Inside Lenovo Yoga 500 – disassembly, internal photos and upgrade options
This flexible little companion offers neat features with a budget-friendly price tag, but somehow modest upgrade options. Maybe mainly due to some design limitations, but at least the teardown is just as modest. You will just need a screw and a small plastic tool to completely disassemble the notebook or just gain access to the most commonly upgraded hardware.
You can check the current price of the notebook here: http://amzn.to/1LPciCA
1. Opening the bottom cover
You need to do some unscrewing and after that try to pop out the bottom piece with a thin plastic tool or credit card of some sort. Luckily, there no cables that need to be removed so go ahead and detach the cover.
2. Upgrade options, Wi-Fi module, battery
The notebook comes with Seagate 500GB SSHD (8GB SSD + 500GB HDD running at 5400 rpm) or at least the configuration we are currently reviewing. If you need additional storage, you will need to swap the current SSHD with another 2.5-inch storage device like HDD or SSD. No M.2 SATA SSD slot, unfortunately, but quite acceptable at this price range. Right next to the drive you can see the 45Wh battery with model name L14M3P21 manufactured for/by Lenovo.
Going up the motherboard can be seen the Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 Wi-Fi module and one RAM chip covered with a black sticker, which in our case is 4GB. You will have to swap the 4GB chip with another 8GB chip if you want to perform an upgrade, since there is only one RAM slot provided.
You can check the current price of the notebook here: http://amzn.to/1LPciCA