I picked this laptop up directly from Levono's website for $849 (was $919 with tax); It came with a 24gb SSD (M.2 drive not a mSSD), 1TB HDD, Haswell 2.4ghz Quad Core processor, 8gb of ram (upgradable to 16gb) and a Geforce GT750m dedicated graphics card. Mainly wanted this beast for running Virtual Machines and it does that very, very well not without some issues though (but I can't complain for the price, looked at other laptops and all were well above the $1000 mark which was beyond my work budget). I didn't have the heating issues or issues with the speed as one of the other reviews gave, but in the end I wound up getting rid of Windows 8 which I think helped a lot (I wound up installing Windows 7 and all my apps on the m.2 SSD and left the 1TB for my data and profile.
So having said all that, in the past 5 days I've owned this the issues I've run into were; wifi dropped connections every 30 45 minutes (I'm right next to the wifi access point both at home and at work so distances nor wifi ap should have been a problem). The built in trackpad acts funky, but every ELan trackpad I've dealt with so far has (I just use an external mouse every chance I get). Running 2 3 Virtual Machines at once does get this thing a little warm but as long as I don't block the vent ports it's fine, I'd rather it be blowing hot air than the air get trapped up inside. So far I've found fixes / ways to deal with all the problems I've encountered but I am knocking off 1 star because of these issues (if I couldn't find a fix for them I would have dropped my rating lower).
For the wifi issues, you need to update the driver the card uses to the latest and greatest and possibly even install windows 7 rather than 8 (the drivers are the problem not the card or the laptop itself) I installed windows 7 after a long driver hunting party and haven't had a problem since.
For the touchpad issues, if your not used to a macbook the touchpad will definitely be a new experience for you. The touchpad on this laptop could be compared to a jacked up version of the one found on a Macbook (if you get the Elan version it's really frustrating to use). This laptop comes with two variants of touchpad, one is produced by Elan the other is a Synaptics based touchpad (hope and pray you get the Synaptics, I was unfortunate and got the ELan). There's not much you can do with the touchpad, you can disable tapping which will help a little, I have mine setup so that it's push to left click, tap or push with two fingers to right click and scroll with two fingers.
The battery life has been a little disappointing, but it's a 2.4ghz quad core gaming laptop what did I expect?? I was able to get almost 3 hours of battery out of this thing with everything but the wifi turned off (screen turned down to about 25% brightness, Nvidia card turned off, power settings turned to battery saver in windows.
Really for the price of this laptop, if you overlook the issues you can't beat it. Just upgrade to Windows 7 or install some form of linux on it (I'll be experimenting with that one next)...
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The laptop itself has a couple problems... the wifi blinks in and out occasionally and the touchpad is awful (two finger scrolling seems poorly implemented, and I hate the single-piece trackpad that includes the left and right click buttons). However, the one star review is more for the customer service.They shipped my laptop to me with an australian AC adapter. It doesn't fit into US outlets (unless you have a funky old-school outlet for a large appliance like a washer/dryer). I called them up and they sent me a corrected one right away. Except that the new AC adapter did not fit my laptop.
My next five attempts to reach out to Lenovo were hilarious:
1) Post sales team: you need to talk to the technical support team, here's their number.
2) Technical support team: this is the wrong technical support team, let me transfer you to the right technical support team.
3) Technical support team 2: this is a post-sales team problem. You need to talk to them. They sent you here? Let me put you on hold for half an hour and then try to convince you that Lenovo doesn't sell ANY laptops that can plug directly into US walls you need to go out and buy an international adapter!
4) Web sales chat: we can't help you, but we will make a note of this and someone from the post-sales team will reach out within 48 hours (did not get a response).
5) Post sales team (immediately escalated to a team lead this time): we're not sure which AC adapter goes with this laptop, let me call you back within 48 hours (did not get a response).
Finally, I got a response out of the websales at lenovo e-mail, where they told me that I could go buy an AC adapter and get reimbursed. That's great, but they didn't tell me which AC adapter I need, or where I could buy it. Then they offered to send it to me. At this point, I'm 20 days into the 30 day return period, so I figured I wouldn't chance it.
I'm returning the laptop today, and I reaaaaally hope the return process is smoother than my interactions with Lenovo so far. I know that every large company has some bad call center agents, but what I experienced was full-on ridiculous. I tried literally every avenue of contacting Lenovo that I could, and still could not get the issue resolved in a reasonable timeframe. Lenovo needs to get it together.
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I had real trouble working with customer support to get the wifi working right. so i was mad mad mad. BUT after that, this little fellow has been fast and flawless. the hd plus screen is very fine in this 14 inch size. it plays new games like battlefield 3, and others, perfectly. it boots up fast. I have the one with the 1 tb hard drive plus the 24 gig ssd. I haven't notced the heat generated or 'sharp edges' or the trackpad to be problem areas, like another reviewer here did. the computer chassis/body feels pretty solid, but it isn't made from a machined aluminum billet and does not reach that level of perceived solidity. good enough, though. best computer specification for the price right now. not even close. I shopped before buying.Honest reviews on Lenovo IdeaPad Y410P Laptop - 59369916 - Dusk Black
I wanted to try some mid-level gaming and that is why I chose the Y410p. Considering the specs and the features you get for the price, this machine is in a class all by itself. Similar builds at HP and Dell can easily run for $200-$300 more. I actually had to send my first model back and this is why: When i got my first model, the first thing I did was downgrade to Windows 7 because i had read bad things about Windows 8 and didn't like the new interface. Windows 7 actually ran pretty great but there were a few bugs and some problems with the drivers. I could tell that this machine was built to run with Windows 8. I contacted Lenovo Support, who were very helpful. I told them that my laptop wasn't working properly and I wanted a new one. They sent out a new one the next business day and I was able to keep using the one I had until the new one arrived. With the new model, I stuck with Windows 8 and it's been pretty good. I found a way to disable the new UI and stick with the classic Desktop mode.This laptop actually does a great job with gaming, I play Battlefield 3 and Medal of Honor on high settings and you can max out the settings on most games. Backlit keyboard is very nice as well. The only complaints i have deal with the keyboard and touchpad. Simply put, the touchpad is terrible. It is designed like the apple macbook touchpad but is not anywhere near as responsive or effective. It's just something u have to get used to. Also, some of the keyboard keys such as Enter, Backspace and Shift are smaller than standard size and this also takes getting used to. I've had this laptop for 3 weeks and still mess up sometimes.
Overall its a really good laptop but it has some minor design flaws.
UPDATE:
OK, so it's been about 2 months now since I've had the laptop and I'm sticking with what I said. Besides the minor annoyances of the touchpad and keyboard, everything is great. Another thing i forgot to mention that the laptop is great cooling wise. I always have my laptop sitting on a fan but I don't even turn the fan on anymore, the laptop does a great job of keeping cool. Only when I'm gaming do I even notice any hot air and even then, the built in fan in the laptop pushes it all out from the left side of the laptop.
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