The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Yes, both can be upgraded. I used an 8 GB stick from Crucial and a 256 GB ssd from Crucial. However, the current Crucial ssd has not worked for some people. The one I have is an older version.
Lenovo now carries an upgraded version of the Haswell Yoga 11s on their website. It has a slightly faster, lower SDP processor, and it's $100 cheaper ($699)!
Not enough to make a noticeable improvement in performance (maybe better battery life), but for $100 less, why not? And you can get it in Clementine Orange. You can get the black model for $20 less with a 500GB HDD (save a little if you are planning on upgrading the SSD anyway).
Yeah, that is the Yoga 2 11. One big difference is the battery size. The Yoga 2 11 has a 34 Wh battery while the Yoga 11s Haswell has a 42 Wh battery. That will most likely mean over an hour less battery life. The other thing is that Lenovo has from time to time refurbished Yoga 11s Haswells for less than $500.
Interesting... Where do you see that battery spec? Best Buy's specs only say 4-Cell Li-Poly, and I can't find specs for the Haswell 11s on Lenovo's site.
Yeah, I had to really grind to get the published specs. But, my battery utility confirms 42 Wh for my 11s Haswell. I will try to find a link to the Yoga 2 11 battery size.
I just can't understand why Lenovo and other manufactures would put smaller batteries in Haswell units. Don't they know that consumers value battery life?
Edit: Here is a link to the Yoga 11s Haswell battery capacity.
So, 20% smaller battery in the Yoga-2 11", but a 25% lower SDP on the CPU. I wonder how that translates to real world battery performance? I also wonder why the weight has remained the same if it has a smaller battery?
I guess it depends on how the SDP is defined.
If the SDP is realized in the real world, the Yoga2 11 would have a battery life of about 30 minutes longer than the 11s Haswell.
Well, that's just the SDP of the CPU. It's possible the rest of the computer is a bit more efficient as well, but I doubt every component is 25% more efficient. Also, SDP is an average use case scenario. Under heavy load both processors are rated at 11.5W TDP and should consume roughly the same amount of power. So, as a guess, I'd say that under heavy load the 11s will have significantly better battery life, but under light/medium use run times would be closer.
So... $100 less. Slightly faster, more efficient CPU (by specs, anyway). Smaller battery. Similar size & weight (Y2 is actually a few Oz heavier). Tough call... I really wonder where the extra weight on the Y2 is coming from. Better cooling? Beefier case? You'd think with a 20% smaller battery the Y2 would weigh less. However, if the specs I've seen on the 11s are correct, it weighs 3.02 lbs, vs. 3.196 lbs for the Y2-11, which is 2.8 Oz more. I realize that's not a lot. It's just the fact that it *should* be lighter that's curious.
FYI: Scenario Design Power (SDP) is an additional thermal reference point meant to represent thermally relevant device usage in real-world environmental scenarios. It balances performance and power requirements across system workloads to represent real-world power usage. Reference product technical documentation for full power specifications.
If I didn't already have a Yoga 11s Haswell, I would probably go for the Yoga2 11 because it is a new design. The 11s Haswell is basically a two year old design that Lenovo stuck a Haswell CPU in. But, the first thing I would check would be battery life. As for the weight difference, most likely just the result of different materials used in construction. Good luck in your decision.
That is a bummer! I upgraded my 11s Haswell to 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD. I still think it is a great 11 inch laptop. I don't know why Lenovo never offered it, only available at Best Buy. Well, I guess Lenovo did have it listed in the outlet store as a refurbished unit.
New to the forum but hopefully someone will still answer my questions on this thread!
So I've read over this thread at least twice by now, but I'm still having trouble deciding between the yoga 11s and the yoga 2 (11).
As mentioned earlier there are now models with fairly similar processors, making the laptops almost identical.
Yoga 2 (11): i5-4202Y (1.6-2.0GHz / 11.5W TDP / 4.5W SDP)
Yoga 11s: i5-4210Y (1.5-1.9GHz / 11.5W TDP / 6W SDP)
So assuming the processors performances are almost the same, the reasons to go for the 11s are the fact that it has a bigger battery, up-gradable Ram and SSD, and weighs slightly lighter.
My main question is what would the Yoga 2 have going for it? Its a newer model so part of me wants to assume its a big improvement, but the only thing I can see is that it is fanless.
It would be greatly appreciated if anyone could tell me if there are any other pros with going with the Yoga 2, because right now it just looks like it has a slick new case to me! Also I was wondering if anyone ever was able to confirm if the lower SDP did make up for the smaller battery? Or did Lenovo actually make the laptops battery life worse :/
The laptops are running at the same price now so that itsn't a problem either, unless I do end up deciding to upgrade the ram but I'm still on the fence for that too (or else my decision would have been a lot easier haha). I'm just hoping there are at least a few reasons to go for the newer version!
I picked up the Lenovo Yoga 11s core i5-4210Y with 8gb of RAM for $450 Refurbished on Newegg.com. From everything I read on the internet, the 11s seems to be the better system over the Yoga 2 for the reasons you listed.
The Y2-11 has a newer, more power efficient processor. On the other hand, it also has a smaller battery. If you can live with 4GB of RAM then the Y2-11 should be fine. However, due to the larger battery and semi-upgradable RAM, I'd say the 11s is the better machine.
And I say semi-upgradable because the RAM is not designed to be user installed. It requires a significant disassembly of the computer to swap the DIMM. It's not a difficult job, but it does require some skill.
Lenovo has finally put the Yoga 11s Haswell on the main store site. Two versions, one with 4 GB ram and 128 GB ssd for $549 and one with 8 GB ram and 256 GB ssd for $699. This is the first time Lenovo has even acknowledged the existence of the Yoga 11s Haswell aside from the refurbished outlet store.
I have some information to share. I just recently upgraded my Yoga 11s Haswell to 8 GB of memory and to 250 GB ssd. Several days later, I discovered that the recovery options were missing. After a lot of teeth gnashing and hair pulling and a lot of time on a very helpful windows forum, I found a very simple solution.
Get Paragon Partition Manager 2014 (Free) and install it on your Yoga. Then assign drive letters to the two recovery partitions (partitions 1 and 9 on my Yoga). That is all, the recovery program will now work. And you can then remove the drive letters and the recovery program still works.
The problem is that somehow the upgrade process changes the recovery partitions file system from NTFS to "raw" and the recovery program can't find the partitions. Even worse, Windows Disk Manager doesn't recognize "raw" partitions, so you can't use it to assign letters or do any other operation.
Only two of the seven partitions were raw. And both raw partitions were the recovery partitions. Both should have been NTFS. The other partitions had appropriate file systems and everything worked perfectly except the missing recovery options.
That is not what my Yoga 11s Haswell partitions look like. There are only seven partitions, not eight. And the size of the partitions is not the same. I could show the details if you are interested.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
If the SDP is realized in the real world, the Yoga2 11 would have a battery life of about 30 minutes longer than the 11s Haswell.
