Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga review

Lenovo’s Yogas have been the pick of the hybrid bunch since they first appeared, and the ThinkPad Yoga brings the design to the firm’s famed business-laptop range. See also: what’s the best laptop you can buy in 2014?

The result looks and feels exactly as you’d hope from a marriage of two such successful designs. The build is sturdy and superbly rigid: the matte-black plastics feel high-quality throughout, and there’s barely a hint of creak or flex.

The keyboard is, as usual, superb, with a sensible layout and keys that boast a light-yet-positive action, allowing for quick, accurate touch-typing from the moment you pull the laptop from its box. Lenovo’s trademark red trackpoint – set into the keyboard between the G, H and B keys – remains in place for touch-typists who prefer to control the cursor without their fingers leaving the keyboard.

The hybrid mechanism works in the same way as previous Yoga devices. A fully articulated hinge allows the 12.5in touchscreen to be pushed back and around a full 360 degrees, so the laptop can be used in a variety of configurations.

With the display folded flat against the base, it can serve as a Windows 8.1 tablet. With it folded almost all the way back, it can be used in “stand” mode, with the keyboard planted face down on the desk. And you can flip it around and prop it up in “tent” mode – ideal for cramped spaces.

Innovative design

The ThinkPad Yoga isn’t simply a me-too design. A number of key differences separate it from consumer-focused devices such as the recent IdeaPad Yoga 2 Pro. The most ingenious is the “lift-and-lock” keyboard. We aren’t fond of the name, but we love what it does: as you push the screen back into tablet or stand mode, the plastic plate surrounding the keys rises until it’s flush with the tops of the keys, while another mechanism locks the keys so they don’t depress.

This may sound like a gimmick, but it makes the device feel more like a bona fide tablet than previous Yogas: when you grip it, there are no disconcertingly squishy keys on the rear. There’s also less likelihood of damage to the keys from catching on the seam of a pocket, for example. It’s just a shame that it’s such a lump: at 1.6kg, tablet mode isn’t particularly comfortable unless you rest it on something.

Another difference is the pressure-sensitive passive stylus, which stows away in the front-right corner of the wristrest when not in use. It’s a boon for creative tasks, such as digital painting and photo editing, and it adds the possibility of using Windows 8.1’s excellent handwriting recognition to your text-entry toolbox.

Alas, stylus support isn’t standard across the full ThinkPad Yoga Range: it’s included in our upper-end review model, and the Core i3 model just below it, but the two cheaper configurations, priced at £780 and £930 respectively, support finger-touch only.

One updated feature is the touchpad: instead of hinging from the top as before, the whole surface of the pad now depresses with a solid thunk. This has its advantages: trackpoint users no longer need a second set of buttons just below the keyboard, since it’s now possible to simply click the top edge of the pad. It also means the pad can be larger, making multi-finger gestures easier to perform.

We’re not entirely convinced by the implementation, though. It’s heavily sprung, which isn’t a problem in casual use, but with jobs that involve a lot of clicking around – updating a website CMS, for instance, or photo editing – you’re going to get tired fingers very quickly. If you choose to tap rather than click, the whole pad rattles slightly.

The final novelty is Lenovo’s OneLink connector, which takes the form of an extended power socket on the left-hand edge of the laptop. It’s Lenovo’s take on the old-style docking port found on the bottom of many business laptops, and it supports charging, data and video across a single cable. The forthcoming Lenovo OneLink Dock will use this port to add three USB 3 ports, a pair of USB 2 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, DVI and full-size DisplayPort.

That’s just as well, since connectivity is one of the only disappointing aspects of this laptop. Around the edges of the ThinkPad Yoga you’ll find only two USB 3 ports, one mini-HDMI, an SD card slot, and a 3.5mm headset jack. Gigabit Ethernet is provided via a dongle; we’d prefer a dedicated, onboard socket.

Wireless support is better. Our review model was supplied with Intel’s Wireless-AC 7260, 2×2 stream 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter, which is well worth having at an additional cost of only £16. There’s also Bluetooth 4 and NFC, the sensor for which lives in the touchpad. Oddly, NFC is free, but you have to specify it as an upgrade on Lenovo’s website if you want it included.

Display, performance and battery life

We can’t speak for the 1,366 x 768 screens of cheaper models, but the premium ThinkPad Yoga configurations come with Full HD, 12.5in IPS displays, topped with matte-finish Gorilla Glass. This feels beautifully slick under the finger, and helps to keep reflection from office lights to a minimum.

The screen is a joy to behold, and it’s made even better by bright backlighting and respectable colour fidelity. Measured with our X-Rite i1Display 2 colorimeter, the ThinkPad Yoga delivered a striking 451cd/m[sup]2[/sup] top brightness and a contrast ratio of 663:1, with an average Delta E of 3.4. This makes it noticeably brighter at top whack than its consumer stablemate, the Yoga 2 Pro, and easier to read in daylight.

The only small criticisms we have are that the darkest shades of grey tend to disappear into black, and that the matte finish adds a slight graininess – but we’re being very picky here.

Performance-wise, the ThinkPad Yoga is speedy enough for most jobs. Our review sample is powered by a dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-4200U, backed by 8GB of RAM and Intel’s HD Graphics 4400.

Storage takes the form of a 500GB HDD enhanced with a 16GB mSATA SSD cache drive, although you can alternatively specify a 1TB HDD or a 256GB SSD if you wish; they all mount in a standard 2.5in drive bay, which can be accessed by unscrewing the bottom cover. The processor can be upgraded to a Core i7-4500U for £102 extra.

All this contributed to a decent result of 0.62 in our Real World Benchmarks, and an exceedingly responsive experience in everyday use. Browsing the web and using touchscreen apps is superbly fluid, and the ThinkPad boots in only 22 seconds – pretty quick for a hard-disk-based system. The 802.11ac wireless, meanwhile, delivered a maximum bandwidth of 37MB/sec in our close-range Iperf test.

The best result of all, however, is battery life: the ThinkPad’s 47Wh lithium polymer battery combines with the power-efficient Haswell CPU to ensure there’s enough stamina for the Yoga to last a full day at the office. In our light-use test, the ThinkPad Yoga kept going for an impressive 9hrs 15mins before shutting down. In our heavy use test, with the screen at full brightness and the CPU running at full tilt, it lasted 2hrs 8min.

Verdict

Aside from the smallest of niggles, this new ThinkPad has well and truly won us over. It’s the same price as the consumer-orientated Yoga 2 Pro, and definitely more practical – aside from the 200g extra weight. It’s cheaper than the ThinkPad Helix, and a more elegant design.

It only misses out on overhauling our current A-List incumbent, the Dell XPS 12, by dint of its weight and a slightly lowlier CPU. All told, Lenovo has yet another winner on its hands with the ThinkPad Yoga: it’s a simply superb business Ultrabook.