Lenovo Yoga Book Review

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The Windows Version of Lenovo's Hybrid Tablet

Ever since Lenovo unveiled the Yoga Book in late August, I’ve been extremely excited to get my hands on it. This folding tablet-laptop hybrid is unlike any other product on the market, as it takes the concept of the 10-inch tablet with a keyboard and replaces the cumbersome docking mechanism with the Yoga series’ signature 360-degree hinge.

The resulting hardware is a beautifully slim tablet that folds apart like a book, transforming it into a lightweight, portable laptop. Lenovo is aiming for the best of both worlds here: a compact tablet that’s easy to hold and transport; and an on-the-go laptop that isn’t hindered by an awkward dock, mediocre keyboard case, or confusing tablet stand.

To achieve this goal, naturally there are some trade-offs. There is a keyboard attached to this tablet, however there are no physical keys; you’re typing on a touchscreen slate.

It’s not particularly powerful either, packing an Intel Atom x5-Z8550 processor and 4 GB of RAM.

To make up for these, Lenovo has packed in a range of compelling stylus features. The touchscreen keyboard slate can be used as an accurate graphics tablet with the included pen, or you can slap a piece of paper on the slate and write physical notes while they are simultaneously digitized.

Lenovo also claims the Yoga Book is good for 13 hours of battery life, which sounds impressive considering its size.

The Yoga Book ($550 running Windows, $500 on Android) is one of the most attractive pieces of hardware I’ve used this year. The magnesium-aluminium alloy shell is sleek and gives this product a premium aesthetic, especially combined with Lenovo’s watchband hinge. The frosted glass touchpad complements the design well, as does the glossy glass protecting the display. There are very few distracting elements as well, aside from some removable stickers from Intel and Microsoft, which helps deliver the minimalist look this tablet deserves.

The most impressive aspect to the Yoga Book is how compact the entire device is. It’s a 10-inch tablet, so we were always getting a portable footprint, however the slimness is the key to this design’s success.

The Yoga Book is just 9.6mm thick when closed, which is unbelievable for a device that opens into two sections. The base, which includes the touch slate, is a slight wedge that maxes out at just over 6mm thick, while the display lid is a slender 3.5mm. When open, the Yoga Book looks astonishing.

Of course a 9.6mm thick 10-inch tablet isn’t hugely impressive, so if the Yoga Book were merely a standard tablet I wouldn’t be raving about the thickness. The impressive feat here is getting the Yoga Book in its closed tablet mode to match typical 10-inch tablets, while still featuring a hinge that allows it to open into a laptop. There is no product on the market that achieves this, and that’s what makes the Yoga Book stand out from such uninteresting competition.

The Yoga Book is one of the most attractive pieces of hardware I’ve used this year.

 

In its tablet mode, the 690-gram device is quite usable, but don’t expect an experience that rivals the Apple iPad Air 2. Not only is the iPad several hundred grams lighter, but it also features a more comfortable 4:3 screen aspect ratio. The 16:10 display on the Yoga Book makes it a little awkward to use as an entertainment device like the iPad, but it’s clear that the strengths of this tablet lie in productivity and creativity instead.

The watchband hinge that connects the two halves of the Yoga Book is as beautiful as it has been on past Lenovo convertibles. The hinge allows 36-degrees of fluid movement, yet it’s strong enough that any position you choose will be maintained in a reasonably stable fashion. I say “reasonably” because there is some wobble in the display half when using the touchscreen in laptop mode, however, despite this, the angle of the hinge is maintained.

The touch slate section is interesting as it serves two functions. When typing, the backlit keys appear from nowhere to provide a full keyboard with function keys and a trackpad. But when you hit the pen button, the keyboard disappears and the slate can be used as a graphics tablet within the printed bounds that match the size of the Yoga Book’s display. You can still see the outline of the keyboard under light, but the dual-function design is effective.

Around the edges of the touch slate is where you’ll find all the key ports and buttons. The right side includes a 3.5mm audio jack, the power button, and the volume rocker, as well as one speaker grill for the stereo side-firing speakers. I did find myself accidentally hitting the power button a few times while I was using the Yoga Book as a laptop due to its awkward position, and I’d rather the power and volume buttons were switched.

On the left side is a rather odd combination of ports: microUSB for charging and accessories, along with micro-HDMI. The Yoga Book is a device crying out for USB-C, so the inclusion of microUSB instead is baffling. And it’s not a size issue: there’s enough thickness in the Yoga Book to comfortably slot in USB-C, which would have provided greater compatibility with upcoming accessories and removed the need for the HDMI port (USB-C can be easily adapted to full-sized HDMI or DisplayPort).

The inclusion of microUSB over USB-C indicates to me that the Yoga Book has been in development for a long time, and near-final hardware was locked in before USB-C began its surge in late 2015. USB-C is a really disappointing omission from the Yoga Book, but at least with a microUSB to USB adapter you can still attach regular accessories.

The Yoga Book also includes a nano-SIM tray for integrated 4G LTE functionality, and two cameras: one for selfies above the display, in the Book’s large bezels; and another above the backspace key in the touchscreen slate. This seems like a weird position for a secondary camera, but when you fold the device into tablet mode, this camera becomes rear facing. Both cameras are pretty average in terms of quality, so I wouldn’t want to take any holiday photos on this tablet.

Display, Keyboard and Trackpad

The display included with the Yoga Book is a 10.1-inch IPS LCD with a resolution of 1920 x 1200, which is pretty standard for a tablet of this size.

At 224 PPI, the display is sharp and provides a good viewing experience for both text and imagery. This IPS panel features excellent viewing angles that make it easy to see at nearly all reasonable positions.

Testing the color performance of the Yoga Book is tricky because Lenovo has implemented dynamic contrast that cannot be disabled. This is not good news for creatives who demand perfect color accuracy, as the Yoga Book will change its color output depending on the image it’s trying to display. The dynamic contrast effect is particularly noticeable in dark scenes, where each contrast step is noticeable as the Yoga Book adjusts to its steady state value.

Lenovo claims the Yoga Book’s display can output 400 nits of brightness, however I only recorded 320 nits at the maximum for a full white screen (note that this could be affected by dynamic contrast). Color temperature is cool in general, falling somewhere around 7100K, while the contrast ratio seems to fluctuate between around 730:1 to 1600:1.

When the Yoga Book isn’t adjusting color output, its display is reasonably accurate, boasting an overall gamut of 95% sRGB and better-than-average accuracy for blues and greens in particular. Again, dynamic contrast has an effect here, which hurts grayscale accuracy and gamma in almost all situations, though in general the Yoga Book isn’t the worst for creative uses.

The keyboard included with the Yoga Book takes a while to get used to. Given that it is a touchscreen and has no physical keys, there is no feedback when you press a key aside from a brief buzz of the vibration motor and an audible sound (which, frustratingly, you can’t disable). As you might expect, this is no substitute for physical keys, and typing on the Yoga Book feels like you’re tapping a hard surface rather than activating a key.

Feedback isn’t the only issue with a touch keyboard like the Yoga Book: there are no guides that indicate whether you’re hitting the center of the key, or the edge, or even another key altogether. After a week of typing I did get used to where my fingers need to be positioned to accurately hit the main letter keys, which are laid out like any other keyboard, and my typing speed increased to about 80% of a regular keyboard, but the experience is still several steps behind an actual laptop.

The best analogy for how the Yoga Book’s keyboard performs is this: it’s like typing on a tablet’s virtual, touchscreen keyboard. If you’ve used a tablet’s on-screen keyboard before, you’ll know what typing on the Yoga Book is like.

Aside from issues with feedback, Lenovo has used a weird layout for the Yoga Book’s keyboard that hampers its usability. The backspace key is enormous, but the enter and left shift keys are much smaller and harder to hit. Bizarrely, there’s a backslash key slotted between the left shift and Z keys that does nothing but negatively affect how easy it is to hit left shift. Surely that backslash key could have been relocated to give left shift more space, while reducing the space taken by backspace.

Most of these layout quirks are due to the United Kingdom keyboard layout that Lenovo has used on my UK review unit. Hopefully these issues are non-existent on the models destined for other regions, because the United States keyboard layout is superior for a space-limited design like the Yoga Book.

The trackpad on the Yoga Book isn’t particularly great either. I had to crank the sensitivity up to its maximum value just to get a reasonable tracking speed, and occasionally I would start using the trackpad, only for it not to respond immediately. Combined with odd placement of the touch left- and right-click buttons, the trackpad experience is similar to the keyboard: not as good as you’d get from a legitimate laptop trackpad.

Stylus Input and Software Issues

Aside from the form factor, one of the best aspects to the Lenovo Yoga Book is the stylus input. Press the pen icon above the keyboard, and the touch slate is transformed into a graphics tablet that accepts inputs from the included stylus. The stylus itself is comfortable to hold and battery free thanks to Wacom’s electro-magnetic resonance (EMR) technology.

The stylus delivers the most amazing writing experience I’ve ever seen from a stylus-equipped device. Unlike with most other solutions, there is absolutely no noticeable lag between writing on the slate and drawings appearing on the display. I’m used to seeing a very slightly delay between stylus input and on-screen feedback, but with the Yoga Book, it feels like I am literally transferring ink to the screen. Plus, with 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity, how you write on paper is how drawings appear on screen.

It will become quickly apparent to users that the included stylus does not work on the display itself: it only works on the touch slate. The screen uses Lenovo AnyPen technology, so users can draw on the display with basically any suitable object, like a traditional pen or pencil, or even a carrot. You’ll probably want to steer clear of this, though, as the touch slate is a far more responsive solution for writing.

I originally thought that not having full stylus support on the screen itself would be a downside to the Yoga Book, but in my time with the device I formed the opposite opinion. By writing on the touch slate, the entire display is free from my palms and fingers blocking my view, which is an issue when you write directly on the screen. You’re then free to mani[CENSORED]te content using your fingers on the touchscreen while you write using the stylus, or you can take your hands away from the screen and get an unobstructed view while you write.

In general, I had no issues translating the position of the pen on the slate to the position of the digital pen on the screen, thanks mostly due to a pointer that appears when you hover over the touch pad. Without this feature, I suspect using the slate would be difficult.

The Yoga Book’s touch slate (Lenovo calls it the Create Pad) also supports another feature: digitizing physical notes as you write them. All you have to do is place a piece of A5 paper over the touch slate, use the included stylus (Real Pen) with its ballpoint tip, and write on the paper while a notepad app that supports inking is open. As you physically ink the piece of paper on the slate, your writing is stored digitally in the app. It’s a neat feature if you want to easily create both a digital and hard copy of a note or drawing, although I didn’t find myself using this functionality as often as the slate by itself.

The main reason for this is that swapping the stylus tip from the standard tip to the ballpoint tip is awkward. You can just write on the slate with the ballpoint tip, however it leaves traces of ink on the surface. Although these ink marks can be wiped away, I wouldn’t want to risk permanently writing on the slate, so ideally you’d switch between tips whenever you wanted to write physical notes or just digital notes. A better solution would be to include two pens in the box of different colors: one for writing on the slate, and one with a ballpoint tip for creating physical notes.

What Lenovo includes in the box instead are three ballpoint tips and a Book Pad, which is a magnetic notepad loaded with appropriately-sized paper than can be attached to the Yoga Book’s slate. It’s great to see Lenovo really embracing their stylus features by including in the box something that would normally be an optional accessory. Refills of both tips and paper are available through Lenovo for an unknown price at the time of writing this review.

While I loved the Yoga Book’s stylus features, it’s worth talking about something on the other end of the scale: software issues. I specifically requested the Windows 10 model to review (there’s also an Android variant available for $50 less) because I find Windows a much more versatile platform for productivity. This was a good idea in principle, however in practice, the software on this tablet feels more like a beta release than something for the general public.

For starters, while the keyboard does disable when you flip the device into tablet mode, the button that enables the stylus slate does not. There were countless times when I was using the Yoga Book as a tablet and I would accidentally hit the stylus button, bringing up a small tray of shortcuts to inking apps on the screen. I’m not sure why this button isn’t disabled like the rest of the keyboard, because it’s not useful in tablet mode.

The product page for the Yoga Book on Lenovo’s website lists the device as coming with Lenovo NoteSaver, an application for writing notes using the touch slate. My review unit did not come with this software installed, and I couldn’t find any links to download it. OneNote works perfectly fine with the stylus, although it’s odd that Lenovo would advertise a software feature that’s not actually included.

I also had several issues getting the Yoga Book to properly resume from sleep. Hitting the power button would do nothing, even when the Book was plugged into the charger, and even when holding the button down. The only solution was to hold down power + volume up to enter the Yoga Book’s BIOS and initiating a normal boot from there, which is something no regular user should ever have to do.

On top of that, I experienced a rare issue where the touch keyboard wouldn’t work at all, which was resolved via a restart. The battery life indicator seemed to fluctuate significantly after a restart as well, sometimes jumping upwards by as much as 20 percent.

If Lenovo can resolve these software issues, the Yoga Book could be transformed into a rather buggy piece of hardware, to something that runs Windows 10 just like any other tablet on the market.

Hardware Overview and System Performance

The Lenovo Yoga Book’s main source of performance is the Intel Atom x5-Z8550, which is an entry-level SoC from the company’s Cherry Trail line. Built using a 14nm process, the Z8550 features four Airmont CPU cores and four threads, 2 MB of L2 cache, and a “scenario design power” of 2W. This is essentially Intel’s competitor to tablet processors from ARM vendors, although, of course, the entire Atom catalogue supports x86 instructions.

The x5-Z8550 is clocked at 1.44 GHz with a burst frequency of 2.40 GHz, while the Intel HD Graphics 400 GPU inside is clocked up to 600 MHz. This processor only supports dual-channel LPDDR3 memory, so we’re limited to 25.6 GB/s of bandwidth, and the Yoga Book tops out at 4 GB of RAM. While Cherry Trail processors do support USB 3.0, we’re not getting it on the Yoga Book due to the choice of a micro-USB port.

The Yoga Book also supports Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac on 2.4 and 5.0 GHz bands thanks to a Broadcom chip, plus Bluetooth 4.0 support. As for 4G LTE support, the Yoga Book is split into two models: one that supports most EMEA regions, while the other supports the Americas. In either case there is a good smattering of bands for cellular connectivity on the go.

The main issue with the Yoga Book’s performance is that the Intel Atom processor is not really fast enough to run Windows 10 applications that you’d normally use on a laptop or desktop. The Yoga Book is fine for running UWP apps like OneNote, Edge, and the UWP Office suite, but it suffers under the weight of more intensive applications like full desktop Chrome, Photoshop, and large Excel spreadsheets.

To me, it seems like the Yoga Book was designed primarily as an Android device, with Lenovo opting to use an Intel Atom SoC so they could also produce a Windows 10 variant. I have no doubts that the x5-Z8550 with 4GB of RAM is plenty for Android apps, but on a Windows machine with clear aims of being a productivity and creativity device, I’d prefer to see faster internals

In the usual range of benchmarks we run on Windows devices, the Samsung Galaxy TabPro S, which uses Intel’s Core m3-6Y30, offers almost twice the CPU performance of the Atom x5-Z8550. We’re not even looking at a fully-fledged 15W Core processor, but Intel’s entry-level Skylake Core M CPU which some people feel is a ‘slow’. I don’t believe Core M is too slow for everyday tasks, but the x5-Z8550 certainly struggles.

The Microsoft Surface 3, which I reviewed last year with the higher-clocked Atom x7-Z8700, recorded seven percent better performance. A current-generation laptop with an Intel Core i5-6200U clocks in at 140% faster in general.

Graphics and Storage Performance

Don’t expect the Yoga Book to provide a good gaming experience, as Intel’s Core M CPU is once again in the order of twice as fast as the Atom x5-Z8550. The Yoga Book is capable of playing lightweight Windows Store games and the occasional low intensity title from Steam, but anything more intense, including 3D games from 10 years ago, will struggle to run at 1080p.

The good news is that the Atom’s HD Graphics 400 GPU is more than capable of rendering Windows 10 and its animations, so the operating system didn’t seem to lag, and if there were slowdowns, it was often while loading applications.

The Yoga Book comes with a fairly limited 64 GB of storage, of which just over half is available to users out of the box. There is a microSD card slot included for expanding upon this, but I would ideally prefer 128 GB of storage in the Yoga Book as standard, at least for the Windows model.

Storage performance is weak, which leads to uninspiring app loading times. Having faster storage performance, particularly increased random reads and writes, would have helped the Yoga Book feel faster to use in everyday tasks.

Battery Life

Inside the Lenovo Yoga Book is an 8,500 mAh lithium-polymer battery, which equates to around 32 Wh. Lenovo claims the device is good for 13 hours of “general use” and over 70 days of standby; claims that actually seem reasonable now that I’ve used the device.

When I first received the Yoga Book, I assumed that the slim, folding design wouldn’t allow a large battery to fit inside. As it turns out, the combination of a low-power Intel Atom SoC and a battery of reasonable size delivers excellent battery life that should suffice for at least 10 hours of continuous use, if not more. I managed to get 12 hours out of the Yoga Book with a combination of web browsing (using Chrome) and document editing.

The battery tests back up claims of excellent battery life, thanks mostly due to the lower power requirements of Intel's Atom SoC. I guess if you're sacrificing performance you should definitely expect to see better-than-average battery life, which is what the Yoga Book provides.

Beautiful and Innovative, But Flawed

The Lenovo Yoga Book is an innovative, compelling concept product with a great feature set and an attractive price tag. However, while I like what the Yoga Book brings to the table in a first-generation product, it’s worth waiting for a next-generation model that addresses some niggling issues with the hybrid design.

The size and portability of the Yoga Book is my favorite aspect of this device. When opened into its laptop mode, the Yoga Book is astonishingly thin; and when flipped into tablet mode, the 9.6mm-thin device is just as usable as other 10-inch tablets. Lenovo’s signature watchband hinge and a seriously beautiful design remove the need for clunky keyboard docks, confusing keyboard cases, and other substandard convertible solutions.

In short, the Yoga Book offers the best mix of tablet and laptop functionality in a light, portable body.

On the other hand, like with most hybrid devices, there are compromises in the design. The biggest one is the keyboard, which is basically just a touchscreen that performs no better than an on-screen keyboard. Getting a keyboard with actual keys in a design this thin is practically impossible, but I believe there are some changes that Lenovo could make to improve the typing experience. An improved layout with bigger shift and enter keys would help, as would better haptic feedback (think Apple’s Taptic Engine) and a more responsive trackpad.

There are also a few puzzling design choices that, if addressed in a second-generation model, would greatly improve the Yoga Book. Lenovo has opted for micro-USB over USB Type-C for the Yoga Book’s main port, which is a bad choice in 2016, especially for a Windows device. The power button should also be relocated to avoid accidental presses in laptop mode.

The Yoga Book’s stylus functionality is something I thought would disappoint, as the stylus can’t be used directly on the display. However, the touch pad transforms into an excellent graphics tablet that blew me away with its responsiveness, and even though you can’t write directly to the display, I had no issues annotating documents and drawing diagrams. In some ways this solution is better, as your palm doesn’t block the display while you annotate with the stylus.

The ability to write physical notes while they are simultaneously digitized using the touch pad is neat, although I didn’t find myself using this feature often. That’s partly because you have to switch stylus pen tips to avoid inking the touch pad itself; something that could be resolved through the inclusion of two stylus pens. I did appreciate that both the stylus and a magnetic notepad are included in the box, which normally would be expensive optional extras.

Performance is an issue with the Yoga Book, and although the Intel Atom x5-Z8550 should suffice for the Android version, I’d like to see a more powerful chip in the Windows equivalent. The relative slowness of the Atom SoC limits the Yoga Book to lightweight Universal applications for the most part, as it’s simply not powerful enough to run Photoshop or even desktop Chrome with many tabs open. If Lenovo can cram Core M into this design, a second-gen model would be more compelling for productivity on the go.

The upside to packing an Atom SoC is excellent battery life. You should expect to get at least 10 hours of continuous usage from the Yoga Book’s battery, which is enough for a solid day’s worth of use, and in my time with the device I pushed closer to 12 and 13 hours. Using Microsoft Edge over Chrome is also a good idea, not just for performance, but also battery life.

At $549 (or $499 for the Android version), the Yoga Book is appropriately priced, although there’s not a lot of competition in the 10-inch Windows hybrid market. Lenovo resisted the urge to price this innovative product well above its hardware bracket, instead falling in line with the launch price of last year’s Microsoft Surface 3 and Google Pixel C. I’d still wait for the second generation of the Yoga Book, but right now it does present value to consumers after a tablet-laptop hybrid with stylus support.

Review By: TechSpot