Question regarding Lenovo Y400

[ericest1978]

The PC comes with a 1 year factory warranty which can be upgraded to the following:

* 1 year in home with accidental damage protection.

* 2 year depot with accidental damage protection.

* 3 year in home with accidental damage protection.

Based on your experience, is it worth it purchase an extended warranty, and if so, which duration given the incrementally higher cost of each one?

Thanks so much guys, I appreciate it.

 

[jaguarskx]

I suppose it depends on how prone electronic gear tends to last in your own hands.

I generally take good care of my electronics so I am not very concerned about buy an extended warranty. I did extend my IdeaPad Y470 to 3 years though 'cause there was a sale on the warranty at the time. I think it was only an extra $50 at the time. I am 20 months into my 36 month warranty without any problems other than the battery life got cut in half which the warranty doesn't cover. There is a separate extended warranty for the battery, but at basically the same cost of a new battery, I decided to ignore the battery warranty. There is also a very common overheating issue where the CPU goes over 85C in games and CPU intensive task like video encoding. Unfortunately, Lenovo's (and other brand names) stance is that those are "normal" operating temps for their laptops. Perhaps they don't think temps under 98C to be overheating... I dunno.

While nothing has technically broken on the laptop the warranty does prevent me from opening my Y470 to clean out whatever thermal paste they are using to apply my one. I've seen a couple of pictures and people posting about an excessive amount of thermal paste being used. Too much thermal paste means the heat transfer properties is hindered. I need to wait until my warranty expires before I can really replace the thermal paste, otherwise I would simply be wasting the remaining warranty in case something really does go bad.

In any event, the issue will be rather moot since I am planning to buy a new laptop anyway; most likely a 15.6" Lenovo ThinkPad T series when it get's updated with Intel's upcoming Haswell CPU. I do not plan on buying any extended warranty.

 

[ericest1978]

Some additional info on the cost of said warranty upgrades:

1YR In-Home + Accidental Damage Protection - $39.99

2YR Depot + Accidental Damage Protection - $79.99

3YR In-Home + Accidental Damage Protection - $159.99

I generally take good care of my electronics as well, but this will be my first personal (non work issue) laptop. I've also not had a bunch of experience with Lenovo in terms of reliability and build quality although they seem to have a solid reputation.

Thanks for taking the time to respond Jaguarskx, I'd appreciate any other insights, you or anyone else can offer. I'd like to make the purchase today or tomorrow and this is the only piece that gives me pause.

 

[jaguarskx]

The question is how much is your piece of mind worth to you? And if you are okay with sending your laptop to the depot for repairs?

Naturally, having someone show up to your house to fix the laptop is more convenient than sending the laptop in for repairs which means it can be weeks before you get your laptop back. But it also costs more.

It seems many people complain that their laptop dies or develop problems after the warranty period. However, that seems natural since most people only when they have a problem. Usually when a laptop is no longer under warranty people do not post about not having any problems.

Lenovo is generally reliable. Their business oriented ThinkPads (particularly the T series) are probably the enterprise level laptops you can buy with generally solid customer service. Their consumer oriented laptops are generally good as well for both price / performance and customer service (but not as good as for their ThinkPad series).

The thing you need to realize that gaming laptops generally have the issues (at least in my opinion) because both the CPU and the GPU will be generating a lot of heat. When I play games on my 14" Y470, I disable Turbo Boost. Small chassis does not provide much room for airflow and the one piece heatsink for both CPU and GPU are generally inadequate. Leaving Turbo Boost on the Core i5-2410m hits 92C when playing most games, the exception is GTA IV which hit 99C and the CPU started to throttle down. With Turbo Boost off the temps are basically mid 80's. Not great, but better than being in the 90's.

The way the Y470/570 and likely Y480/580 are designed, the laptops do not benefit from a laptop cooler. There are no open vents underneath the laptop except for the fans. So having a laptop cooler to blow more air into the laptop does not work. Lenovo also refers to underside of the Y series as a "thermal panel", and with good reason... When my laptop overheated (99C CPU temps), I was able to place the laptop on my lap (bare skin) and it merely felt warm; I left there for over 2 minutes. Since the laptop's underside does not conduct heat very well, a laptop cooler did not decrease the internal temps of my Y470; not even by 1C.

The nVidia GT 550m was adequately cooled though. The temps never rose above 65C.

 

[whyso]

if it was only a general warranty i would be leery about it but including accidental damage is a huge bonus. If you plan on using your laptop for 3+ years and have had a lot of klutzy moments then at that price the warrenty is worth it (dell, hp charge twice as much).