Lenovo Yoga 900 junk

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Lenovo makes under-engineered junk. I made the mistake of buying, in November 2015, a Lenvo Yoga 900-13ISK. I wanted a Windows 10 convertible Ultrabook to compliment my bigger and heavier mid-2015 MacBook Pro, as I develop on multiple platforms. On paper, and initially, the Yoga 900 looked like a great machine; it was stylish, very light, had a screen that was easily the equal of my MacBook Pro’s Retina display, the SkyLake i7-6500U performed well.

Everything was great, until it began falling apart. First were the scratches on the top and bottom aluminum trim, then (inside 8 months) the screen began flickering and exhibiting very odd behavior that I traced down to failing solder/connectivity for the ribbon cable that connects the mainboard and the display. I was able to hack a solution that keeps the display somewhat working (but it’s very flakey). The accelerometer/position sensor stopped working after just 10 months, so the machine wouldn’t auto-rotate the screen or properly switch between desktop and tablet modes. Today, the display now has noticeable artifacting and “snow”, due to the failing display cabling. To add insult to injury, all four of the hinge end-caps for Lenovo’s fancy hinge design, fell off, making the closed machine very prone to snagging on wires and clothes.

And that’s just the hardware situation. In under a year after the Yoga 900’s release, Lenovo orphaned the machine, ceasing to provide new firmware and driver updates; but also doing a great job of vendor locking you to their outdated drivers. Along with outdated, bloated Lenovo crapware applets, you can be assured that once they’ve decided to distance themselves from a problematic machine, you’ll get no more support, nor will anyone from the company answer difficult questions.

In comparison, my MacBook Pro, which I’ve used a lot more heavily (mainly because I had to use and travel with it more that I intended, since my Yoga became largely unusable) still works as well today as the day I bought it.

Put simply, the Lenovo Yoga 900 is the single worst computer I’ve bought, or built, in the last 35 years.

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