If the Y740 had working drivers it would be a "decent" laptop for the price; not good, not great, just decent. But with the awful drivers it comes with (and no updates so far) it's a hard pass. First: video and battery. By default it does not allow dual graphics, that must be enabled in the BIOS. On nVidia graphics you get ONE HOUR of normal web browsing (!!!!!). Absolutely the worst laptop I've owned when it comes to battery life. Go into BIOS, change it to dual video card and now you lose all control of your screen brightness - it's at blindingly bright max at all times. Lenovo knows of this problem and no fix is coming. Ever. So if you don't mind having a super super bright laptop screen you can get maybe an hour and a half, as it still runs full throttle CPU when web browsing (the fans even kick in!!)... truly unbelievable. I've tried various driver rollbacks, tricks, whatever. Nothing works. It's just bad design by bad engineers.
Second major driver issue is sound. The built in RealTek drivers have no manager or equalizer (!?!?!). First laptop I've owned out of a dozen in the past decade (and another dozen I've used for work) that didn't have Realtek Audio Manager - so you can't adjust anything other than volume. With default equalizer settings the built in speakers have a super annoying "buzz" during normal audio playback. After uninstalling the built in drivers and re-installing 2017 RealTek drivers I could access the RealTek Audio Manager and crank down the lower range to keep the low quality speakers from sounding gratingly awful when watching videos or playing games. With default and “better” drivers the audio will 100% cut out if you close the lid about 30% of the time. The only solution: total restart. Since it's on an SSD it's not a deal killer but holy crap it's super annoying. Known issue. No fix coming.
Lastly the bling bling lights. They are out of control - and I mean that in the worst and most literal way. The default mode is rainbow parade and max brightness. It is absolutely garish; I can't stand it. Every time you restart the computer it forgets what the last settings you had were, so you have to use special key combinations to tune down or turn off the groovy hippy lights. Alternatively you can wait 15 seconds or so for the iCue software to start up and you can adjust it. But until the program starts up you're going to have your own personal glowing, flashing light show, like it or not. I'm sure it's a huge hit with the 14-17 year old YouTube streamer FortNite crowd, but for anyone that is sane or old enough to legally drink it's just ugly and annoying. God forbid you dare to use this POS as a business laptop - you're guaranteed to get glares if you turn this techno light show on in an office environment. Oh, and the iCue software is *incompatible with some games*, such as Far Cry New Dawn. You lose ALL keyboard lights until you force close the program. Very high end engineering here.
Gaming performance is fine. It is in line with what you would expect with the hardware it has. It runs most games at 50-60 fps on ultra at the native 1080p resolution (with the nVidia 1660 anyway). Physical build quality of the laptop seems solid, and I really appreciate the plastic "grill" on the bottom that keeps my lap from cooking while gaming.
Still, had I known about the ONE HOUR battery life (SERIOUSLY!?), the LOOKATMEE 16-year-old-girl disco lights (untz untz untz, woop woop), and the wonky speakers, and works-when-it-wants audio - I would have simply gone with another brand entirely. This is 100% the last Lenovo I buy. I'm past my refund window, so I'm going to turn this laptop into a dedicated home theater machine - just about the only thing it's kinda sorta good at, maybe. It's unremarkable for gaming, embarrassing for business, and absolutely horrendous to live with on a day to day basis.
| Standing screen display size | 15.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1366 x 768 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Processor | 8032 |
| Memory Speed | 2.6 GHz |
| Hard Drive | SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660Ti |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 6 GB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11abg, 802.11a/b/g/n, 802.11a, 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 5 Hours |
