Lenovo laptops silently stripped of important feature in BIOS updates

[Redaktion]

Many users on Lenovo's forums are reporting missing encoding codecs on their Legion laptops after a recent BIOS update. This issue appears to exclusively affect Legion units sold in Germany, potentially due to now-settled litigation with Nokia.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-laptops-silently-stripped-of-important-feature-in-BIOS-updates.550673.0.html

[China Lied People Died]

How does this affect video/audio playback and performance when working with Adobe PremierePro, After Effects, Blender, Lightroom, Photoshop etc.?

[Santiago]

Bios updates should be avoided by people who know what they're doing. 4.07 legion 7i's firmware version applied a +70mw offset to the cache to solve a vulnerability. But, being serious, it is better to know what we're doing online (avoid downloading weird stuff, not opening unknown email attachments, etc.).
I backflashed to 2.01 and applied - 100 core - 50 cache (uncore) I voltage offset and now my lap chills due heavy tasks. Avoid bios updates!

[America Lied No One Died]

How does this affect video/audio playback and performance when working with Adobe PremierePro, After Effects, Blender, Lightroom, Photoshop etc.?

I'm not sure about the other programs, but PremierPro does use NVENC to significantly accelerate video encoding.

[JohnIL]

Firmware should not be upgraded unless there is a specific reason to do so.
I have seen this before where features disappear in newer firmware updates. In most cases if your hardware works correctly you don't need firmware updates. We saw this with Spectre/Meltdown where the firmware updates slowed your PC and the threat never really materialized. Besides many firmware never allow for downgrades if you have issues. As they say if it works don't fix it.

[Beyaz]

Stay away from Lenovo products! I paid a lot of money for a P70 work station and from the day it has arrived I am still facing problems. 4 years no solution!

[Consumer Rights Advocate]

Every consumer affected by Lenovo's failure to disclose this issue BEFORE and AFTER purchase of their laptops in Germany (and likely other countries) should file a report here:

##### Report Lenovo here #####
Verbraucherzentrale (German consumer rights protection) > Marktbeobachtung (market watch)

Not even Lenovo's own upport staff in their official Lenovo Forum are aware of this.

People are paying a lot of money for laptops with missing features, and popular video editing programs will be much slower than similarly priced or cheaper alternative laptops.

[JoeBidenDinosaur]

The lack of Nvidia NVENC results in around 80% higher export times meaning instead of 1h, German Lenovo Legion customers need to wait 5h for the same rendering process.

That will be a dealbreaker even for amateur creators. Still no statement or fix from Lenovo.

[Lukas Christ]

Can't we just flash the US firmware of the laptop? Which seems to be available through the download page as well on Lenovo vantage or am I wrong

[Advisor]

Latest Bios Update (Aug 2nd) enables H264 NVEnc again. Tested and checked with command line tool.