Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga

Any throttling down of the i7 processor would counter most conceptions about worse battery life. Personally, my i7 will get between 6-7 hrs depending on what I'm doing.

Sent from my GS4

 

I had both the Core i5 and i7 models in for review and didn't see an appreciable difference in battery life nor did I see significant throttling on the Core i7. The Core i7's voltage and architecture are very close to the i5, so it shouldn't really be a problem.

 

Not sure if it is the same where you are, but in Australia, when you change the configuration to i7 on the Lenovo website, it makes the 8gb ram upgrade a LOT cheaper. I decided I did not want to spend the whole hog, so I went with a i5 refurb to use as a replacement for my Surface pro. I am quite happy with it. and 7 hours of battery life is pretty good (in normal usage),

 

Did yous come with 128Gb or 256Gb? I too ordered a refurb from eBay and i am worried about the 128Gb spec. Its an i5 with 4Gb. I would like to dual boot WIndows 7 with WIn 8 only for compatibility with legacy software I use (not that many of them)...and he 128Gb is obviously a problem. I don't know if you can upgrade the SSD or if there are fast SD cards that can act as a substitute where I would save my documents

 

It came with a 128gb SSD, but I have already upgraded to a 256gb one I had spare from another computer. Upgrading the drive is easy. Any 2.5 inch 7mm SSD will fit.

 

Oh nice, which brand and model? And do you know if it voids any sort of warranty? Mine will have the 1 year depot warranty.

 

Thank you for sharing your experience with the i5 and i7. This certainly helps me with my decision. I'm getting psyched to "pull the trigger".

 

Have you guys been able to dual boot Win 7 and 8.1 with no problems? Was gonna get a bigger SSD to do this because of legacy programs...or would using Virtual Box be a cheaper feasible option

 

It shouldn't void your warranty, but it's always good practice to keep the original drive so you an put it back in if you need to send the unit to Lenovo for repairs, etc.

 

The one I had lying around was a Samsung 840 EVO. Works really nice and has its own software for monitoring the health of the drive. With prices dropping as they are, I would be tempted now days to go straight for a 512gb SSD if you are going to upgrade.

Since there is no warranty sticker on Lenovo Thinkpads, as long as you don't damage anything inside, you should have no issues with warranty.

 

Yeah I guess I would stick the old one back in there.

 

And you can't upgrade the RAM can you?

 

No it is soldered onto the motherboard, so if you want 8gb then you need to get it at the start. The good news is that all the i7 ones I have seen comes with 8gb of ram.

Though having said that, my time with the Surface Pro 1 has taught me that even for a power user, 4gb of ram is usually enough unless you are stitching together large panos or doing a lot of video editing. So since the Yoga is a replacement for my Surface Pro 1 (my secondary / bed time PC and tablet), I went for a 4gb ram one to save some money.

 

Sweet thanks for the reassurance. I get mine today. Can't wait to start using it. I have been using a laptop from 2004 with a cracked screen. I'll give you guys my impressions when Fedex decides to give it to me

 

Mine is manufactured mid-January and warranty has been running since February 4th. Any reason to be suspicious before I open the box?
Why is the warranty not from the date of purchase, or have Amazon sent me a used/returned item?

 

Nah, that's just how Lenovo does it. Their warranty, while one of the best in the business, starts from the date the PC was manufactured. Not from when you buy it, unfortunately.

Sent from my GS4

 

Well I'm liking it soo far. Its a huge upgrade from my 2004 laptop. At stock I had 88.8Gb free from the 128Gb. I need to see if there are any ways to get 97Gb, thats how much space the surface pro 2 comes with. Any ideas? I'm gonna be cramped for sure

I will say the 860 bucks I paid for this was painful but man what an ALL IN ONE machine

 

The only thing I can think of is maybe a recovery partition. (go to computer management and look at how many partitions are on the disk). Not sure why you have that little stock. I had more like 95gb straight out of the box, but that might be due to the way the computer was refurbished.

 

Yeah I looked at the partitions and mine has all the usual suspects:

WINRE_DRV (1Gb)
SYSTEM_DRC (260Mb)
a partion named "*" (yeah its an asterick, the partition is an asterick) (128Mb)
Windows (108.23 Gb)
Lenovo Recovery (9.65Gb)

Your computer didn't have the recovery partition?

My has hibersys file and page file as well but I figured this is standard. Can I delete hybersys on my laptop. I don't know how it affects laptop but I never needed to hybernate on my desktop so I deleted it there...still on my laptop though

 

You can get rid of the hibersys file, but you shouldn't do it manually... there's a command line prompt you can run to disable hibernation and that'll get rid of it; it's like "powercfg something something".

 

TPY owners: What is the memory usage after starting Windows 8, idling?

I did not do a fresh install, so Lenovo configuration, idles at 1.5GB. Is it normal?

 

Yes, do not worry about memory usage with Windows 8. It will use whatever memory it needs and monitoring it's usage is useless. Not like the old XP task manager

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1.5 gigs of RAM showing as allocated is perfectly good and normal.

 

Hey Lisa, I saw you reviewed both the Vaio flip and the Yoga. WHich one do you prefer overall and why?

 

Mine was a refurb from a business so recovery partition. I back others up in saying that you don't need to monitor usage in win 8. mine seems to run fine no matter how many things you have running.

 

Depends on the Flip size you're talking about. For the Flip 13 vs. ThinkPad Yoga, my person preference is for the Yoga-- much better keyboard, quieter fan and for the art programs I use (Corel Painter) Wacom is supported while N-Trig still isn't for pen pressure. But the Flip 13 sure has a lovely display and a pretty design. I do like the Flip 15 much more-- dedicated graphics for a little punch, upgradable RAM and drive, few competitors at the 15" size.

 

just asking cause i feel a little guilty for buying such an expensive device even at 860, but i am a student and i also like to draw so yoga i perfect. i just wish it had been around 600 $. the flip 13 was slilghtly cheaper but sony going away from vaio and the lack of places to buy the pen (the unit i was looking at best buy was refurb and didn't have the pen) made me reconsider and it seems everyone has a little problem with the flip13. now that i think about it i wouldn't have gone for 14 or 15 cause that is too big and i am having problems using the yoga in tablet mode.


anyway besides one note, are three any pdf apps/programs i can use to annotate. adobe and foxit have no good solutions. its abysmal...i was expecting something as good as their offerings in Android.

 

so even with recovery you still had 95 Gb? i guess you didnt have hibrsys file?

 

Sorry typing with one hand as the other is in a cast. that is 95 WITHOUT the recovery partition.

 

And there it is, I have image retention on the lower left side of my screen...specifically it shows the start button (the windows 8.1 button) and a bit of internet explorer. Its barely visible on dark screens but enough to notice. Well it looks liek I really can't have a 2-in-1 without having some kind of compromise or issue.

Might be returning this unit as I also had some trackpad problems, giving I haven't taken the time to update drivers but this is ridiculous. I'm gonna go demo the Helix, hopefully the Microsoft store near me has it.

 

Not only that but this thing doesn't have a good battery life like everybody has been saying. I was streaming netflix at 100% brightness and only got 4 hours from it. My laptop speakers were set to 56%

Netflix with some internet gave me about 5:00 hours at around 50% brightness...this was with power saver. I didn't use Lenovo's because my screen despite having adaptive brightness kept fluctuating slightly. I don't get this problem with Microsoft's power saver

 

I'm having some issues with my TPY after restoring default bios settings.

I am getting an Error Code 10 on the Intel Wireless-N 7260 adapter whenever I restart windows. Simply disabling/enabling the device removes the error and the wifi works fine, but the error will come back on the next restart. Any ideas how I can get this fixed permanently?

 

Drawboard PDF

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Most laptops wouldn't be able to stream Netflix for that long at 100% brightness, especially at this thickness honestly what we're you expecting? Plug the laptop in to stream Netflix for hours and hours. 4 hours is 2 long movies, why is that bad?? This laptop has very good battery life for its size and performance you just have ridiculous expectations.


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While I would say yeah that sounds reasonable, I've used it at lower brightness for general tasks and it barely makes it to six hours. Really not impressed by that. Weirdly it can do ~4 hours with Netflix and 100% brightness (thinking about it now, I think my brothers HP pro-book can do that as well on IVY) but when it comes to what I will be using it for which is working on school and art stuff, it can't do 6 hours

Yeah, I think I'm gonna return this unit and check out the Helix. The problem is I can't even get my hands on one but it can't be worse than the Yoga. Anybody got experiences with the Helix? Two people I'v etalked to, one n youtube and one on Lenovo said that the heat everybodyhas been talking about hasn't been a problem. I am afraid of going down in size but it doesn't look like I can get what I want without compromises when it comes to Windows machines.

And my Yoga has the image retention problem...I don't know if it gets worse but its barely noticeable but still there.

 

Personally I like the Yoga a lot more than the Helix, but the Helix is (imo) aimed at a slightly different crowd...

I had the Helix and I got rid of it after a month. I have no use for separating the tablet and the dock (hence why I say it's aimed at a different crowd), and as a traditional convertible tablet the separation makes for a very inconvenient conversion method and makes it also no lighter than an x220/230t. That hinge mechanism is also not an amazing design, and it has noticeable slop in laptop mode... in which it's also still somewhat top-heavy (though nowhere near as bad as say a TC1100).

The relative battery life is by no means better than the Yoga, but it does compensate a little by having bigger net battery capacity... though I highly doubt you will get much more runtime in your 100% brightness Netflix use case. I don't think the heat and noise profiles are significantly better or worse than the Yoga... the Helix puts out a little more heat, but it's somewhat mitigated by the fact that the CPU is in the tablet portion, and not in your lap/on your desk.

I don't think the size difference is something you should worry about; 1080P 11 and 1080p 12 are pretty much the same.

 

I ran that test to compare it to the surface pro 3...but even for normal use at half brightness, it doesn't last more than 5 hours with wifi on now that i think about it. Unless Lenovo released driver updates that make the Yoga run longer, much like the Surface Pro 2 firmware update

 

I've started noticing image retention on my screen now. It is pretty bad at times. Any update about screen replacement from lenovo?

 

Problem with the helix is it suffers from a lot of heat and throttling issues which will kill the battery quicker then normal. Also go into battery settings and set the max CPU on battery to 80%. performance wise the difference is negligable but it allows me to web browse and type notes for around 8 hours. Also try setting the brightness to 30% on battery and see how it goes.

Otherwise just return it and wait for the next version to come out.

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why don't you guys try intel's xtu utility and undervolt the cpu voltage, cache voltage and graphics voltage. Intel is pretty safe with voltage so I can undervolt by a lot, says heat, and increases battery time.

 

Okay I think I may have identified some problems...it appears whenever I use photoshop, Adobe has this thing called GPU sniffer that really drains my CPU along with other background processes

I will say I enjoy typing on the keyboard which breaks my heart cause this thing is near perfect except for the image retention and weight in tablet mode...but I don't even use tablet mode that much.

What to do what to do. The SP3 is too expensive and I can't find a way to demo the helix.

Anyone know what lenovo's return policy is for new items. I was thinking of buying a Helix and returning it if I don't like

 

Doesn't look like adobe flash likes Windows...and to those saying to use this and this utility, this is an ultrabook, its supposed to get 6 hours minimum...

 

Sent you a PM. Ultimately didn't you get a much bigger runtime out of your Helix?

 

I'll elaborate what I said in the PM here:

In the best case scenario, the Yoga draws about 3.5W idling with the brightness near minimum. The battery capacity is about 46WHr. This means you can get about 12 hours out of it if it's doing nothing but keeping the screen on in Windows. In the same situation, the Helix draws about 5.5W and has a net (tablet and dock) battery capacity of about 70WHr. Again, the math says you can get about 12 hours.

Of course, you aren't going to be using the laptop to do nothing. Everyone does things differently, but for me if I've got 5-10 tabs with AdBlock open in Chrome and I'm browsing NBR; I'm getting maybe 8 to 9 watts on the Helix and 6 to 7 watts on the Yoga. Dividing from the net battery capacities you can see the runtime is again about the same at 7 to 8 hours.

So like I said I got about the same runtime out of each, but it's really not the same thing... the Helix is pulling more power and Lenovo is throwing more battery capacity at it to compensate. That is probably some of the reason why it is heavier than the Yoga despite having a smaller nominal screen size. This also means the Helix generates more heat. In laptop mode it doesn't get much hotter because the CPU is the in the display, but in combined tablet mode the Helix will either run hotter or run the fans more.

 

I have the image retention issue, but I just work around it. not all that happy about it, but that is the price I pay for going used.

As for the battery, running flash for 4 hours straight is not that bad. I get just under 7 hours mixed usage, or about 6.5 streaming Youtube. I usually use it in bed so about 50% brightness is more than enough. I get 1.5 hours more than the Surface pro 2 or 2-3 hours more than the surface pro 1 (Youtube).

 

No, an ultrabook has to get 6 hours minimum doing a specific scenario to meet classification. The Thinkpad Yoga meets and exceeds that requirement in that scenario. You just have very unrealistic expectations of what a device of this size should be able to do battery wise. This device rivals the battery life of a Surface Pro 2 and probably also the Surface Pro 3. You want something that hasn't been made yet, wait a year and get the next generation of products.

 

I agree. Streaming online video is not a usual application, it stresses the wireless, the cpu and the gpu.

 

720p or 1080p streaming is definitely going to be taxing, but 480p shouldn't be too bad... I just watched a couple standard-def Youtube videos and I was still only pulling about 7W at 10-12% CPU. That should still get you in the 6+ hour range.

 

I'm looking for a laptop that will be used almost soley in my lap. With this in mind i'd like one that does not heat up at all. If you used this laptop in your laptop to web browse for an hour, does it heat up at all? According to some reviews this laptop stays below mid 80s at all times when not maxing out the gpu and cpu.

 

When just browsing the web and doing word documents mine never heats up to a point where I can feel it through my trousers and need to lift it up. Assuming the web pages are not full of videos and flash based adverts it doesn't really stress the cpu much and can easily stay within the comfort zone for lap use.

That being said, the vent for the fan is on the back of the device and in the middle so you shouldn't feel any hot air on your leg I have even gamed for an hour or so with it on my lap and had no issues with heat.

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