T440s nightmare

[daymon909]

Hello everyone,

I would like to share my terrible experience with my new T440s. The QC issues I am having with it are just too big to be ignored. For the price I paid I was at least expecting something that does not fall apart out of the box. Understand that I am being honest here and not trying to do any kind of product bashing. The model I bought is the GT730m version with i5 4300, FHD screen, 8gb ram, intel 7260AC.

So, long story short: bad screen, bad keyboard, bad fan.

1/ The screen: the assembly is terrible. It is not properly glued on the right side and comes off from its bezel. And it's already getting worse. The amount of backlight bleeding at the bottom is unacceptable and makes the laptop completely useless for movies and even games when a black background is being displayed. It is just too distracting.

2/ The keyboard: some of my keys are not centered into their housing and when pressed down, the right side of the keys is hitting the border. I have 5 or 6 keys acting like that, including the backspace one. Again, unacceptable.

3/ The fan: sometimes the fan blades are hitting something, probably the fan cage, resulting in an annoying noise. 

My touchpad also seems to get a bit stuck sometimes and cracks a bit, but if it were just that I could live with it.

I tried to call Digital River for a return with no luck, so I sent a mail yesterday morning and am still waiting for a response. Today is the end of my 7day return policy so I guess they will call back on monday to say I can't send it back and must call after sales service.

Overall, this is possibly one of the worst purchase I ever made. I cannot believe my unit could have successfuly passed some sort of quality control.

I wish you more luck than I had and I apologize for the rant.

[wantathinkpad]

Well if all else fails. Call Lenovo for warranty service.

[sjahanmi]

sounds like you got a bad one...probably one in every few hundred in a batch will be like that the way Chinese assembly lines go these days. I have the same model and no issues. if the seller doesn't remedy, go to Lenovo warranty service.

[daymon909]

Yes if I can't return it I'll do that. I will keep you posted on how it goes.

[capflam]

You need to return it, period. These are a lot of issues and they seem 100% linked to quality control.
I returned mine because of the display not being able to display white (light yellow instead, all websites looked like crap).

[daymon909]

Well, after making some research on the Thinkpad german forum, it looks like I am not the only one with the display coming off. Other people are reporting the same issues after some weeks of use in that thread: http://thinkpad-forum.de/threads/163928-Lenovo-T440s-schlechte-Erfahrung

There are also pictures showing the problem on page 18. I should probably take some pictures too and post them and make a video of the keyboard issue.

One other issue I did not motion is about the bottom screws not being of good quality. I noticed today I have one screw in pretty bad shape and i'm afraid it could be hard to remove. Again this is out of the box because I never touched it.

I will definitely call on monday for a return. I can hardly believe what I'm seeing.

[daymon909]

Here is how my display looks like. This is what I got out of the box. I can even see the backlighting.

[daymon909]

And here you can understand the problem with the keyboard. Some of the keys are simply sitting too close to the keyboard frame and there is not enough clearance for those to come down properly. 

[sjahanmi]

Man, you weren't kidding. your screen is coming right off...its not mounted properly. the keys on your keyboard don't look right either. definitely return it for another one. thanks for the pictures

[tolga9009]

We're experiencing the same problem with the display bezel: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T4-T5-und-neuere-T-Serie/T440s-Bildschirmrahmen-löst-sich/m-p/1353481 My bezel: http://postimg.org/image/4rw1o9dzb/ You can even see the backlight. It's the same spot, bottom right, as always. Other than that, everything runs smooth. It really is the bezel only; the display-unit sits in tight.

To your keyboard: it seems, that it didn't fit 100%. You should read the hardware maintenance manual page 66. There are 2 notches on the bottom of your keyboard. You can moving the keyboard bezel, so it fits right. Your problem 3 is kinda unsolvable by yourself, so you will be better of just returning it I guess. To 4: there are lots of other users with cracking touchpads. My touchpad is OK though. Definitely return that unit!