Here’s Why you Shouldn’t Buy a Lenovo Laptop

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Recently, my Lenovo IdeaPad 5’s touchpad pooped the bed. It flat-out refuses to work anymore, no matter what you do. This started about a week ago, and we tried to go into UEFI BIOS and it still didn’t work in there. This seems to be a common problem with Lenovo laptops. However, Lenovo’s problems extend much further past touchpad problems, as you will see by reading the “EDIT” section of this post.Well of course that wasn’t good sign, because that means it’s a hardware problem, not a Windows problem. (And this machine is running Windows 11, FYI.) We’ve already gotten the Lenovo support guys on the horn, because fortunately the thing is still under warranty, since we just got it about 10 months ago. For this reason, we decided to extend the warranty to a Premium Care warranty for another year in case something like this happens again; we’re not exactly too happy with the reliability of the laptop so far. We almost had to send it out somewhere to be repaired, but now we’re hearing that the Lenovo guys are going to come to our house and try to swap it out for a new one. It seems that Windows does not recognize the touchpad at all; in Device Manager, it does not see any mice or pointing devices at all other than the external mouse I have connected. And there is also no settings in Windows Settings for the trackpad, as if it doesn’t detect a trackpad whatsoever. Things have just gone completely crazy.

Also, I may add, this laptop was not cheap. If I remember correctly, it was close to a thousand dollars, maybe $900 or something like that. Out of a laptop this expensive, this kind of performance should not be expected. Do we live in a world where you have to pay tens of thousands of dollars just to get something that will last for 1 year? This is the kind of annoying everyday technology that’s just all the way out of control. So then the Lenovo guys ask us to reset the whole damn machine, for some reason, even though we know (and they probably know) that the problem isn’t with Windows, it’s with the hardware! Since the machine’s probably going to get wiped during the repair/swap process anyway, though, we made a full backup. However, I really don’t think it’s necessary to waste all that time resetting Windows, re-applying the backup, and all this craziness, when we’re 100% sure it’s not going to do anything. God! Do these Lenovo guys even know what they’re talking about beyond the basic troubleshooting steps, like rebooting, re-installing drivers, and trivial things like that?

Anyway, these problems with the touchpad on this laptop certainly aren’t very pleasing to have to deal with, especially since this is so early on in the laptop’s usage period that it makes me wonder if the whole thing’s just going to go out in a year or two. (That’s the main reason why we extended the warranty.) I’ll continue to add to this post through edits as this situation progresses and we hear more back from Lenovo. Let’s just hope this turns out successfully.

EDIT 7/19/2022: It turns out that no, Lenovo won’t come out to repair the laptop in-house because we upgraded to the premium plan.

???!!

You should get more repair features, not less, by upgrading to a premium care plan. Instead, we got the ability to have guys come out and repair it in-house revoked by paying $56 dollars to “upgrade” to a premium plan. This was not made clear by the service people on the phone at all. In addition, we also have the ability to send it to a Best Buy to have it repaired revoked as well, because we “upgraded.” It seems that we have downgraded, not upgraded. Because of this lackluster customer service and superfluously poor communication, we now find ourselves having to send it off overseas in a Lenovo-marked box, making it an even greater target for theft. Oh dear. Customer service did not communicate this whatsoever.

So this is why you shouldn’t by a Lenovo laptop at all costs. First, their reliability factor is horrible. Touchpads break within a year of usage. Customer service is horrible and doesn’t know what they’re talking about. The way things work with warranty at this company doesn’t make any sense. And God help you if you “upgraded” to the premium plan and are now expecting another full year of coverage and some guys to come out to your house to repair your crippled laptop.

This company is a scream.