Another reason to never buy a Lenovo Yoga (huge design flaw)

So far, nearly every generation of the Lenovo Yoga has proven to have a massive design flaw that renders the laptop useless. Hinges, charging port, and now, power button. What were the engineers actually thinking when they designed this power button? A piece that costs less than 1 cent causes this laptop to become a paperweight. There is no excuse for this.

[DavidLee-crxv]

With most consumer laptops being sold at stores with 1 year warranty, it seems that many of them are designed to fail not far outside that warranty period.

[thearousedeunuch]

It works as intended: their intention is to get you to go to their official stores/retail vendors to get it fixed. They will ship it to Lenovo, which will gladly fix it... for a fee, of course.

[rockdemn]

So sad to see this happen to a company like Lenovo, yes their reputation is borrowed from IBM when they bought their hardware division but still they held the line for a long time and earned their own rep in their own right by keeping the ThinkPad a ThinkPad as long as they could, so sad to see another company destroyed by their own accounting department.

[ARockyRock]

Had yogas as a school laptop years ago, students figured out that they could detach the entire screen by sticking their thumbs between the bottom of the screen and the keyboard.

[timmy]

As an hardware/firmware engineer myself, I'm 100% certain that someone in Lenovo's engineering team, warned about that button being an issue.
But as it usually goes, management with all their wisdom, decided to ignore all of it!

That's why I've bought myself a framework laptop. Still have to see how long it will last, but I've the feeling set company respects and listens to their engineers rather than their sales department.

[batyanko]

Lenovo is somehow ahead of everybody in the "make laptops as brittle as possible" game.
Last time I put some real effort in a pretty thorough overhaul of a Lenovo, backing up all the broken plastic with aluminum planks. Only to realize, just at the end of the project, that now the display is gone - although I sure as heck didn't apply any abnormal stress on it.
These guys are just one step ahead in the game. They apparently LOOK FOR the worst materials and designs to put in a laptop.

[blast_processing]

You should consider publishing videos about the laptops / desktops that are (in your experience) built to last, with some explanation as to why. I'd be interested at any rate.

[tenhundredkills]

I've had several of these Yogas come into my office. Never once has a client approved a repair on them because of either broken hinges, or the worthless power button. Parts are unobtanium and the few motherboards that are out there cost more than the laptop is worth. Every single one of these Yogas, I end up just recovering data and transferring to a new laptop. Whenever I have a client that wants to buy one for themselves or their employee(s), I tell them "NO! Do not buy a Yoga. Spend more and get something better. You'll thank me later".

[petterikippo]

Just a question, but could you replace the whole power switch thing with a simple sideways mounted push button? Does the power button do anything special other than closing the circuit? Because if it could be replaced this is just planned obsolescence at its finest. Well done lenovo! Its weird how even some of their cheaper end stuff can last a good while, but this 1200$ thing breaks in just a few years.

[-Tylermsa]

2:41 "So the fail safe for a shitty design is another shitty design."
That is one of the relatable quotes in recent history

[madscientist]

Lenovo has done a lot of dumb things to their laptops over the years... This is one of the top 3 worst engineering designs by far!

[nathanbasset]

Vote with your wallets people. I voted Framework.

[chrissre]

They were all like APPLE DESIGN school on that.

[johnsbirthdayinapril]

This is sad to see, I have a 6 year old yoga it survived 4 years of college (2 mile bike rides in the rain and snow, getting hit by a car, dropped multiple times, and constant use) and is honestly still running great. I am not sure if this is just newer yogas that are going to crap, or if I just got lucky. Either way I am sad to see that not everyone has had the same experience as me.

[ianfoster]

These Yogas were what got me into hardware repair. I had a 2016 hand-me-down from my mom. Got two more duds for parts. Two Hard drive failures, ram failures, four broken motherboards, power switches, keyboards, backlights, everything that could break did in the less than 3 years I was using it. They broke so often that i cobbled a backup laptop together so i had a working one when the other inevitably broke. For a laptop that cost $1200 new it's inexcusable, especially considering how resilient their older thinkpads are.

[gaggioaxel]

When you find your laptop model in a video named "huge design flaw": 🗿

Fortunately mine never broke but i handle it better than the way i do (did) with my gf.
But still my gf is not mine anymore, and the hinge of the lenovo broke one year ago and i keep putting superglue until it dries, break and then put it again.
Because another design flaw is that the hinge on the screen is made of metal, but screwed on a plastic chassis so if the metal separates from plastic because you open it 1500-2000 times in 3-4 years when you use it for work, there's no way to put them back together, except by glueing, breaking and repeat, like me and my gf.

[christianvaniten]

This happened to mine actually. 2 days out of warranty. I replaced it with a button meant for a PS4 disc eject and it's worked fine since.

[qlum]

Conceptually I can see why they wanted a push button on the pcb actuated by a button on the side, it saves on assembly, however it definitely needs some refinement.

[BulkyHealthyCat]

You can still fix it because *YOU'RE THE GREATEST TECHNICIAN THAT EVER LIVED*

[qwertycupcake]

Lenovo's new laptops come with lid sensor (flip to boot option in BIOS/vantage application). Side power button is still there on some models.