Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 User Review

I have the IdeaPad Yoga 13 in hand and since there's a lot of discussion around this new system put together a review. I've only had it for about a week so it's not as comprehensive as some here might like to see I'm sure but hopefully it helps some people!

With the much repeated phrase “the PC is dying”, compliments of tablets and smartphones replacing their functionality, savvy PC manufacturers knew they had to come up with fresh designs and functionality to make their products appealing again. Lenovo happens to be one of those smart companies that is not sitting pat, but rather innovating their way to staying relevant and ahead of the competition. The IdeaPad Yoga 13 is one such product, it’s essentially an Ultrabook that serves well as both a laptop or tablet, and a few modes in between.

The IdeaPad Yoga 13 I have on hand is the same as that being sold in Best Buy stores, it comes with an Intel Core i5-3317 1.7GHz processor, 128GB SSD, 4GB of RAM and has an impressive 13.3” IPS display with 1600 x 900 HD+ resolution. For the uninitiated, IPS stands for In-Plane Switching and means you can view the screen from any angle and colors will remain the same, the Apple iPad is probably the most familiar example of this to many. While the hardware specs of the Yoga 13 are impressive in and of themselves for a 3.3lbs thin and light 13.3” screen Ultrabook, it’s really the unique form factor functionality that makes the IdeaPad –Yoga a standout. The patented hinge is designed in a way that the screen can rotate 360-degrees. What this means is that you can go from a laptop type mode, to tablet mode, to tent mode, to stand mode. It’s easier to demonstrate via imagery what each of those modes actually mean:

Laptop mode

Tent mode

Stand mode

Tablet Mode

Now, none of these new modes would be possible without a touchscreen and an OS that makes touch input easy to do. The Yoga 13 screen has 10-point multi-touch (go ahead, put all ten fingers on the screen at once) and the new Windows 8 OS. Windows 8 offers big tiles on the start screen to easily access programs and apps, it’s much easier than poking at the small icons present in Windows 7 that are more conducive to mouse input. That said, there is a learning curve to using Windows 8 for those coming from any prior Windows version, so a fair warning there. The most cited difference is the fact the Start bar we’ve become used to for accessing programs and utilities is gone and there’s no built-in option to get it back (though a few 3rd party program hacks are out there).

Design and Build

The Yoga 13 comes with two color options for the case, graphite gray or clementine orange. The Best Buy model selling for $999 is graphite gray, and in fact that’s all you can get on Lenovo.com at the current time, there’s a short supply of the orange. The gray color is professional looking and classy, just the thin form factor and unique hinge abilities still makes the Yoga 13 eye catching. However, there’s no doubt the orange case might turn a few more eyes and is more unique, so there are going to be some disappointed it’s impossible to find that option at the current time.

Whether you get a silver or gray lid, the keyboard and keyboard deck area will be black in color on the inside along with the screen bezel. One cool finish feature I really like is the rubberized textured palm rest area, it really makes it easy for resting you palms on and prevents any hand slipping that’s common on all metal construction notebooks.

The build quality of the Yoga 13 is excellent, this thing feels solid with its magnesium aluminum alloy constructed case. It’s really hard to find any flex on the body, despite the fact it’s extremely thin and 0.67”, Lenovo managed to make it rigid. The unique 360-degree swivel hinge is also very rigid and tight, whatever position you put the screen into is where it stays, there’s no wobble or give whatsoever. Overall the fit and finish lives up to the premium billing associated with the Yoga 13

Weight

If you’re on the go weight matters, I used my handy Salter kitchen scale (good for more than just weighing flour) to see what the stand alone and travel weights were for the Yoga 13. Without the power cord and adapter it comes in at 3lbs 6..8 oz (3.425 lbs).

Add in the power adapter and cord and the weight goes up to 4lbs 0.9 oz (4.056lbs).

Not bad weights for carrying in a backpack, you’ll barely notice the 3.3lbs on top of some books. However, 3.3lbs is too heavy to use in slate tablet mode while standing up for long periods of time. You need a smaller slate style tablet if you’re a doctor or field worker looking for a work machine to be held 8 hours a day.

Screen

Let’s talk about the screen a bit more. Already mentioned is the fact it’s IPS, 13.3” diagonally and offers touch input. It also uses what Lenovo calls “Direct Bonding” of the protective glass layer on top of the LCD panel, this allows for more light to come through than the typical air bonding, Lenovo claims it’s only a 4% loss of light versus a typical 12%. To help the brightness out further the Yoga 13 has a bright 300-nits backlight, which is brighter than an average laptop that would offer around 250-nits of brightness. The glossy screen also helps to enhance the colors, the downside to the glossy finish is the fact it’s quite reflective, if you have a strong lighting source behind you the screen can become mirror like. On the whole this screen is quite gorgeous though, I especially like the high resolution display that gives you enough screen real estate to fit two open windows next to each other.

Check out the viewing angles of the screen, as you can see, no matter from what angle you look at the Yoga 13 the colors appear the same:

Performance wise you should be very happy if you like fast bootup times. With the 128GB SSD I’m getting around 10-seconds to boot to the desktop in Windows 8. Shut down is faster at around 3 seconds. The fast SSD helps to overcome the somewhat limited 4GB of RAM, I really wish Lenovo had made 6GB of RAM the standard base configuration for this premium product. You can get up to 8GB of RAM at purchase via Lenovo.com, but it’s a pricey upgrade. Upgrading RAM after market is possible if you’re brave enough to pry off the keyboard, but be forewarned this could void your warranty and there’s no guarantee you’ll get the keyboard to go back in right, an adhesive is used to help the keyboard stay in place and once removed you’ll lose some of that adhesion.

The Intel Core i5 1.7GHz processor and Intel HD 4000 graphics are fast enough to allow for some light gaming, but I don’t think many buyers will have 3D gaming in mind when buying the IdeaPad Yoga. It’s meant more as a versatile machine that has snappy response so you can easily multi-task by typing up documents, watching video and browsing the web with multiple tabs open and never run into any slowdown. To test overall performance I ran PCMark 7 and got a score of 4,333, this is a very respectable number and stacks up well against other modern laptops. The overall score in 3DMark Vantage for the Yoga 13 came in at 2,739, if you want high frame rates in games like Skyrim or Battle Field 3 then you might consider reducing the resolution, while the HD+ 1600 x 900 resolution allows for more detail, it does stress out the GPU more.

For those that like to see comparison score benchmarks, check out the tables below:

3DMark Vantage – Measures 3D graphics performance, higher scores are better

Laptop	3DMark Vantage
Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 – Intel Core i5-3317 1.7GHz, Intel HD 4000, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD	2,739
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon – Intel Core i5-3427 2.3GHz, Intel HD 4000, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD	2,755
HP ENVY 4t-1000 – Intel Core i3-2367M 1.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB 5400RPM HD, Intel HD 3000	1,320
Lenovo ThinkPad X230 – Intel Core i5-3320M 2.60GHz, 4GB RAM, 7200RPM HD	3,165
Lenovo ThinkPad X220 – Intel Core i5-2410M 2.30GHz, 4GB RAM, 7200RPM HD	1,611
Dell XPS 15 (Intel Core i7-2670QM, Nvidia GT 525M 1GB RAM, 8GB RAM, 7200RPM HD)	4,211
HP Envy 17-3000, Intel Core i7-2670QM, AMD 7690M, 6GB RAM, 7200RPM HD	6,970
Dell XPS 17 (Core i5-2410m 2.30GHz, Nvidia 550m, 6GB RAM, HD 7200RPM)	4,747
HP Pavilion dv6t Select Edition – Intel Core i5-2410m, Intel HD 3000 Graphics, 6GB RAM	1,845

PCMark 7 – Measures overall system performance, higher scores are better

Laptop	PCMark 7 Score
Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 – Intel Core i5-3317 1.7GHz, Intel HD 4000, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD	4,333 PCMarks
HP Pavilion dv4t-5100 (Intel Core i5-3210M, Nvidia GT 650M, 8GB RAM, 7200RPM HD)	2,267 PCMarks
Lenovo IdeaPad Y580 (Intel Core i7-3610QM, Nvidia GTX 660M, 8GB RAM, 5400RPM HD)	2,622 PCMarks
HP dv6t-7000 Quad Edition, Intel Core i7-3610QM, Nvidia GT650M, 7200RPM HD	2,877 PCMarks
HP Envy 17-3000, Intel Core i7-2670QM, AMD 7690M, 6GB RAM, 7200RPM HD	2,703 PCMarks
Lenovo IdeaPad Y570 – Intel Core i7-2670QM, Nvidia 555M 1GB, 8GB RAM,5400RPM HD	2,573 PCMarks
Dell XPS 17 (Core i5-2410m 2.30GHz, Nvidia 550m, 6GB RAM, HD 7200RPM)	1,995 PCMarks
Sony VAIO SA (Intel Core i5-2430M 2.50GHz, AMD Radeon 6630M, 4GB RAM)	2,002 PCMarks

I’d be remised in not mentioning the rather odd partition setup of the 128GB SSD. Out of the box with the 128GB SSD you only get around 64GB of space on the C: drive partition, after you back out the space taken by the Windows 8 OS and other utilities pre-installed, it’s just over 40GB you have left to deal with. The Lenovo recovery partition on the D: drive takes up 25GB of space, yet it indicates 14GB of that is free. Seeing as there’s so little capacity already it’s a rather odd thing to see and one that you’ll probably want to remedy. Your options are to burn recovery disks that can be used with an external optical drive and then blow away the D: drive or simply purchase a high capacity SDXC card, say 64GB – 128GB capacity, and put it in the card reader and use that for extra storage of files. There is a 256GB SSD version of the Yoga 13 but right now it’s not available at Best Buy and purchasing from Lenovo.com indicates several weeks of waiting.

Battery

Battery life is an important consideration with any Ultrabook as they’re by definition designed to be used on the go. Lenovo quotes the 4-cell Lithium-Polymer battery as offering 8-hours of battery life. The internal battery offers a capacity of 3860mAh. There’s no way to replace or remove the battery, it’s sealed inside. There is also no extended or external battery option, so what you have is what you get. Though I haven’t been able to achieve the 8 hours of battery life Lenovo quotes, I do get between 6 – 6.5 hours under normal usage that includes having the screen set at half brightness and then simply browsing the web, typing up documents and watching a short video or two on YouTube. Getting over six hours is pretty respectable, you could certainly stretch the battery life out more if you’re willing to dim the screen and change your Windows power settings to energy saver.

Ports

With many Ultrabooks the port selection really suffers, but the Yoga 13 has the most important ports you’ll need. It offers one USB 3.0, one USB 2.0, 2-in-1 media card reader (S, MMC), headphone out/microphone in combo jack and an HDMI port. The media card reader allows an SD card to go in fully so it’s almost flush with the body and doesn’t protrude much at all, this is great if you were thinking about getting a large capacity SDXC card to help supplement the limited 128GB storage on the SSD. The presence of an HDMI port is great, it makes it easy to output video and audio to a larger sized high definition monitor or TV. While there is only one USB 3.0 port, it’s critical to have a fast data transfer port for faster file transfer to a portable hard drive. There are also several peripherals coming out now that require USB 3.0, such as the Lenovo ThinkPad USB 3.0 Dock.

Left side: HDMI, USB 3.0 powered port, dual headphone/microphone jack

Right side: SD card reader, USB 2.0 port, power jack

Front side: One Recovery button, Power button, LED indicator light

A closeup of the power jack, it’s flat and looks a lot like a USB port connector

Keyboard

The keyboard on the Yoga 13 was something I was skeptical about prior to actually having the system. So many Ultrabooks have poor keyboards due to their slimness and real lack of depth to allow for decent key travel distance. But with Lenovo being Lenovo and owning the ThinkPad name, one associated with the best keyboard in the industry, they of course put a focus on making the keyboard a good one. While it’s not quite on par with a ThinkPad keyboard, the IdeaPad Yoga’s Accutype keyboard (as Lenovo calls it) is still pretty good as far as Ultrabooks go. The key spacing is great, feedback from the keys are nice and bouncy so you know when you’ve struck a key, and the depth of key travel is above what I expected. The only feature missing is a backlighting for the keyboard, it’s a really nice feature to have and in a lot of Ultrabooks and other premium machines these days. But you can’t have it all, there’s a lot of technology crammed in here and I’m sure Lenovo had to make a conscious decision to leave it out as a tradeoff for other benefits.

The touchpad is oversized and uses Synaptics drivers, for the basic task of moving the cursor it’s great as it’s oversized and has integrated buttons so the entire area of the touchpad can be used for navigating the cursor. It of course also offers other multi-touch features such as scroll, zoom, rotate and a whole host of new Windows 8 touch gestures for the more advanced users out there. Lenovo included a smart sensor that offers palm rejection, so should you brush the touchpad with your palm while typing it will just ignore that. Interestingly, the touchpad is physically centered with the laptop and not the keyboard, most times manufacturers center the touchpad beneath the space bar of the keyboard -- aesthetically this is pleasing but in practice it might throw you off a bit when using it. The integrated mouse buttons work quite well for right and left click, however folks (curmudgeons) like me still prefer to see dedicated physical buttons like you get on ThinkPads. I think given the thinness of this machine and benefit of an oversized touch input area the integrated buttons make sense though.

Conclusion

I’ve used the word unique a lot throughout the review, but the IdeaPad Yoga 13 really is a unique offering in a world of laptops where so many other machines have a ubiquitous design, specs and components. Seriously, how many more MacBook looking clones do we need from PC manufacturers? The Yoga 13 will not be mistaken for a Mac or any other device out there for that matter. The design and functionality sets it apart from anything else out there with its ability go from being a laptop, to tent/stand mode where it’s perfect for viewing movies, to a tablet that’s great for reading and interacting with the screen. The fast Core i5 or i7 processor and SSD will mean you never see any slowdown, so no compromises are made with performance. The keyboard is even pretty good, rarely said about an Ultrabook.

As with anything there are a few downsides to the Yoga 13, the 128GB SSD is small and strangely partitioned so you only get 40GB of space to install programs and put large files on there. I would like to have seen a keyboard backlight, something pretty common to have in notebooks over $999 these days. If you like to tinker and upgrade it’s a little hard to do with the Yoga 13, though some have managed to upgrade RAM or add an internal SSD, it’s not for the weak of heart and involves prying off the keyboard that could lead to permanent damage if not done carefully. The battery is also non-upgradeable. But with all that said the positives for the Yoga 13 still strongly outweigh the negatives. If you’re looking to be on the cutting edge of personal computing technology, want something built well and can use the functionality of a laptop and tablet (and other modes in between) the Yoga 13 is where it’s at.

 

good review, thanks.

 

Thanks for the review. Good overall coverage of the different facets of the system. I was wondering what the use case is going to be for this laptop (standard portability, web surfacing, email, etc.? do you do any software development on the machine? media consumption on the go? etc.). I've been considering a purchase to have a thin/light laptop on the go for software development primarily, but everyday use as well. Just curious

 

I won't be using it as my permanent machine, I have a ThinkPad X230 that fills that role. I still need my trackpoint, can't live without it This is just to play around with and I'm using it in the evening to get used to Windows 8 and do some web surfing from the couch in place of an iPad. That said, I have used it for a bit of work and the 1600 x 900 resolution screen does make work within an IDE and writing code much more pleasant that that you get on the 1366 x 768 screen of my X230. Can you use the tablet functionality to make you a better worker/programmer? If you're at your desk, not really, a mouse and keyboard rule the day in most business and productivity usage scenarios for a desktop bound computer (at least in my experience). I guess if you're just reading through lines of code or a programming manual / book then the stand mode is pretty cool for that and being able to scroll through code. The Yoga 13 is a little too heavy to hold for long in slate mode unless you cradle it, some warning there if you had any intentions of this replacing an iPad/Galaxy/Kindle Fire!

 

Thanks for the quick reply. I am currently a student finishing up a Comp Sci degree. Do a lot of work in Eclipse as well as Visual Studio. I had been toying around with the idea of an ultrabook or macbook air for productivity on the go (as well as general use). The Yoga caught my eye back at CES, and based on reviews, I have been pleasantly surprised by the quality. Tempting to make it my main machine and then "dock it" when I am at my desk at home. I noticed you mentioned the Lenovo ThinkPad USB 3.0 Dock, which I would think would be essential, considering that the Yoga only has one a/v out option in HDMI. Do you have any experience with it at all by chance?

 

Here is review for the dock USB Docking Station in Review: Lenovo USB 3.0 Dock 0A33970 - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

Kind of OT: what exactly is in the lenovo wallpaper? eyeglass cases? really spark my curiosity...

 

Thanks baiii. Yoga really seems pretty close to perfect.

 

Yes, I have used the USB 3.0 dock and actually have a video review of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nuO99yQ_Nl4:



And here's another written review of it on LaptopReviews. Honestly, while it does a nice job extending the ports, the term "dock" is a misnomer because you can't charge off of it and it's not as well integrated as a typical dock that uses a docking port connector.

Just some mineral rocks sitting in a shallow pool of water, it is an interesting image though I agree.

 

Thanks for the review! Do you have any images or links to how difficult it is to upgrade the RAM yourself? 4GB really is not enough.

Edit: Found the answer here: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/IdeaPad...one-seen-any-instructional-videos/td-p/906345

 

Could you plz help me with its webcam quality. Is it HD or not.....?
For video chatting can I rely on this as I am a student and very often need to chat with family and friends living away, so I want a good quality HD integrated webcam....

Thanks

 

Hi, it's 720p and designed to work well in low light conditions which I think is more important than say a 1080p web cam, especially where I live as during the winter light is very poor. It's not as good as an external web camera you can plugin, but it still suffices for Skype / video chat with friends and family far away.

 

Hi Andrew,

Now that you've had it for a month, do you have any extra comments?

Sent from my GT-I9000

 

I would guess Andrew sent it back to Lenovo after completing the review. Perhaps not as Lenovo tends to be pretty generous about long reviewers can keep the units.