Yoga 2 Pro Release Thread

Hi! Lenovo has announced the Yoga 2 Pro, the Haswell (aka 4th-generation Intel processors) and Windows 8.1 update for the Yoga 13.

Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro: Laptop Tablet Hybrid | Lenovo (US)
Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro Datasheet
Gizmodo's Hands-On (shows size comparison with Yoga 13)
MobileGeeks Yoga 2 Pro in-depth Video Review (with comparisons to Yoga 13)
(special thanks to B3RL1N for finding and posting it!)

Release Date: October 18th, 2013 ( source)

Specifications Overview:

• CPU options (all use Intel HD Graphics 4400 iGPUs): i7-4500U, i5-4200U, i3-4010U
• RAM options: 8GB or 4GBof DDR3L 1600MHz, single slot (unknown whether single or dual channel)
• 13.3" IPS LCD: 3200x1800 (276PPI) | 350-nit (same brightness as Yoga 13) | 10-point multitouch (same as Yoga 13)
• Storage options: 512GB, 256GB, 128GB SSD
• Battery life: 9 hours of Windows 8 (and presumably 8.1) idle @ 150 nits | 6 hours of 1080p playback @ 150 nits
• Backlit keyboard
• Ports: 1 USB 3.0, 1 USB 2.0, 1 micro HDMI, combo microphone/headphone jack, and 1 SD/MMC card reader
• 0.9MP/720p front-facing camera
• Bluetooth 4.0
• Dolby Home Theater v4 with dual array microphones
• Color options: Grey or Clementine Orange (same as Yoga 13)
• 15.5mm thin | 3.06lbs weight (vs 17.1mm and 3.3lbs on Yoga 13, respectively)
• Probably an Intel Ultrabook 2.0 (so 2x2:2 WiFi, WiDi, etc. See the full list here) | See WiFi note below
• Price: starts at $1,100 (price liable to change, states Lenovo--this $1,100 config will be 3200x1800 screen, Core i5-4200U, 128GB SSD, and 4GB RAM)

Battery Note:

WiFi Note:

Interestingly, the Datasheet shows B/G/N as the only WiFi option.

Miscellaneous changelog from Yoga 13:

• Windows Home button is now touch instead of a physical button
• Basically every button has moved, LOL: right side now contains power button, an unknown button (OneKey Recovery?), rotation lock, volume rocker, combo microphone/headphone jack, and USB 2.0 while left side now contains: SD/MMC card reader, micro-HDMI, USB 3.0, and power jack. Thus, NO buttons on front (probably because of edge curving, noted below).
• A rubber rim around display for better use in Tent Mode
• Bottom/top edges curve a bit, so less boxy than Yoga 13 (see here)

Random:

• Will be released in same markets as Yoga 13 (source)
• The hinge has been tested 25,000 times (source)

Well, some good things and bad things, as expected.

 

Reserved. 10char

 

>Bottom/top edges curve a bit, so less boxy than Yoga 13

My first reaction is that I don't love this aspect of the new look - I really liked the boxy look of my Yoga13 v1.

Still no word on which wireless card it uses!

 

If they call it an Ultrabook, which I think is likely, it must have 2x2:2 WiFi and WiDi. See Ultrabook 2.0 requirements in OP. WiDi is basically only on Intel wireless cards (one or two Broadcom chipsets have it, though). Thus, 2x2:2 WiFi chip likely from Intel.

 

Good point, the reviews did use the word Ultrabook so maybe there is good reason to be hopeful that the painful RealTek card from the Yoga 1 is gone!

 

Dat retina. Way to copy apple

U or Y series CPU?

 

Compared to the original Yoga 13, will Haswell have an effect on battery life with the new 3200 x 1800 screen resolution? Thoughts?

Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro: Basically a Perfect Upgrade

 

Still waiting for those Haswell Thinkpads and 750M Bays...

 

Can any one please tell me how would be the experience of working on MSoffice on 13.3" screen of 3200x1800 resolution? Good or bad?

Like everything of Yoga 2, but worried about small font and display. Not sure if that would be comfortable for eyes because of high resolution and small fonts.

 

My thought exactly. When manufacturers create these ridiculously high res 13" laptop, they should really take into consideration that some people actually use them to do work, and it's not ideal for viewing emails or webpages with large amounts of text.

 

Windows 8.1 is said to improve scaling. Let's hope they deliver that promise.

 

In pictures, the old Yoga certainly looks better with its symmetrical book-like design. But actually viewing it from an upper angle, you're probably see that it's just boxy and bulky. I think the new design will actually help the book-like design when viewed from upper angles.

 

Wifi Chip confirmed to be Intel. Will be a 2230 like the Y series/Z series, but can be upgraded to AC.

 

All Haswell ultrabooks I've seen, including the Sony Vaio Pro 13, Acer S7-392 use "Intel Dual Band Wireless-N 7260" (which I have on my laptop BTW) while the Dell XPS 12 Haswell uses "Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260" Even the u430 touch Haswell use the "Intel Wireless-N 7260" Intel is really pushing the 7260 series for ultrabooks while the Centrino 2230 for multimedia laptops, and Intel Advanced / Ultimate-N series for business laptops. I bet when Haswell arrives on Lenovo business laptops, they will have the Dual Band Wireless-N 7260 as the upgrade for ThinkPad BGN while the AC version for the most expensive upgrade. I still think Lenovo might keep the Ultimate-N 6300 along with the 7260 series for their Haswell business notebooks. This is just my opinion BTW.

 

Y (tablet-series) only goes up to i5. Probably the U (laptop-series), then, as they go the i7. But, they use the same socket, so maybe both as options. But, my money's on the U series, as that battery life estimate isn't huge.

Depends on the technology. IGZO consumes less at high-res, but amorphous silicon consumes more high-res. But, it will definitely be an increase in GPU consumption, though.

Scaling will be better than most high-res displays, but it won't beat 1600x900: Windows 8.1 now allows 200% scaling, which replicates 1600x900 exactly because 3200x1800 is exactly double 1600x900! Great news, right? Except that some applications don't work well with ANY scaling. So, those will look either stretched, pixelated, or tiny. But, the Windows UI, etc. should look exactly the same size as a 1600x900 screen.

Really?! That's good to hear. Where did you find this? I Google'd without avail.

 

Was in the comments on some site, some guy said he worked at Lenovo. Mentioned it was Intel, then the guy under said it will probably be 2230. Rumors, rumors...

Anyways, the Z series is getting a makeover with the Flex. I made a thread on it, return to the Ideapad forum and see for yourself. You can even buy the Flex now. It's basically a poor man's Yoga.

 

On September 1, Intel released hordes of new Haswell CPUs. The most relevant to us is Core i5 4300U, Core i7 4600U, Core i5 4300Y and Core i7 4610Y.

The 4300U and 4600U is a very good replacement to the 4200U and 4500U as it adds 300MHz frequency to both Base and Turbo frequencies. That's a 19% gain for the i5 and 17% for the i7! I feel almost sorry for the 4500U adopters as now the much cheaper 4300U has 100MHz higher Base frequency but 100MHz less Turbo frequency. Even the GPU is raised on the new i5 to be up on par with old i7! That means they are equals, and I'd say the 4300U is even slightly better as the guaranteed clock is higher. The 4600U is now a full no-compromise replacement to the Ivy Bridge based 3687U with equal frequencies but better perf/clock and GPU.

Now for the Y, the 4310Y has 1.6/2.3GHz frequency and 4610Y has 1.7/2.9GHz frequency. You are getting slightly less than 4200U with much lower 11.5W TDP while getting better performance with the i7 4610Y. With the 3rd Generation Core Y, I wouldn't have considered it over a U, but with the 4th Gen, it closes the gap significantly. With the Y chips you are getting 10% increase in perf/clock in addition to 7-13% gain in frequency depending on the chip version. I'd say that's a pretty impressive refresh for both lines.

The Yoga series were never the most efficient of the Ultrabooks and this adds a super high resolution, which in Macbooks were the reason for having 30-40% greater battery capacity to achieve same battery life as the previous generation.

 

Liking what I see so far. Right now I'm debating between this, AB9+, and UX301 with i7/8GB/256GB.

Sent from my GALAXY NOTE II

 

Those units will easily be $1700 plus based on that config.

Does anyone have any guess to what an i7/8gb/128 GB SSD Yoga Pro 2 will cost, someone more familiar with the platform? Early Oct or late?

 

Yeah, I'm willing to spend $2000 with those specs, as long as there aren't any issues with the keyboard, fan, wi-fi, and trackpad.


Sent from my GALAXY NOTE II

 

1,299 euros = $1700 USD. This looks to start as more expensive than the original Yoga. Great information from everyone, thank you!!

 

Another site said 1199$, so i think Lenovo will be "discounting" the laptops like they do all the time.

 

What configuration is $1199?

 

To summarize, am I getting this right?
4310Y (lower TDP) <4200U< 4610Y (lower TDP) < 4500U< 4300U< 4600U

How much more battery efficient are the new Y's compared to the new U's?

Thanks in advance.

 

Yoga 2 should come with different screen size and resolution. 13-15 inch and 1900 to 3200 pix

 

If I can add a question to your's: does this mean the Yoga 2 is likely to have a Intel graphics 4XXX or 5XXX series? I'd love to get some *light* (low res) gaming done on this machine :thumbsup: Thanks.

 

It will most likely have the HD4400 if it sports an ULV processor or the HD4200 if it sports a Y-series processor. I would NEVER put an Iris inside something as thin as the Yoga, those get HOT HOT HOT.

 

Very impressive laptop, hits absolutely all of my check marks at a price on the lower end of my budget if everything listed is true. May consider the Thinkpad version with the wacom though depending on upgrade prices. 3200x1800 on 13.3' is probably overkill and digitizer support could be fun.

 

Alanbrenton: Yes, that's right. Although I'd put 4500U=4300U, the latter is a Core i5 so cheaper which is the big deal.

TDP won't make a big difference, or even at all in low to medium load scenarios. It'll be in high load scenarios like gaming that'll matter, but then Y series devices likely has lower battery capacity as well. Y is just for running it cooler so you get slimmer/smaller systems.

isthisfunforyou: I find it interesting they named it Yoga 2 "Pro". That must mean they have a regular Yoga version coming. The original Yoga only had single channel memory, so that's the thing you should be looking at first. If you want gaming done, you want dual channel memory, no exceptions. Another thing is even if it ends up to be a HD 4400, it performs pretty darn well on the Sony Vaio Duo 13(due to its excellent cooling and Config TDP implementation). The Duo 13's HD 4400 is neck and neck with the HD 5000 on the MacBook Air. Those two are bigger factors than "HD 5000".

Now, if it uses a Y processor its a different story, because its clocked lower with even lower TDP. But if I had to speculate, I would say they'll get an 11S successor and call it "Yoga 2" without the Pro moniker and with the Y chip.

Update: According to Lenovo's press release: "The recently introduced Yoga 11S will also be adding choices of up to 4th generation Intel Core i7 processors."

Engadget was saying $1099 with the Core i5, 4GB memory, 128GB SSD config with 3200x1800 display(which is baseline on all devices). So that's same as the original Yoga, which makes it really impressive.

One thing about the Yoga 2 Pro is that it doesn't have a digitzer. I wish they had a Yoga 2 with same thickness and weight without that "keyboard mechanism" which supposedly is the reason in thickness and weight difference between the ThinkPad Yoga and Yoga 2 Pro.

 

I thought the Duo 13 also came with the option for the HD5000.

As for the 11S the up to 4th gen i7 to me means that they may offer the latest Pentium cpu, which my understanding maybe just renamed top line Bay Trail cpu(it may even be the quad core variant?).

 

Yes it does, but on the Duo 13, HD 5000 is just icing on the cake, while on others may be a requirement, and in some circumstances, might not even perform as well as the HD 4400 on the Duo 13.

"4th Gen i7" explicitely means Haswell.

I'm disappointed that the Thinkpad Yoga is not only thicker and heavier than the Yoga 2 Pro, but offers as little as 5.3 hours of battery life with the top end configuration. I'll wait for the reviews regardless, but I'm leaning towards the Yoga 2 Pro despite it not having digitizer. Also if the 11S can offer 9-10 hours of battery life while getting smaller as the regular Yoga did that would be in my consideration too.

The advantage of the 11S is not only its smaller form factor but that it costs less too.

**About Battery life versus the original Yoga 13**

The 8 hours achieved with the original Yoga 13 is with the outdated MobileMark2007 benchmark, which uses less demanding tests and 60 nits of brightness. The 9 hours on the Yoga 2 Pro is likely done with the MobileMark2012 which uses 150 nits of brightness and is actually quite comparable to real world use. Also 6 hours is on movie playback with the same brightness.

 

According to Intel, IB-E also counts as 4th Gen, though IB-E are limited to desktop CPU's and Xeon's only.

And for those asking, IB-E is the *Fourth* generation of Enthusiast Desktop Core i processors:
- Nehalem/Bloomfield (i7 965x)
- Nehalem/Westmere (i7 990x)
- Sandy Bridge-E (i7 3970x)
- Ivy Bridge-E (i7 4960x)

Also, since massive LGA2011 laptops like the Clevo P570WM can accept IB-E processors, this means that 4th gen does not always mean haswell (though 99% of the time, it does).

 

Thank you! Will update OP with this and Intel Wi-Fi card.

Quick question: what makes you think they're using an updated benchmark suite? Is that what they've been using in their newer laptops?

 

Am I the only one who thinks this quest for huge resolution screens in laptops etc is simply daft whenever windows doesn't support scaling that well and therefore becomes next to unusable..?
There is a video on YouTube of someone looking at the yoga 2 pro and he's having a lot of difficulty trying to tap on the battery icon as it's so small. Then there's a command prompt open which is unreadable.

I am quite interested to see what the specs on the updated yoga 11s are going to be.

 

1080p + Haswell.

 

Whether they use the MobileMark 2012 benchmark I'm not 100% sure, but MobileMark is actually used widely in manufacturer testing, and the battery life recommendations by Intel is based on the MobileMark 2012 bench. Also, the figures for the video playback is done using 150 nits brightness.

The differences based on battery benchmarks can be quite big. For example, Sony quotes 3 figures, 18 hours, 12 hours, and 10 hours on the Duo 13. The first one is based on the unrealistic Japanese test suite called JEITA, and the second figure is the updated version. The third is MobileMark 2012. So it would be misleading to compare previous gen using earlier JEITA or MobileMark 2007 with newer model using the updated JEITA or MobileMark 2012 figures.

That's not true. According to ark.intel.com, Sandy Bridge E chips are labeled under the 2nd Generation Core i7 Extreme processor, but the model is 3xxx. They don't openly advertise that its a "2nd Generation" either, because its top of the line extreme processor and maybe some consumers would think bad of it if its named "2nd Gen 2xxx".

 

Hopefully a backlit keyboard too.

Tbh I didn't notice a backlit keyboard in the videos of the Yoga 2 Pro, but I'm guessing it would be hard to tell in a video with all the lights at a show like that.

 

Thanks for answering my question IntelUser.

I like your speculation about the 11S Successor. I wouldn't touch a Surface RT tablet but if the Yoga 2 no-Pro does come with full Win 8 Support, maybe I can convince my daughter to get that one instead of the Macbook Air.

She's only in Grade 8 but I keep telling her she might tire of the OSX, especially when who knows when touch screen will be made available.

 

The backlit keyboard is noticeable to me in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJhSRqDM-v0&amp;feature=youtube_gdata_player


Sent from my GALAXY NOTE II

 

Yeah, it's definitely noticeable in that video.

 

The Ultrabooknews.Com hands on video confirms it also.

 

They seem to have fixed some of the other short comings of the original yoga, I hope the new display is brighter than the 200 nits that one had.

 

Did they fix the overheating issues?

 

Still find it wierd how we are in 2013 and Apple stil hasn't made an iMac touch.

 

Lenovo says it's four times brighter than the original Yoga.

Not sure how they measured that as 800 nits is unheard of.

 

I saw that also, but Lenovo says and Engadget confirmed that Yoga 2 Pro is the same 350 nits as the original Yoga. I think they're reasoning is that equal nits with higher resolution = brighter.

 

Ohhhh...that makes a lot more sense. It *is* four times the resolution.

 

350? That can't have been 350..Samsung is only doing 300 now and they are twice as bright as the original Yoga.

 

Or at least the Macbook line.

The touch screen and digitizer pen are what's swaying me to not try OSX.

 

This seems unnecessary to me, given that last year's 1600x900 panel on the Yoga 13 was already sufficient for most desktop tasks--photo processing included. Quadrupling the number of pixels on the Yoga 2 Pro feels gratuitous, especially since Windows doesn't support straight-up pixel doubling like Mac OS. On the 13-inch panel, native 3200x1800 resolution and 100% scaling on the Yoga 2 Pro made text almost unreadable--my open eyes turned to a squint trying to read system text when examining the screen. And even though it's improved in Windows 8.1, high-resolution scaling at 150% or 200% is still woefully lacking on the Desktop, according to tests by Arstechnica's Andrew Cunningham. Metro--excuse me, Modern UI--apps and interfaces scale well, but third-party and legacy Desktop program UI rendering remains inconsistent.

Hands-On with the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro - Tested

I also wonder, what if someone uses Linux on such high resolution, can the texts read easily. This is unnecessarily HD.