Yoga 11s (Haswell)

If you are talking about an 11.6 inch Yoga with better resolution, dual band wifi and more ram, you are going to have a long wait. The Yoga 2 (11) doesn't have those specs and is a downgrade from the 11S. If you want a 13.3 inch, take a look at the Yoga 2 (13).

Good luck, Jim

 

i'd rather have 11 inch, I could get the 11 inch lenovo s210 with same res and ram and i3 3rd gen for only $399 instead of $749

 

Not to mention you can upgrade the RAM/HDD on the S210.

 

Yea you get what you pay for. By the time you add IPS display, SSD and i5 haswell with yoga modes, the price increase is well worth it so unless you don't need those things then s210 is a good deal. Also look at inspiron 11 3000 with the pentium 3556u haswell.

 

If you would be happy with the S210, go for it!

Good luck, Jim

 

Heads up guys! About 6 of them right now are available at Lenovo Outlet with the haswell i5-4210y refurbish/scratch&dent for only $510.

The only thing I cannot verify is if the display is IPS or not. The description only says TFT but since the haswell i5-4210y only came with IPS displays from best buy, I would assume it is the IPS panel? I called Lenovo customer service/sales just to double check and he cannot give me a straight answer and he said it is most likely not IPS.


What you guys think?

 

Interesting! This is the first time Lenovo has even acknowledged the existence of the 11S Haswell. It has been a Best Buy special, available only at Best Buy. So, chances are that these units are from Best Buy.

Good luck, Jim

 

Can anyone confirm if the RAM is expandable or not? I saw one spec that said no (System Memory (RAM) Expandable To: Nonexpandable), which wouldn't surprise me, but 4GB is probably not enough for me. Thanks.

 

Pretty sure it's soldered, like the other yogas, done to maximize thinness. As above, look at the S210 or Dell 3000 if you like something from the competition.

Also at 500$, there is the Thinkpad Tablet 2, which sports a 768p IPS display with Digitizer, and probably has better build quality than the Yoga. I'd get one myself if it had Bay Trail, sadly Clover Trail is too weak for me, also only 2GB RAM, that's kind of a dealbreaker if you wanna do lots of photoshop on the tablet. I would have personally loved a 4-8GB model.

 

The previous 11S had a DIMM, as did the 13 (not that they were easy to get to), and someone earlier in this thread said the memory was upgradable (or they thought it was), like the earlier model. Seems like a reasonable assumption, but it'd be nice to know for sure.

I'm actually a tech at a Lenovo service partner, but the only Yoga from the new lineup I've seen so far is the Thinkpad version. Which is pretty awesome, BTW. The new "Lift-n-Lock" keyboard design is seriously cool!

 

I am thinking about getting this laptop, but I had some questions for those who already have it:

1) In tablet mode (or all modes for that matter), is it possible to have the power button work like the sleep/wake button on the iPad? Like turns off the screen, instead of putting it into the standard windows sleep mode?

2) In tablet/tent/stand mode, is it possible to make the virtual keyboard automatically appear when tapping inside of a text field? Like when tapping in a text field while browsing the internet

3) In tablet/tent/stand mode, is there a way to quickly scroll up to the top of the current page? Like in laptop mode, you can press the Home key (or Ctrl+Home sometimes). Or on iPhone/iPad, you can tap the very top bar and it quickly scrolls to the top of the page

 

There are four options for the power button, do nothing, sleep, hibernate or shut down.

In all modes, touching a text entry window brings up the on screen keyboard. And clicking in the window with the cursor just places the cursor there for keyboard input.

I can't find any way to jump to the top of a page. But, I don't use my 11S in modes other than laptop often. Scrolling is very fast and sometimes it goes up or down by what seems a whole page. But, I don't know how to make it happen.

Good luck, Jim

 

Thanks for your response.

Yes but the "sleep" on the iPad is different from, say, a Windows laptop. With the laptop, pressing the sleep/wake button just turns the screen off. Then pressing the home or power button just wakes the iPad back up instantly. I was seeing if there's a way to do that with the Yoga when it tablet mode.

For the virtual keyboard, I find that it doesn't always bring it up automatically. For example, if I go to my desktop view, and open the Internet Explorer program (not the metro app, but the actual desktop program) and click in the address bar, the virtual keyboard does not automatically come up. I need to click the little keyboard button on the bottom-right corner of the screen.

 

I have had the 11s since December, bought one for me and one for the wife for Christmas and I can confirm that yes you can upgrade the RAM (a YouTube search will show how to do it) since evidently the same board was used and just the processor was upgraded. Just a note, I did try the YOGA Pro 2 and returned it, the screen was incredible and the yellow tint has been fixed but the 11s was just more portable, RAM is soldered on the Pro and for me the screen is fine on the 11s for it's size. Incidentally I use an Asus G750 JH at home so the portability of the 11s was a key for me...YMMV.

 

I had both as well and actually returned the 11s. I got them both on a great outlet sale but having both side by side, I just fell in love with the pro. I don't know if it was just a bad day or a bad processor but the difference between the core i Y in the 11s and the core i U in the pro was night and day, I can't see anyone comparing them due to that alone. Either way, I didn't mind the 11s and if it was all I could spring for, it would be a great and long lasting machine, I am not trying to bash or anything but I think the pro is miles better in nearly every respect.

 

Well, Best Buy had both the 11S Haswell and the 2 Pro side by side. I couldn't tell the difference is the displays, but my wife thought the 2 Pro was sharper. The 2 Pro i5-4200u is about 15% more capable than the 11S i5-4210Y, not enough for most people to detect on normal tasks. The 11S has had no problems with dirty green yellow. The 11S has had no problems with noisy fans, The 11S has had no problems with scaling issues. The 11S has 7.5 hours battery life for light duty, while the 2 Pro is lucky to get 5 hours. Otherwise, the 2 Pro is an outstanding laptop.

Jim

 

I just picked up the 11s from Best Buy, and so far I really like it. A few concerns though:

1) When using the virtual keyboard in tablet mode, the keyboard feedback noise seems to be messed up. When I tap a key, the sound will be soft and every once in a while it will make a louder feedback noise. It's not just one same volume level for each key press. Any way to fix this?

2) I always inadvertently press a keyboard key (one of the function buttons on top) while folding the 11s from laptop mode to tablet mode. It seems that the keyboard does not become disabled until the red "Tablet Mode" notification on the top-right appears, which is usually after a few seconds of folding it. Until this, the keyboard is still active and I always accidently press the airplane mode key, screen backlight key, the refresh key, or some other key. I also sometimes click the mouse pad. Is there some way to either have the keyboard disable faster, or to fold it in such a way as to avoid accidently pressing the keys?

 

went to best buy today and compared the 11s and the new yoga 11 for $499. main differences r the faster processor, ssd, better sound, and they say 2 hours of extra battery life with haswell. screens r identical so to me it is not worth paying the extra $250 for the 11s

 

Haswell's great and all but BestBuy's Estimates are off. I went down there today. and looked at both the Haswell and the "Pentium"-read atom. and they estimate that the Haswell had better battery life was just off to me. So I unplugged both laptops there. and waited for Windows to give me estimates, low and behold my suspicions were right. the estimate on the Haswell was 4:45 at 100%, the Pentium was 6:30 at 100 %. this makes sense.
the n3510 ( Pentium) is a 7.5 TDP (4.5w SDP) and the i5 4210y is 11.5 TDP (6w SDP)

I bought the atom verion I don't need an i5 for what I need it for. I just wanted to give you guys a heads up on what BestBuy estimates are a little out of whack.

 

the inside of the Pentium Yoga 2

 

i'll probably buy the atom, only thing i don't like about them is i don't think the battery is replaceable.

 

The Baytail Pentium Yoga 2 11 at Bestbuy for $499 seems to be a really great deal since it comes with an IPS display and the yoga modes. I also changed my mind about the yoga 11s since anything upwards of $750-800 which is almost close to $1,000 should come with a backlit keyboard and at least a full mobile core cpu or ulv instead of y. By the time you add an ssd to the yoga 2 11, you would still be under $630 which makes it a lot cheaper than the yoga 11s.

 

The Yoga 2 11 uses a 5mm HDD with a SFF-8784 edge connector (check the FRU list for the parts). As far as I know, neither is available for SSDs. The Yoga 2 11 lacks a mSATA or M.2 slot for other types of storage. You will not be able to replace the HDD with a SSD at the moment.

The Yoga 11S uses a mSATA SSD. This can be replaced easily with a larger mSATA SSD if needed. It also has a non-soldered RAM if you want to expand it.

The Yoga 2 11 is, frankly, a take it or leave it proposition with very little you can do to improve the pre-configured hardware.

 

Ouch that sucks then for the no upgrade to SSD at the moment. Now it all depends on that slow rotating drive on the Yoga 2 11. I might pick one up from Best Buy to test and if it's adequate enough then i might keep it. But we'll see, i'm in the fence of grabbing one of these or a Vaio Pro 11 or Inspiron 11 3000.

 

If you get a Vaio Pro 11, be sure you can return it. I returned a Vaio Pro 13 because of poor wifi, mediocre battery life and because of an overall flimsy feel. And the front corners, where my hands rested when on my lap, were sharp, very uncomfortable.

Good luck, Jim

 

Yep i'm very skeptical about it but HTwingnut said his vaio pro is not showing any of those problems and he got his Vaio Pro 11 a week ago. He said wifi is stable, Sony said the flexing/bending is normal because it is carbon fiber and it is design that way to prevent it from breaking/cracking?

About battery life, how much were you getting on your Vaio Pro 13 while doing basic multimedia and web surfing from 100% down to 5%? About the sharp front corners, how bad was it? Was it just yours or it's normal for all Vaio Pros?

 

The wifi may now be stable, but I found that unless I was close to a good router/AP, the throughput was awful. I could be a distance from my AP where I was getting 10 Mbps and put a Netgear USB wifi adapter in, switch to the Netgear and get 28 Mbps.

I got slightly over 6 hours battery life on light duty such as Email, web, card games, etc.

I have seen other complaints about the sharp corners. If I had decided to keep the Pro 13, I was thinking about taking a file to the sharp corners. The sharp points are where the keyboard/top panel joins the bottom panel.

I doubt that Sony designed the Vaio Pro to be flexible to prevent cracking. It most likely ended that way in the attempt to make it as light as possible. To me it just ended up feeling flimsy.

Good luck, Jim

 

My Yoga 2 11 came with a Seagate ST500LT032-1E9142 which according ST500LT032 Data sheet PDF, ST500LT032 Product Manual PDF and Seagate ST500LT032 product webpage state that this drive has a standard SATA interface.

Seagate's 600 ST480HM001 SSD is available in 5mm z-height as well. I haven't bothered to shop for one yet.


I am not familiar with SFF-8784 edge connector.

 

Does anyone know where I can get drivers for the Haswell 11S? Will the drivers for the more common Ivy Bridge version do the trick? I'm looking to clean install Windows 8.1.

 

I think the common assumption is that the 11S Haswell is exactly the same as the 11S Ivy Bridge, except for the Haswell CPU. Lenovo doesn't seem to have a separate spec page for the Haswell model. I think it is a Best Buy special. I think you will be OK with the 11S drivers from Lenovo.

Good luck, Jim

 

Okay, so the drivers from Lenovo's site worked for the most part, but I'm wondering if there's a better trackpad driver out than the one listed there. With the current trackpad driver, the cursor behaves pretty erratically. Sometimes when I drag the cursor and tap to click, the cursor will jump a few pixels, causing me to miss whatever I was trying to click.

The touch screen also isn't quite as accurate with taps as my old Asus Vivobook X202E, which seems odd. I was able to greatly improve this by calibrating the touch screen (before it would literally take 4 or 5 tries to tap a taskbar icon), but it's still a little off from time to time.

There's a warning in Event Viewer that keeps popping up: "A multi-touch device reported inconsistent contact information." Sounds like this could be relevant.

I'm on Windows 8.1 Update 1, by the way, which is the absolute latest Windows release. Maybe by the time it's officially released, Lenovo will release some new drivers. Has anyone else experienced any trackpad/touchscreen problems on 8.1?

 

Been having a few more issues, still with the trackpad.

Does anyone know how to make the trackpad and keyboard disable faster when the screen is tilted back? There's a few second delay and it's kind of annoying at times.

Also, my cursor keeps disappearing while I'm typing, taking a second to come back after I start trying to use the trackpad again. (EDIT: Solved this by disabling palm rejection)

I really need to find some new drivers for this thing.

 

I bought a refurbished 11s Haswell from BB for $579, and was able to enhance the one year Lenovo Depo warranty to 2 years in-home for $69. That's a pretty good deal. I found no cosmetic problems with the laptop, and it has worked like a charm since I booted it up. With that kind of pricing, it was impossible to resist.

 

Congratulations on your purchase!

Jim

 

To those on Windows 8.1: what trackpad driver are you using? Does your cursor ever randomly jump a few pixels when you tap to click? It's driving me crazy.

 

I have Synaptics Click Pad V1.0, Driver V 17.0.8.4, 20Aug2013. I haven't noticed the cursor jumping.

Good luck, Jim

 

Seems like setting the sensitivity to its default value makes the issue a lot less prevalent.

Last issue for now: is anyone getting ghosting around the outside edge of the screen? It doesn't take long for my entire taskbar to be lightly visible on a gray background.

 

I want to be clear does the Haswell variant get about 6-1/2 to 7 hours of battery life, or is best buys product page incorrect?

 

Readers-Test Idle (without WLAN, min. brightness): 10h 25min (8h 45min Ivy Bridge)
Surf-Test via WLAN (brightness set to 150 cd/m², changing websites every 40 sec.): 6h 27min (5h 21min Ivy Bridge)
heavy work (full brightness): 2h 15min (2h 9min Ivy Bridge)

 

I get about 7 to 7.5 hours surfing, email, card games, etc.

Jim

 

Hi all,
I'm new to the conversation and I'm not very tech savvy at all. I'm leaning towards buying the refurbished lenovo yoga 11s (i5 processor, 4 GB, 128 GB SSD) on Best Buy's website. Does anyone know if it will run itunes? Also, is there a micro sd slot to add more storage?
Thanks!

 

I guess you mean the Haswell version? I don't use Itunes, but I see no reason why a Windows 8.1 laptop wouldn't run Itunes.

No, there is no micro SD slot, but there is a full SDXC slot. I have a 64 GB Patriot LX Series in mine. And it fits in the slot about one millimeter recessed, so there is no danger about unwanted ejections.

Good luck, Jim

 

Hello guys

I am new to the Lenovo community coming from the VAIO community... Because of the 'burning battery' of VAIO Flip 11A I bought yesterday the Yoga 11S with Haswell from Amazon.

The last days I thought about the differences of 11s and 2 11. The main differences are CPU and internal Harddisk (SSD vs. HD). In Germany the 2 11 costs 599 Euro. When you add a 256 GB SSD (Samsung 840) (pricepoint 160 Euro) you pay for the 2 11 about 760 Euro and you will get a CPU which can handle FHD movies very very bad ^_^ (watching Amazon Instant Prime Video)...

Even the 11S has a fullsized HDMI port. The 2 11 has just a micro HDMI port...

And the batterylife on both version is stated from Lenovo about the same (6 hours)...

So I decided to buy the 11S on warehousedeals for 770 Euro. Much more powerful CPU, 8GB of RAM, only 128 SSD ( ( ), equal batterylife and like some reviews say about 100g lighter than the 2 11...

My main problem was, that there are no good reviews about the 2 11 and out there are no comparisons between the 11s and the 2 11....

 

Why didn't you buy the Haswell Version (11s) for about 699€? You can get a new convertible for that price at serveral stores in Germany! I would say the 11s is way better than the 2 11 for the same reasons you mentioned above. (CPU und SSD vs HDD). Someone would assume that the atom-CPU will result in a longer battery life time, but as far as I know Lenovo reduced the capacity of the battery so that you are now faced with an even weaker runtime.

You made the right decision when buying the 11s!

 

Bump, for people to post which model numbers of 8GB ram they have successfully or unsuccessfully installed?
Thanks in advance for your help.

 

Hi all,
New to this conversation. I recently returned an Asus T100 because I found the keyboard too small and the build a bit too creaky. Since my anticipated usage is 80% laptop / 20% tablet I decided to look at convertible notebooks to get a slightly larger screen and better keyboard. I looked at everything at Best Buy and was really impressed with the Yoga 11S. Good build, nice screen, excellent keyboard. I also noticed that 11S Haswell refurbs have been showing up at the Lenovo outlet for $476.

I was ready to pull the trigger on a refurb when I stumbled across the Notebookcheck.net update review (posted 3/25) of the 11s Haswell refresh . It’s the only review I’ve seen that closely compares the Ivy Bridge and Haswell versions on parameters other than battery life. Unfortunately, except for battery life the Haswell version did no better, or actually worse, than the IB version. They actually got lower CPU performance scores for Haswell than for IB, although Haswell graphics performance was somewhat better. They noted that other machines using the same processor such as the Dell XPS11 performed significantly better. The SSD performance of the Haswell unit was also slightly worse than IB. They even found the Haswell display to be not as bright as the IB and have poorer color saturation, although it is apparently the same panel (I suppose this finding could be a simple case of sample variation). And thermal performance was hardly improved at all; the Haswell unit still reached temps of 52°C on the bottom surface under stress.

The review contains statements such as “it seems likely that the Turbo of the Haswell model's CPU was slightly slowed down in favor of lower emissions” and “ Lenovo has set the temperature limits very conservatively.” They.summed up that they were “surprised that the processor performed so much worse than its potential.”

The unit I played with at Best Buy seemed plenty snappy and the display plenty bright, so I may still pull the trigger on a purchase. I have to wonder though if the Lenovo engineers realized that the 11s chassis design had mediocre thermal management – perhaps one of the reasons it was discontinued -- and just slapped in a Haswell at minimal performance settings to get it out the door with the “Haswell” label and longer battery life for marketing purposes. Unfortunately, since the 11s is apparently now EOL with the advent of the Yoga 2 11, it seems unlikely that there will be any fine tuning of the Haswell performance in the form of a BIOS revision.

Still a very nice machine, but perhaps a case of significant unrealized potential....

 

I noticed that Lenovo's US outlet just got 650 of these... somehow. So... questions:

1. Is there something obviously wrong with them?

2. Has anyone tried to replace the wifi card with an Intel model?

 

In case anyone is upgrading their ram on this 11s Haswell...I just installed an 8GB RipJaw at 1866MHz CL10 and it works great (1.35v PC3-14900).

http://www.gskill.com/en/product/...c10s-8grsl

 

Last week, on the 9th, they had roughly 100 of them available so I pulled the trigger and bought one. It just got delivered to my house and is currently waiting for me to get home from work before I can check it out.

For $477 I don't see how you can go wrong. To me a factory refurb is just as good as buying new. I'd imagine you'd be hard pressed to find a better deal on any machine comparable around the same price.

 

Update for anyone interested:

The laptop was waiting for me when I got home. Other than the sticker on the back of the device stating that it was a refurbished and that it might have used parts in it, there was no way to tell that it was a refurb. Cosmetically, it was flawless. I'm 100% satisfied and would recommend a refurb computer from Lenovo.

As far as a review of the computer goes, I'm not the best person to give one. Considering that the computer this is replacing is an IBM Thinkpad x40 (I bought it 9 years ago, before they sold their laptop line to Lenovo), the Yoga 11s blows away or ties with my X40 in almost every aspect. The 11s is surprisingly solid feeling and to me feels like a premium device when it is in my hands.

The only things I would change on the 11s is the color (I would like a black like the Thinkpad), I would like a trackpoint (like the Thinkpad), and I would like a keyboard with better feel and travel (like the Thinkpad). 11.6" is on the small side for a screen, but I got used to it after a couple of minutes of use. The resolution (1366 x 768) is more than appropriate for the devices size. I think a 12.5" screen would be a welcomed improvement (like a Thinkpad Yoga). In short, the only things I'd improve are exactly what you find in the Thinkpad Yoga.

I love my 11s. At a little less than $500, I'm very pleased with what I got. I was kind of nervous about buying a "consumer" level laptop after having had such a great experience with my Thinkpad X40 and working with several very flimsy cheap feeling Dell and Sony laptops over the years, but I'm very impressed with the feel of the Yoga 11s. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get 9 or 10 years of life out of it like I did with my X40, but I don't have any concerns over the build quality and sturdiness of the 11s.


----- edit to add -----

I was very pleased to find out that the i5-4210y processor is adequate enough to play Civilization 5. Given that I've been playing Civ 3 for the last decade on my X40 and it is the only computer game I play, it was important that be able to play the newer (at least new to me) civilization game on the Yoga 11s. So far, I'm having no problems doing that.