Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro gripes (v. it's turrible)

Stereodude

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So I have a Yoga 3 Pro as my work computer at my new job. As far as I'm concerned this is the worst work PC I've ever been provided by a company. If I wasn't using it for work it'd be a tad better, but I'd still classify it as a turd.

First, the keyboard is terrible. For one, it has no discrete F keys. Further, I'm not entirely sure if it's too small or the odd placement of some of the keys, but I find it hard to use efficiently and quickly. I frequently find I've got one of my hands in the wrong spot after using the undersized backspace key. The right shift key is undersized and right next to the up arrow key. I end up hitting the up arrow instead of shift a fair percentage of the time. The keyboard doesn't have home and end keys. I have to Fn + PgUp or Fn+PgDn to use them. I like to use them when typing. ARGH!!!

Second the touchpad is terrible. For whatever reason right click doesn't work about half of the time. You can click in the lower right corner a bunch of times and you don't get the right click context menu. The other half of the time when it decides to work, you always get a right click and a left click together. So if you try to right click on a link you will get the context menu, but you'll also left click and follow it.

Third, that awful reflective glass cover on the screen... It's hard to see the screen if you're in a bright room.

Fourth, it has all of two, yes two, USB ports. Both are USB 3.0. This ties into my next complaint.

Fifth, there is no docking connector. Between this and the two USB ports and the terrible keyboard and mouse, you'll use up both USB ports with a mouse and keyboard. I hope you don't have anything else to plug in. And you have to plug each thing in one at a time.

Sixth, the screen... Yes, the 3200x1800 screen is all nice and pretty looking if ambient lighting is fairly dim. However, it's all of 13.3". That means everything is microscopic. I have to set the scaling factor in Windows 10 to 175% to get most GUI elements and text large enough, and I like things pretty small. Of course not everything in Windows scales nicely (like RDP) but ignoring that for a minute, the scaling makes a second external monitor useless. The 2nd monitor has to be connected via mini-HDMI, another gripe, and as far as I know you can't set a different scaling factor for each monitor. A normal 24" 1920x1200 monitor with a 175% scaling factor is like trying to use a 640x480 monitor as your primary monitor. Useless!

Seventh, the built in card reader is poorly designed. A SD card sticks half out when inserted. On my last work laptop I left a SD card in all the time (it didn't protrude) where I could backup files or put personal stuff which could easily be popped out at a moments notice. I can't do that here.

Eighth, the fan runs all the time. It's not terribly loud, but it's a sort of a white noise like whoosh sound that's just loud enough and high enough in frequency to be annoying.

I'm sure there are more things wrong with it that I haven't discovered yet.

To attempt to make it at least partially usable I have ordered a USB keyboard and USB mouse. Also a USB 3.0 hub so I can just plug in one USB cable when I "dock" it as well as use more than two USB devices. I think I'm just going to be out of luck on the 2nd monitor. I tried running the built in screen at 1/4 res, 1600x900 so I could use 100% scaling in Windows and use the external monitor, but it looked really bad on the built in display. I might try it again later and make sure I have the scaling set back to 100% this time to make sure that wasn't responsible for the funkiness. :frusty:
 
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mubs

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Surprising for a model named "Pro".

At this point, I think you should cut your losses; they can always give this one to another / the next employee, and get you a real / proper laptop.
 

Stereodude

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At this point, I think you should cut your losses; they can always give this one to another / the next employee, and get you a real / proper laptop.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not an option. I've only been here a few days, and I'm trying not to get fired in the first week for being a rabid complainer.
 

Buck

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What in the world type of professional work can you possibly get down with a 13.3" screen? (Well, maybe if you were programming in BASIC at 640 x 480.) I have two 23" screens and I need more space (and not a higher resolution). My sympathy extends to your misery of using a lame PC. At least the reflective glass on your screen makes for a shiny turd (dull turds are the worst). :)
 

Stereodude

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What in the world type of professional work can you possibly get down with a 13.3" screen? (Well, maybe if you were programming in BASIC at 640 x 480.) I have two 23" screens and I need more space (and not a higher resolution). My sympathy extends to your misery of using a lame PC. At least the reflective glass on your screen makes for a shiny turd (dull turds are the worst). :)
I did okay with a 14.1" FHD screen on my T440s at the last job. When I was writing code I definitely preferred having it dock and using 2 monitors though. One was a 24" 1920x1200 monitor and the other was the 14.1" display on the T440s.
 

Buck

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24" 1920x1200
For my personal use, that is my favorite size for a monitor, particularly because of the vertical resolution being 1200. My home computer monitor is a 20" 1600x1200 Dell model. I have thought about replacing it, and whatever that replacement will be, it must have a minimum of 1200 pixels vertically. (The 1920 width would be nice for playing Rust :) ).
 

Mercutio

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With my Surface Pro, I mirror the screen to an external display and use a USB keyboard and trackball when I can. Having it as a small portable device for presentation needs works well enough and I can get by with the Type cover and trackpad if I have to, but it's never ideal. I don't think I could handle it as a primary computing device but I have no idea what SD's employer thinks he's supposed to do with it.
 

Stereodude

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I don't think I could handle it as a primary computing device but I have no idea what SD's employer thinks he's supposed to do with it.
Why use it as a notebook PC to do all my work on of course... :eek:wneddnce:

I would guess it's better than trying to use a Surface Pro as my PC, but I can't say that definitively having not tried one. They were rolling out Surface Pro 3's to the sales people at my last job.
 

Stereodude

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Sixth, the screen... Yes, the 3200x1800 screen is all nice and pretty looking if ambient lighting is fairly dim. However, it's all of 13.3". That means everything is microscopic. I have to set the scaling factor in Windows 10 to 175% to get most GUI elements and text large enough, and I like things pretty small. Of course not everything in Windows scales nicely (like RDP) but ignoring that for a minute, the scaling makes a second external monitor useless. The 2nd monitor has to be connected via mini-HDMI, another gripe, and as far as I know you can't set a different scaling factor for each monitor. A normal 24" 1920x1200 monitor with a 175% scaling factor is like trying to use a 640x480 monitor as your primary monitor. Useless!
So apparently the 2 monitor situation was quite as dire as my initial quick test showed. Some applications shrink when you drag them onto the 2nd monitor (27" FHD) so they're not all blown up supersize style, like Outlook and Pale Moon. Others like Adobe Reader DC don't. However, the scaled windows / applications end up a tad blurry because they're being scaled after being rendered.

Also, the Yoga 3 Pro has a micro HDMI port, not a mini HDMI port. I need to find an active micro HDMI to VGA adapter for when I will have to give presentations.
 

Mercutio

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Why use it as a notebook PC to do all my work on of course...

If it's not a big deal where you have a real computer as home base, what makes anyone think it's an adequate station for engineering work? Whose bright idea was it to buy those and are you sure you want to work for them?

The Surface Pro is actually great for a lot of applications. I use mine when I'm in a datacenter, when I'm lecturing or for field demos. It's definitely not a first choice computing device for anything else. I know they're great for students and high mobility needs but for engineers it shouldn't be anything but a secondary device.
 

LunarMist

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What in the world type of professional work can you possibly get down with a 13.3" screen? (Well, maybe if you were programming in BASIC at 640 x 480.) I have two 23" screens and I need more space (and not a higher resolution). My sympathy extends to your misery of using a lame PC. At least the reflective glass on your screen makes for a shiny turd (dull turds are the worst). :)

The laptop I've had for about 3 years has a very small display around that size, but normally it is connected to a 24" monitor.
Very few people want to travel around the world or even from conference room to conference room with a big laptop anymore.

The problem seems to be more than about the display size. Is there no IT support at that company? It's not a good sign for long term employment.:(
 

Stereodude

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If it's not a big deal where you have a real computer as home base, what makes anyone think it's an adequate station for engineering work? Whose bright idea was it to buy those and are you sure you want to work for them?
I'm not doing processor intensive conventional design work. It's more customer support. A lot of email and documentation work. The machine was a leftover they already had.
 

CougTek

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I'm not doing processor intensive conventional design work. It's more customer support. A lot of email and documentation work.
Haw! Documentation. My death. I so much hate doing documentation. It's so boring that every minute I spend doing this, I feel a little bit of my life is leaving my body.
 

Stereodude

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Haw! Documentation. My death. I so much hate doing documentation. It's so boring that every minute I spend doing this, I feel a little bit of my life is leaving my body.
I'm not writing it. I have to find answers to customer's questions in it. Review it. That sort of thing. I'm not entirely sure how things will play out at this new job in terms of what I do day to day. I haven't worked in this industry in almost 10 years and never for automotive. On the chip side almost no one reads the documentation for the parts or even does a search of the PDF before firing an email off with a question. So most customer questions were fairly easy to answer because the answer is in the manual or datasheet.
 

LunarMist

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I'm not writing it. I have to find answers to customer's questions in it. Review it. That sort of thing. I'm not entirely sure how things will play out at this new job in terms of what I do day to day. I haven't worked in this industry in almost 10 years and never for automotive. On the chip side almost no one reads the documentation for the parts or even does a search of the PDF before firing an email off with a question. So most customer questions were fairly easy to answer because the answer is in the manual or datasheet.

Bummer. I thought you changed jobs only a year ago. What happened if I may ask?
 

Stereodude

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Bummer. I thought you changed jobs only a year ago. What happened if I may ask?
I was at the last job for over 5 years. The company changed significantly over the time I was there. I went from having a team of experts in the US at the company supporting me when I got stuck or needed help with a customer's question to having basically no one in the US who knew more than I did. That left me to go international for help. Europe was pretty good in certain areas. Asia was not good in any. On top of that the company was always playing little games trying to mess with their employees and reduce the bonus payout. I decided I had ridden that downward spiral long enough and found another job.
 

Stereodude

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So I'm pretty sure I know why the Intel Core-M processor was a big goose egg for Intel. I've been using this Yoga 3 Pro for about 9 months now. It can't even play the typical web video back smoothly full screen. It's kind of sad really. Only videos that can be hardware accelerated play smoothly and depending on the website some can and some can't. Between the high resolution of the QHD screen and a dearth of CPU power it really struggles. YouTube can play back smoothly full screen, but only when the GUI isn't trying to superimpose anything on top of the video, like the playback position bar. :frusty:
 

Mercutio

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Broadwell's GPU supports hardware decode of every contemporary codec I can think of. I think you're just a victim having too damned many pixels.

I tried running Haswell and Skylake Core i3s without a discrete GPU on my (4k) TV and found it similarly underwhelming.
 

Stereodude

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Broadwell's GPU supports hardware decode of every contemporary codec I can think of. I think you're just a victim having too damned many pixels.

I tried running Haswell and Skylake Core i3s without a discrete GPU on my (4k) TV and found it similarly underwhelming.
Well, the 4.5W TDP doesn't help. I'm not sure what percentage of video in a browser hardware accelerates under Windows 10.
 

Mercutio

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Well, the 4.5W TDP doesn't help. I'm not sure what percentage of video in a browser hardware accelerates under Windows 10.

I think that's a function of the browser and its relationship with GPU acceleration in the first place. I'm sure it's a messy combination of plug-ins under Firefox. It might be different in Edge or Chrome.
 

Stereodude

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So, I can add the Bluetooth in this thing to the list of things that suck. It's basically not possible to use Bluetooth audio from the Yoga 3 Pro. The same BT speakers that will work in an adjacent room with my tablet, phone, or Walkman won't work even positioned right next to the Yoga 3 Pro. The audio has near constant drop outs and glitches. :smack:
 

LunarMist

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I think our department may be getting those soon. Do you have problems with audio for the phone calls or presentations?
 

Howell

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I was finally upgraded from the Yoga S1 to an XPS 15. I tried the 13 but the screen wasn't tall enough.
 

Santilli

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OK. I get the new Lenovo's suck.

Anyone happy with any version?

I'm looking to in theory, replace some very old Panasonic CF 51's.

However, what I want is absurdly expensive. Would like an suggestion for a decent laptop.
 

DrunkenBastard

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My mum picked up a Yoga 710 today. 11.6" 1080p screen with i5, 8gb of ram and 128gb ssd. $550 at Bestbuy.

Pretty light and compact, however the first thing it did after initial bootup questions was to ask to download 4GB of OS updates. Windoes 10 - just pure garbage.
 

DrunkenBastard

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Hmm, so the Yoga 710 apparently doesn't have a digitizer, so Windows Ink wont work. Would have been nice if the sales guy knew that before selling the Office 365 + Bamboo pen bundle. I guess its time to take the pen back for $50 refund. Any funny business and we'll return the Yoga as well. The unit was showing a video about inking capabilities, so total bait and switch bullshit.

SmartSelectImage_2017-08-23-00-53-07.jpg
 
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Stereodude

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Thankfully I left my Yoga 3 Pro behind at my old job. Now I have a Thinkpad 470s (but with a Skylake CPU instead of Kaby Lake). It's a much better machine.
 
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