everywhere in a GUI), it'll perform worse. (Technically, the RGB subpixel arrangement has high-frequency noise which happens to augment the clarity of vertical and horizontal lines.)

Part of the problem is Windows Cleartype doesn't support pentile. In terms of subpixel rendering, pentile is actually superior to RGB. RGB arranges the subpixels (individual red, green, and blue) in a line. Consequently when you do subpixel rendering like Cleartype, you get 3x the horizontal resolution, but the same vertical resolution. A 1920x1080 screen thus acts like a 5760x1080 screen. This is also problematic for tablets, since you can rotate the screen between portrait and landscape modes. In one mode, your horizontal resolution is tripled. In the other mode, your vertical resolution is tripled. So to do subpixel rendering requires you to have two mappings of the fonts to the subpixels - one for landscape mode and one for portrait mode. Tablets like the iPad just give up and stick with regular anti-aliasing, which is why the retina displays were more important on the iPads than on pentile displays.

Pentile is symmetric. The same subpixel rendering scheme for fonts works in both portrait and landscape orientations. Unfortunately, the producers of pentile displays have taken to advertising the resolution of pentile displays using apparent resolution, rather than actual resolution. Which eliminates this advantage.

The i7 comes with 4MB of L3 cache, vs 3MB on the i5. Whether the price difference is worth it is something you have to decide. Benchmarks can help compare, but will be highly sensitive to cache hit rate. i.e. If you have a task which fits in 3MB, the only difference will be clock speed. If the task fits in 4MB but not 3MB, the i7 will be substantially faster. And the more the task exceeds 4MB, the less the difference becomes.

The first one is 2 DIMMs. So if you wanted to upgrade memory, you'd have to throw one or both away. The second one is a single DIMM. So the second DIMM slot is available for upgrades.

 

So how long had it been since you've given it? I'm from India I'm dead certain they won't have the parts to fix it here. Nor can we source the battery, incase it's a battery related issue, can you tell me what exactly the problem was when you do get it back and fixed? I'll act accordingly then!

 

Same thing here, just randomly turns off, and this unit is only 5 days old, also from BB. Funny, because I got the Thinkpad 14 after getting a Yoga Pro 3 (512GB), but I returned it because the same thing happened with that computer 12 days after purchase, except it never turned on again.

What makes this even funnier, is that I bought the Yoga Pro 3 as an "upgrade" from my Yoga Pro 2 that I had to claim under the ADH policy because I dropped it in my parking garage making it a total loss. The reason I was carrying it outside my laptop bag was because I ran it over to best buy due to an "missing hard drive error that occurred two months after purchase, which was going to require mailing back to the manufacturer. I brought it home to attempt to take it to a computer shop to try and recover the data from the SSD, which Best buy could not access. Did I say "funny?" I meant ridiculous.

So I'm out the $300 in programs I installed and the cost of the ADH policy, notwithstanding the headaches because of poor quality product and a little bad luck.

What gives with Lenovo? Three different Yoga products go bad shortly after purchase, two cases within weeks? I lost data on the first two units and the Thinkpad 14 I'm typing this on already turned off on me once while typing. I haven't installed any apps on this unit and I'm glad and I didn't.

I was thinking off installing a Samsung Evo drive on a Yoga Pro 2 but I think I'm just done with this crap. The quality has gone down the tubes.

 

One thing to note that I think is evident is that Lenovo doesn't really consider the Thinkpad Yogas to actually be Thinkpads. They aren't listed in tabook, and they seem to have failure rates far more similar to the consumer line than the thinkpad line.

 

Is anyone able to discern whether this Thinkpad is a 1st or 2nd generation Yoga 14?
http://www.ndd.lv/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=6733

• It has the fifth generation processor.
• But does it also have the pen/digitizer?
  It doesn't say anything about it: "14.0" (355mm) FHD (1920x1080) color, anti-glare, LED backlight, 300 nits, 16:9 aspect ratio, IPS Supports 10-fi nger gesture"
  
• And what about the trachpad; does it have seperate buttons or are these integrated?
  It does say "TrackPoint pointing device and multi-touch with 3+2 buttons click pad" but does this mean it has indeed seperate buttons?

 

Does anyone know if you replace the 2.5 HDD with an SSD what should you do with the M2 ssd? Should I take it out or leave it? Would it hurt anything to leave it in there?

 

Hey guys, So my Laptop has been fixed under warranty from America however it took over a month to repair, nontheless everything is good...

I just wanted to ask how does one solve the keyboard issue where the @ and the " sign have been exchanged? Is there any cure to this?

Also just wanted to know the best laptop bag you guys are using to carry it around.. A decently big one that can hold the laptop snug and additional paperwork plus charger and wires,tablet phone etc..