***Yoga 2 Pro Owners Thread***

I feel like I've asked this more than a dozen times. And I wish I could get some more answers. There is no satisfactory or unsatisfactory answer to this question. And precisely because everyone uses it differently and has different configurations, I'm asking that everybody who can and feel like it, post how long their yoga goes on a full charge, what power, energy and screen brightness are they using, and which tasks are they performing in battery mode.
This is not hard to answer.

With so many owners of the Y2P posting on this thread, I thought I would give a shot and hopefully I would get some valuable information. Owners' experiences would be much better than those test that are perform in some reviews. And besides, there are no reviews out there after the color fix.

If I had a few more answers, I could analyze the data and see if I can put setting on a Y2P in a way that would be satisfactory for me while at the same time getting good battery life. Unfortunately, there are not enough reports yet to make an educated decision. Somebody said 4 hours, somebody else 7, you say 5. Under which condition? Three opinions without details is not enough to decide. I guess I could just by my own, try it, and if it does not work, I just returned. But I though it would be essayer to get some more answers here instead of doing that.

By the way, battery life is not only a problem if you plan on regularly being away from an outlet for more than 5 hours at a time. Assuming that you need to use the laptop unplugged most of the time, the less hours the battery gives you in a full charge, the more often you'll have to charge it, which also means that it will go through the charge-discharge cycle more often, the more often it goes through its charge-discharge cycles, the sooner you'll have to replace it (if the battery in the Y2P is replaceable).

 

Agree with your frustrations on the resolution being really just a glorified 1600x900 for any serious practical work that's not entertainment. I primarily purchased this for stock trading charts and value high vertical resolution than the widescreen nonsense that a lot of windows OEMs keep pushing to consumers. My preference will be 3800x2160 or even the anything higher than 2160p cos the 1800p does not solve the problem of constantly having to scroll down to read a full webpage or to set up several indicators on one screen for stock charts. The widescreen gimmick has never been for serious work and remains same for this resolution.However if you want entertainment then you will do just fine with something like this.

Never owned any Apple product b4 cos I always felt they were overpriced but am starting to change that notion based on their design / packaging considering the macbookpro is same price as this but with a faster processor, graphics, PCIE SSD, wifi AC,thunderbolt(uncertain), 16:10 resolution and better battery life. Why in the hell is it so difficult for these OEMs to do a decent job of packaging everything together like Apple. They seem to be more interested in designing logos and bloatware than truly useful things that a computer needs to be.Their focus seem to be on things that smart tvs & cellphones,are getting better @ doing everyday. They also wanna charge Apple's controversial high price. This really is an ultrawidescreen even though technically it is 16:9 . Why is that 4k tvs (3840 x 2160)are better suited for working on a computer compare to the entertainment based resolution of 3800 x 1800 of computers. I can count number of times have watched a movie on my computer going back 2 decades despite the fact that have been using 1200p displays for almost that long.

Have had to compromise on using this by putting it in portrait mode & reducing the default text size to medium in order to get any use out of it for my intended purpose. Some might say this is the best bargain for the bucks based on all OEMs out there but are we truly getting our money's worth. I have the i7/8gb/256mb and got it from bestbuy for the $1200 price. Have a little backlight bleeding @ the bottom but it's not a big deal to me.

For those looking for an entertainment ultrabook computer convertible , this is probably the best out there : very light,relatively silent, widescreen for movies & nice convertible design idea but battery life is so so compared to the sony ultrabook,samsung Ativ 9 plus or macbooks. For those looking for truly serious work avoid most gimmicky cost cutting 16:9 displays like this one even though they are becoming the norm.

 

I use this same dock with a VGA 21" monitor using the adapter but otherwise almost same setup ad JDThird. Same experience, works great and no issues with external monitor, DVD player, or hard drive.

 

Your posts are pointless at this point. NO ONE is going to give you a definitive answer. Buy the laptop and figure it out for yourself. If you don't get satisfactory results take it back.

 

I didn't spend much time with Windows 8.1 on the Yoga, but out of the box it didn't seem to have text that was too small. Who knows how people have been messing with the machines at a retail store.

Ask yourself why 300 dpi laser printers look so good and the high resolution doesn't make it too small read stuff. The same concept applies.

I run Linux now, on Gnome 3.10, and it does a good job picking a good big font size out of the box and the text and apps generally look beautiful.

BTW, I get about 4.5 hours of battery life, running light apps (Firefox / LibreOffice) at full brightness.

 

Well, unless you use your Y2P plugged all the time, why wouldn't you answer my questions instead writing that response? If you are already using your laptop in battery mode, you know what tasks you are performing, you know your power, energy manager and brightness settings. And even if you use the laptop en battery mode for just 1 hour, you still can estimate for how long it will run in a full charge,( not very scientific, but still helps) Why wont you answer that?

 

I think that the reason you are having trouble getting an answer is because most only can compare the battery life by the way they use it. I have found great battery life, but have done no formal test to verify it. Also, while using for 3-5 hours unplugged, I will then plug it in. All I know is that I am happy with the battery life, and it lasts much longer than my last 3 laptops. I don't think I have had it much past 50 percent on battery meter since I purchased it.

 

I think a lot of the battery discussion is pointless. Everyone uses there machine differently. Posting something like I get 5 hours between charges is pointless unless it have some kind of battery stats with it. It has to have what processor...screen brightness....Bluetooth on......WiFi on.....just browsing the web or offline doing word processing. Unless the battery life posting is accompanied with some kind of app that can show all of these stats and what apps were open at the time and how long it has been between charges....then just posting battery life is kinda useless. There are too many things that go into battery times......

 

This exactly what you should do. Very few people want to run any formal, controlled tests to help you make a decision. We all use it how we want to use it and most of us love this PC.

I suggest you go buy one and run whatever tests you think are important. Better yet, buy one and just use it how you want to use it and see where it excels and where it lacks. It will lack somewhere, btw, because I don't think the perfect device is out there. If it doesn't do the job for you then return it.

 

Thanks for the response. That is why I'm asking, you just said it in a different way, and that is what I want to know, how are people using the Y2P? What are people using the laptop for (or which task are they usually performing) while in battery mode? Which are the power, energy and brightness settings in their laptops? And base on that, what are the battery life estimates. This are very strait forward question and I don't understand what is the big deal about asking that, and why is so hard for people to answer, when they have all the answers in front of them. For example, I am writing this response on an old laptop. Under windows 7 power options, power is set to High Performance. Screen Brightness is 80%. I'm browsing the web, (several webpages open), checking email, while on the web I watched a couple of short videos. Also doing some office work. I started 1 hour ago, and I have 60% of battery left. So, under the conditions describe above, the laptop will run like 3 hrs on a full charge. Is it so hard to give this type of answers to my question?

 

No doubt... much easier to carry around the Y2P. But have you checked out the 15.6 Zenbook. VERY NICE and light, and good battery life. But again, for me, add the convertible factor of the Y2P and it is very appealing for me.

If you get a chance, try to play with RDP on the Y2P. I actually played with it RDPing from the store to a server and that's where the red flags went up for me.

 

What good is it for people to do that for you if they aren't getting 7hrs, since you've said that is your criteria. Virtually NO ONE is getting 7 hours and certainly not with full brightness which you said is another requirement for you. Anybody reporting less that 7hrs is of no use to you, so why do you keep requesting it?

I answered your question yesterday on my battery use and today you asked me why I can't do that for you. Your asking the same thing over and over and over again no matter what people tell you. hm............

 

This is exactly what I was pointing out in my post. What is the point of getting 2x the resolution (4x pixels) when we have to scale everything by 200% basically bring us back to the effect pixel count of the original Yoga?

Has anyone played with the resolution set to 1080p to see how it looks? I'm not a fan of setting digital panels to a non-native resolution.

 

Forgot to mention that WiFi is on an antivirus program is running as well on my laptop. Other than than no power hungry processes or anything like that.

 

Having read through the 100+ pages on this forum, I can tell you that plenty of users have posted this info. I can also tell you that this kind of attitude is not gonna make friends or get what you want. Good luck.

 

Why can't you just get one for yourself instead of bugging us here?

I hate battery life posts. they are pointless and will be different for everyone.

 

This review and the comments were super helpful to me trying to set up ubuntu. Thanks. I'm also going to check out gnome, my old laptop is having a ton of problems with the default unity interface to ubuntu. Thanks again!

 

Yoga 2 Pro at 1080p looks like anything else at 1080p. Yoga 2 Pro at 3200 x 1800 looks incredible, even at 200%. The difference between the 2 is obvious.

 

Regarding battery life, assuming you want to use this like a normal human and not someone trying to win some sort of battery life contest you are going to get between 4.5 and 5 hours of solid web surfing or doing whatever. That's normal brightness, full resolution, etc.

It is what it is, take it or leave it.

The good news is it recharges VERY quickly.

BOTTOM LINE:
If you are looking for a hybrid that functions as well in laptop or tablet form, has unlimited viewing angles, the highest resolution available today and you can live without an active digitizer for $200 less than anything even close, buy this.

 

Your initial response: "your posts are pointless at this point. NO ONE is going to give you a definitive answer. Buy the laptop and figure it out for yourself. If you don't get satisfactory results take it back" ,sounded like somebody that was not interested in giving me any answers, and I didn't remember that it was you, one of the people that posted battery life, so please accept my apologies for that. Regarding the seven hours and the brightness, sometimes we are force to lower our expectation. I can get more battery life out of a regular ultrabook, but I really want a convertible, and there is not convertible that will give you 7 hours, and the yoga is the best out there. So I'm at the point in which I would be willing to compromise until certain extend. I understand why some people think that it is pointless to get battery life estimates without knowing 100% of the things that are running on the machine. But I know that rough estimates together with just the information that I requested would be enough for me to get a good idea, and it won't by that much far off from an estimate resulted from a technical control test. Some people think that unless the estimates come from such a test, it is not worth it.
Anyways, I wish I had never asked! I have already seen a couple of post in this thread, that were not a response to my question, but mention some limited info about computer usage and an estimate on battery life. Also somebody else in another forum posted a question regarding battery life on the Y2P, and there were a couple of responses there as well. So I guess I'll stop asking and wasting my time. there will be more people posting here and other forums, battery life estimates, without me asking. So I'll just wait.

 

Thank you very much mitchellvii

That is all I was asking for, for people to give me a general sense of usage and battery life.

I wish there were more people like you in this thread.

Unfortunately I have already seen some very nasty and out of line responses to my questions, but I'm not wasting my time answering to that.

I have seen this type of question regarding battery life for different laptops in different forums, but never such a bad reaction to it. go figure!

Thanks again.

 

Why don't people undervolt and control the fan speed triggers so no fans until 55C. The battery life goes up by atleast an hour depending on how much you can undervolt. No fans = quiet = more battery. Undervolt = cooler CPU = less power usage = less fan. I understand that a lot of this is not for everyone but this can all be accomplished using SOFTWARE and all undone. Give it a shot people.

 

I may have to leave it.

This computer is advertised as having a ~6 hour battery, which is already low for a Haswell device. From what I've been reading, with the screen fix it sounds like it has a ~4 hour battery life. Just not good enough.

Also have a Sony Flip 13 on order. Unfortunately the Flip has its own problems, i.e. loud fan. *sigh* One of these computers will be going back. I almost feel like just canceling both orders. So sick of companies using customers as beta testers instead of doing proper quality control before and during manufacture.

 

I agree that the quote that you cherry picked from my post and posted in yours totally out of contest, appear to be written by somebody with a bad attitude. Please read post #997 and #1001 carefully in their entirety and you will see that I'm not the one with a bad attitude. I don't know if that was your intention or not, but really don't appreciate the miss-characterization.

Care telling me the posts #s in which people refer to battery life?

 

My only regret is that Lenovo chose not to go with an active digitizer. I would have gladly paid $100 more for that feature. I am sure that Lenovo's research told them that despite their popularity with manufacturers, in reality most people do not use them. I had one with my Surface Pro and found that I rarely used it. Nevertheless, I still like the flexibility of having it there if I need it.

The Dell XPS 11 is really tempting for that reason, but I am concerned that the smaller screen would be limiting and I've heard the keyboard has missed keystroke problems (which can be quite annoying).

Still it drives me a crazy when a company gets SO close to the "perfect" device then fumbles one the one yard line.

 

Right there with you, man. It is like they are testing the waters with the convertibles, such a limited selection, and it is almost like you could not make a good one if you put 2 of them together. They all have something wrong.
The grass is greener on the regular ultrabooks' side.

 

Have you seen the Sony Flip 13 in person? It is complete crap:

1) Build quality is a mess.
2) Screen has horrible light bleed at the bottom.
3) Keys are positively flimsy.
4) Very limited screen angle in laptop mode.
5) Flip hing is stiff and difficult to use.
6) Screen deforms when writing with the pen - a little scary.
7) You could slice cheese with the edge of the thing - it is that sharp.
8) $200 more than comparable Y2P.

 

Hi I'm interested in doing this, I know how to get into the BIOS, but don't know what to do from there. Maybe you can do a detailed post as to how to go about this. I know how to do it on my galaxy nexus, but it's a different animal. Thanks.

 

I concurr with all your points. Just not a good design overall. I tried it too and was like : WTH is this?

 

Like what? They are all pricey. Enlighten me please.

 

As one of those who has posted a number of battery tests (sorry lafester), I can give you a few posts including 3 I posted last night. #945, 957, #961, #184,#148. These are just ones I posted and I have seen a number of others. There haven't been that many (but there are a few) since the new BIOS and Energy Manager updates came out just a couple days ago, but definitely some there.

I'm running on battery again in power saver mode with the energy manager turned off, brightness at 50%, wifi on, 2 chrome tabs, Outlook and OneNote running. Keeping active so screen does not sleep. Been on battery for exactly 1 hours and have 5 hr 16 min left according to the battery manager but it is erratic so I don't rely on that for accuracy until I get much closer to the battery running out.

And I have to agree with Opus, your posts came off to me as having attitude. May not be what you intended but it's what I too read in your posts.

Forgot to mention that I am running at 3200 x 1800.

 

9) Awful fan noise.

A lot of people that didn't find 1 through 8 to be problems, ended up returning the unit because of the fan noise. At mobiletechreview they nicknamed the hoover (referring to the vacuum).

 

I get about 6hrs of battery life : brightness 40 %, power setting on balance mode, web surfing, working on office documents, checking emails. This is before the BIOS fix. I haven't tried it yet after, since I returned mine to get the Clementine one. Oh yeah, my resolution was at 1920 x1080. This is way better battery life than ANY laptop that I have ever owned(they all crapped out after 2-3 hrs).

 

Except for the Dell XPS, in total agreement with everything you said. The XPS is too small for me but man if this Y2P just had an active digitizer (and a place to store the pen!) this already nearly impossible to beat at this price point machine would be even more unbeatable. The Musemee pen and smudgeguard glove though have already taken it up another notch for me.

 

That is what I'm talking about!

Your response is greatly appreciate.

And to everybody, please accept my apologies if any of my post sounded out of line, or with a bad attitude or offended anybody. Not my intention at all. just trying to get some answers to see if I buy or not.

I really appreciate everybody's posts, helping out and giving answers, info and tips to others.

If it wasn't for you guys, I'll be clueless about a lot of stuff regarding the Y2P.

Cheers.

 

Thank you very much! Another very good answer to my questions!

You guys are awesome! where were you a few pages ago?:thumbsup:

 

Watching the battle between you and Led Zappa. It was rather entertaining!

 

With most hybrids you have to make a choice, do I want a great laptop that can be a decent tablet or do I want a great tablet that can be a decent laptop?

The Yoga 2 Pro is the only device which is equally good as a laptop or tablet. That means ultimate flexibility with no sacrifices. The Y2P is equally proficient as a consumption or productivity device.

At 13.3 inches it is large enough to be a business laptop running legacy apps designed for larger screens yet small and light enough to be enjoyed as a tablet. You can view webpages in portrait mode without needed a magnifying glass to read the text. You can comfortably view two Word documents side by side in landscape. You can view a webpage next to OneNote and take notes on what you are reading.

Yoga is the perfect name for this device because it provides the ultimate flexibility.

 

Btw did anyone notice that all Chrome issues (HiDPI performance, touch etc.) are now fixed in the latest stable Chrome build? Any experiences?

 

4GB/128GB/i5-4200u - Running mine @ native 3200x1800 - 200% scaling - Balanced mode. (I have not updated the bios/energy manager yet due to fear of battery life loss, yellow issue doesn't bother me much)

Light multi tasking + heavy web usage. Occasionally watching 1080p movies/shows with WiFi on and downloads running

I get anywhere from 4-6 hours. I know that's vague but sometimes I like to leave my brightness @ 100%. Generally it's at about 60% most of the time. Most I have ever got is probably 6.5 hours in power saver mode.

I am coming from a laptop which had a battery that lasted only 1.5 hours, and as you can probably tell, I am more than content. I would really like to know if the battery is replaceable though. The battery on the last laptop I had went from lasting 1.5 hours to 15 minutes in about 2 years. Really hoping to avoid that drastic of a battery life loss with my Y2P.

Hope that helps.

By the way, has anyone watched 4K or 1440p video on this thing? I know its not meant for 4K, but even 1080p is extraordinarily beautiful on this thing. Before I used to be content downloading 720p movies, but now my policy is AT LEAST 1080p quality or go home.

 

I actually don't take offense from those posts. I've been reading Led Zappa postings from the beginning of the thread, and I find most of them to be intelligent and helpful writings. And I think I know were Led Zappa was cumming from with those comments. In my view it was just a series of misunderstood post. I think that some times we just write stuff, and unfortunately the message does not get across or is not understood. Other times the posts don't sound the way we intended and people interpret them in a way that is offensive to them, or they think you have a bad attitude, etc But it is all good.

 

Yes I have the Musemee Notier as well and although I did not care for it at first I am liking it more now that I have become accustomed to working with it. To solve the palm rejection problem I just put a microfiber screen cleaning cloth beneath my palm as I write. Works a charm.

Sadly my electromagnetic signal goes right through the Smudgeguard glove and marks the screen.

 

And I can respect somebody who apologizes even though they did not mean to offend to begin with.

 

For all those on the fence, I can say that I am very satisfied with this laptop. I purchased mine from Best Buy when it was first leaked that they were selling them early. I was at first worried about the uber-resolution making it hard to see, or hard to use the touch screen to close windows, but it just works. I am using the default settings, don't notice the yellow issue, and don't care. I will perhaps upgrade the fix, but I am in no hurry.

The most surprising thing for me was just how useful the stand mode is. I use that mode more than any other, it is fantastic for using on the lap. I thought that I would use that mode the least when I bought it, but it is the most used mode, followed by laptop, then tied for last with tent and tablet. This form factor is hard to beat, and I would have a hard time reverting to a regular laptop.

 

Thanks. It is just the right thing to do. Treat others like you would like to be treated yourself.

Do you know if the battery on the Y2P can be replace?

 

Well I for one am spoiled. I do not believe I could ever again enjoy working with anything less than a 250 PPI screen.

 

Thanks for sharing. what can you tell us about the keyboard facing down on stand and tablet mode, some people said it feels wired. what is your experience?

 

You mean make them eat too much, drink too much and party every night?

 

It's one of those things you notice at first but after a while not at all.