If you’ve got a Lenovo laptop, you’ve probably noticed an app called Lenovo Vantage has popped on your PC. It sounds like a pension scheme and an instant candidate for uninstallation, but it actually contains a useful set of utilities for keeping your laptop healthy and up-to-date.
Sadly, however, Lenovo has also bundled a whole load of other promotional garbage with it, reducing the usefulness of this utility and making it an occasional nuisance. So should you keep or get rid? Let’s look more closely at it’s good and bad points.
Lenovo Vantage: the good bits
The best thing about Lenovo Vantage is that it includes a series of diagnostic tools that check on the health of your system and ensure that key software drivers are up to date. If you’ve got a problem with your laptop, Lenovo Vantage might well identify the cause.
Most of these useful features can be found under the Device tab at the top of the screen. These include:
Hardware ScanThis is the place to go if you’ve got a problem with your laptop. The Hardware Scan feature is like an MOT for laptops, checking all the key components are working as Lenovo intended. If you’ve got a faltering hard disk, dodgy memory stick or wobbly power supply, this will probably identify it.
Device SettingsThis includes a bunch of handy tweaks that you might not find in the regular Windows 10/11 Settings menu. From here, for example, you can switch on the clever Intelligent Cooling feature, which throttles performance when it detects the laptop’s being used on your lap, to keep the base cooler.
You’ll also find the option to set a new Battery Charge Threshold. What the Charlie Dickens does that do? Well, if you’re almost always using your laptop plugged into the mains, you’re better off setting the battery to charge to less than 100%. This will reduce the length of time the laptop can run on battery power, but improve the health of your battery in the long run. Given most laptop batteries can’t be replaced these days, that’s almost certainly worth doing.
System UpdateIn some ways this replicates the Windows Update settings, ensuring you’ve got the latest security patches from Microsoft. But it also houses Lenovo’s own hardware driver updates, letting you know if there’s a new piece of software for your graphics chip, touchpad or other components.
In my experience, major Windows updates often knock out the touchscreen on my Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga X1. However, a quick visit to this section of the Vantage app often reveals a new display driver that returns the touchscreen to working order.
Lenovo Vantage: the bad bits
Unfortunately, Lenovo has added various bits of cruft to Lenovo Vantage over the years. We first wrote about this software in 2018 and it was a reasonably lightweight utility. Since then, it’s been bogged down with various add-ons, many of which add little value or are just Lenovo promotional fluff (you’ll see many such complaints in the Comments section below). These include:
The Lenovo Vantage Toolbar A largely useless waste of space in the bottom-right of the screen, that by default adds another battery bar to go alongside Windows’ own. You can switch the toolbar off by clicking Device, then selecting Power under the Device Settings menu. Scroll down and flick the Vantage Toolbar switch to off.
Promotional articles The main Dashboard of the Lenovo Vantage software is now stuffed with editorial, much of it simply pimping other parts of the Lenovo business. There’s not much you can do about this other than ignore it.
Pop-up messages and promotions Lenovo Vantage has become quite noisy, with warning and promotional messages popping up while you’re trying to get on with stuff. To switch the bulk of these messages off, click the down arrow in the top-right corner of the Vantage screen, select Preference Settings and switch off App Features and Marketing in the Messages section. This leaves only the most critical messages activated.
Should I uninstall Lenovo Vantage?
Despite its problems, Lenovo Vantage still adds value to the computer, especially for less experienced users who might otherwise miss things such as driver updates or hardware faults. However, the added promotional puff has certainly made Lenovo Vantage less attractive. On balance, I’d still keep it installed, although make sure to turn off the toolbar and pop-up messages, as shown above.
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