Lenovo Yoga Book
When Lenovo first announced its fancy new 2-in-1 Yoga Book at IFA in September 2016, We got a little caught up in the mad rush of excitement. “Hybrid of the future” claims were bandied about the office, and we was in full agreement. After all, this is a device that looks truly different to everything else. Now that it’s here in my hands, We';re pleased to say Lenovo has created a unique hybrid worthy of the hype.
For starters, there’s no physical keyboard. Instead, there’s a virtual one with illuminated, futuristic-looking keys that appear as though they’ve been pulled straight from an episode of Black Mirror. They vibrate when you tap them, giving a reassuring sense of haptic feedback as you type.
This isn’t a mere aesthetic touch, as the Yoga Book’s real party trick is its ability to turn that virtual keyboard into an electromagnetic resonance (EMR) writing surface, allowing you to draw or scribble down notes with its bundled stylus. Simply press the small stylus button in the top-right corner and the illuminated keys disappear, leaving plenty of room to play.
It’s incredibly versatile, and the lack of physical keys helped Lenovo to pare back the Yoga Book’s aluminium-magnesium-alloy chassis to a mere 9.6mm when closed, making it the world’s thinnest hybrid (or so Lenovo claims). At only 690g, the Yoga Book won’t weigh down your bag during travel either.
With its virtual HALO keyboard and ingenious writing surface, Lenovo’s Yoga Book paves the way for the next generation of ultraportables.
The Yoga Book is the most delightfully-built laptop/tablet we’ve ever used. Weighing just 690g and just 9.6mm thick, this 10.1-inch machine is about as close to a paper notebook as you can get.
The grey metal chassis with its hard edges, rounded corners and stylish “watchband” hinge make the Yoga Book feel far more expensive that it actually is, and isn’t something we ever thought twice about carrying around in my bag.
The keyboard and drawing area has a slightly glossy layer to it so the stylus rolls around it nicely, but it’s not so slippery that it’s physically hard to type on.
You get a single Micro USB port for charging, a 3.5mm headset jack and a microSD card slot that’ll take cards with a capacity of up to 128GB. That’s in addition to the 64GB of built-in storage.
The light-up keyboard induces ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ from whoever’s nearby – it looks like it’s from the future – but as you’ll see from the next section, the magic is short-lived when you actually try and type on it.
The typing experience on the Yoga Book isn't the best, but the writing is like a well-oiled machine. When you aren't awkwardly plunking out an email on the keyboard, it can be transformed into a handy-dandy notepad, capable of capturing all your notes, doodles and scribbles.
Layered underneath the hard, unforgiving keyboard is a proprietary feature Lenovo calls the Create Pad. It's basically a Wacom digitizer, which converts your analog creations into a digital format. The integrated digitizer supports up to 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity with a 100-degree angle detection. Activating Create Pad is as simple as pressing the pen icon located next to the camera on the keyboard deck.
But all this fancy tech is nothing without a means of input. For that, Lenovo includes its Real Pen, which can transform from stylus to actual ballpoint pen in those instances you want a hard copy of your work. To change from stylus to pen (and vice versa), you simply use the hole in the top of the pen cap to dislodge the stylus tip and slide one of the three mini-ballpoint tips into the vacant spot. In other words, don't lose the pen cap.
When the time comes to put actual pen to paper, Lenovo has you covered with the Book Pad. Essentially, a swanky notepad attached to a magnetized holder, the pad lines up perfectly with embedded digitizer. If you find yourself out of paper, you can replace it with any A5-size (5 x 8 x 8.3 inch) pad.
Lenovo Yoga Book Performance
Its 4GB of LPDDR3 RAM means this computer can handle running a few applications at once, but will bog down if asked to handle more. The 10.1-inch screen isn’t particularly conducive to having more than two apps open at the same time anyway.The Yoga Book looks like a high-end device, but it doesn’t have a high-end processor… which isn’t unreasonable because it also doesn’t have a high-end price. Still, potential buyers should be aware that its quad-core Intel Atom X5-Z8550 processor (1.44 GHz, 2.40 GHz burst, 2M cache) is best suited for light office work, including note taking, as well as general personal use.
In case you feel like snapping a photo or video, the Yoga Book has you doubly covered with its 2-megapixel and 8-MP cameras located on the front and rear of the device. Both cameras offer HDR mode, so your images will deliver rich color and sharp contrast in tricky lighting.
The rear camera did a fairly good job on detail, as we could see the overhead lights glistening off my colleague's hair. However, his red-and-gray-striped shirt took on a more pinkish hue, with the camera blending the two colors.
The front camera did a better job on the color, accurately depicting my bright-orange sweater as well as the ribbing in the turtleneck portion of the shirt. It even managed to capture my dark purple locks.
Of course, a natural downside of having such a thin device is its sheer lack of ports. Still, the Yoga Book tries its best, as you get a micro-USB port, a micro-HDMI output for connecting it to an external display, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. As far as network connectivity goes, there's built-in 802.11ac wireless, along with Bluetooth 4 to hook up some external peripherals.
For such a slim chassis, the Yoga Book gets surprisingly loud. Not only that, the audio is surprisingly clear, as I discovered listening to Chris Stapleton's "Tennessee Whiskey." The singer's smoky vocals meshed with the gentle strumming from the acoustic and bass guitars. The Dolby Audio software definitely made for a better listening experience. Out of the six settings (Dynamic, Movie, Music, Game, Voice and Personalize), Dynamic delivered the best audio overall.
Lenovo promises that this computer will run for up to 13 hours on a single charge. To test this claim we used the Yoga Book under what we consider a fairly realistic usage pattern: almost continuous web browsing and video streaming over Wi-Fi with the screen set to about 80% brightness. The device lasted 8 hours and 36 minutes, which is more than enough to get through a standard work day.
The 2-in-1 gets its power through its micro-USB port, so it can have its battery topped off with an average mobile phone charger.
The Yoga Book is the futuristic convertible that we want somewhere down the line. Lenovo definitely gets points for taking a risk and creating such a bold product. The Yoga Book's superthin, superlight chassis is the thing dreams are made of, while the Halo keyboard is straight out of a science fiction novel. The Create Pad gives you a realistic pen feel.
But over-simple software and sluggish hardware leaves me waiting for a new-and-improved second edition.
The Most Beautiful Pieces of Technology
For starters, there’s no physical keyboard. Instead, there’s a virtual one with illuminated, futuristic-looking keys that appear as though they’ve been pulled straight from an episode of Black Mirror. They vibrate when you tap them, giving a reassuring sense of haptic feedback as you type.
This isn’t a mere aesthetic touch, as the Yoga Book’s real party trick is its ability to turn that virtual keyboard into an electromagnetic resonance (EMR) writing surface, allowing you to draw or scribble down notes with its bundled stylus. Simply press the small stylus button in the top-right corner and the illuminated keys disappear, leaving plenty of room to play.
It’s incredibly versatile, and the lack of physical keys helped Lenovo to pare back the Yoga Book’s aluminium-magnesium-alloy chassis to a mere 9.6mm when closed, making it the world’s thinnest hybrid (or so Lenovo claims). At only 690g, the Yoga Book won’t weigh down your bag during travel either.
With its virtual HALO keyboard and ingenious writing surface, Lenovo’s Yoga Book paves the way for the next generation of ultraportables.
Lenovo Yoga Book Design
The grey metal chassis with its hard edges, rounded corners and stylish “watchband” hinge make the Yoga Book feel far more expensive that it actually is, and isn’t something we ever thought twice about carrying around in my bag.
The keyboard and drawing area has a slightly glossy layer to it so the stylus rolls around it nicely, but it’s not so slippery that it’s physically hard to type on.
You get a single Micro USB port for charging, a 3.5mm headset jack and a microSD card slot that’ll take cards with a capacity of up to 128GB. That’s in addition to the 64GB of built-in storage.
The light-up keyboard induces ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ from whoever’s nearby – it looks like it’s from the future – but as you’ll see from the next section, the magic is short-lived when you actually try and type on it.
Lenovo Yoga Book Display
Despite the fancy keyboard and effective stylus, Lenovo hasn’t done quite so well with its display. It has a 10.1in, 1,920 x 1,200 panel at its disposal, but despite a surprisingly high maximum brightness of 422cd/m2, its overall colour accuracy was a little lacking, covering just 81.2% of the sRGB colour gamut. This makes it a poor fit for serious graphic work, but considering its price of just £450, it seems churlish to be too harsh on it.
Lenovo Yoga Book Halo Keyboard and Mouse
There’s a reason why keyboards are still so thick and tactile. We need that feel to them so we know where and what we’re typing. Or, like with on screen keyboards, we need instant visual feedback on the button that’s just been pressed. The Yoga Book can offer neither, and that’s a problem.
Despite haptic feedback that vibrates the entire keyboard when you hit a key, the lack of any proper physical feedback does make for a fairly typo-heavy experience. In truth, this isn’t a massive problem when taking notes because you’re not writing an essay that anyone but you will be reading. But with one misplaced finger leaning on a key you can end up going down a spiral of typos that’s very hard to escape from.
The pre-installed keyboard (called TouchPal), which handles both the on-screen keyboard and the LED ‘board, isn’t brilliant at making predictions. You can pre-select predictions by pressing the corresponding number on screen, but this works terribly when typing usernames and passwords that contain the numbers one to three. It’s almost impossible to do it without having to go back and delete unwanted characters.
Fortunately, you can install third-party keyboard software. we switched to SwiftKey, which knows my typing habits better than we do, and felt more comfortable. It’s nowhere near as effective as it is on phone touchscreens because a large part of its prediction technique comes from the exact spot where you place your thumbs on a touchscreen, not just the key you hit.
With the Yoga Book, all it had to go on was each individual letter, not where on each key we physically placed my fingers. Still, after around 20 minutes of practice we was writing this review and only making typos every few words. For rapid note taking we think it’s just about passable, but there is room for improvement. we reckon a fairly major software update would be able to fix many of my problems, but that’ll only happen if Lenovo agrees with my issues.
It’s more comfortable than typing with two hands directly onto the screen, but it’s a poorer experience than having a physical keyboard. Lenovo says the keyboard learns as you type, which it may well do, but it won’t stop you from occasionally going down a typo rabbit hole that’s hard to escape.
The touchpad is a much bigger problem. Lenovo’s tutorial suggested we'd be able to scroll up and down using a two-fingered gesture, but we can say with 100% certainty that it does not work properly and might as well not be a feature. The pad is sometimes fine for tapping around but we found it too inconsistent and frustrating, so we avoided using it at all costs. It was always easier just to reach out and use the touch screen. The touchpad portion, for me, is simply wasted space. This can probably be fixed with a software update, but right now it’s unusable.
There’s a reason why keyboards are still so thick and tactile. We need that feel to them so we know where and what we’re typing. Or, like with on screen keyboards, we need instant visual feedback on the button that’s just been pressed. The Yoga Book can offer neither, and that’s a problem.
The pre-installed keyboard (called TouchPal), which handles both the on-screen keyboard and the LED ‘board, isn’t brilliant at making predictions. You can pre-select predictions by pressing the corresponding number on screen, but this works terribly when typing usernames and passwords that contain the numbers one to three. It’s almost impossible to do it without having to go back and delete unwanted characters.
Fortunately, you can install third-party keyboard software. we switched to SwiftKey, which knows my typing habits better than we do, and felt more comfortable. It’s nowhere near as effective as it is on phone touchscreens because a large part of its prediction technique comes from the exact spot where you place your thumbs on a touchscreen, not just the key you hit.
With the Yoga Book, all it had to go on was each individual letter, not where on each key we physically placed my fingers. Still, after around 20 minutes of practice we was writing this review and only making typos every few words. For rapid note taking we think it’s just about passable, but there is room for improvement. we reckon a fairly major software update would be able to fix many of my problems, but that’ll only happen if Lenovo agrees with my issues.
It’s more comfortable than typing with two hands directly onto the screen, but it’s a poorer experience than having a physical keyboard. Lenovo says the keyboard learns as you type, which it may well do, but it won’t stop you from occasionally going down a typo rabbit hole that’s hard to escape.
The touchpad is a much bigger problem. Lenovo’s tutorial suggested we'd be able to scroll up and down using a two-fingered gesture, but we can say with 100% certainty that it does not work properly and might as well not be a feature. The pad is sometimes fine for tapping around but we found it too inconsistent and frustrating, so we avoided using it at all costs. It was always easier just to reach out and use the touch screen. The touchpad portion, for me, is simply wasted space. This can probably be fixed with a software update, but right now it’s unusable.
Lenovo Yoga Book Pen
The typing experience on the Yoga Book isn't the best, but the writing is like a well-oiled machine. When you aren't awkwardly plunking out an email on the keyboard, it can be transformed into a handy-dandy notepad, capable of capturing all your notes, doodles and scribbles.
Layered underneath the hard, unforgiving keyboard is a proprietary feature Lenovo calls the Create Pad. It's basically a Wacom digitizer, which converts your analog creations into a digital format. The integrated digitizer supports up to 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity with a 100-degree angle detection. Activating Create Pad is as simple as pressing the pen icon located next to the camera on the keyboard deck.
But all this fancy tech is nothing without a means of input. For that, Lenovo includes its Real Pen, which can transform from stylus to actual ballpoint pen in those instances you want a hard copy of your work. To change from stylus to pen (and vice versa), you simply use the hole in the top of the pen cap to dislodge the stylus tip and slide one of the three mini-ballpoint tips into the vacant spot. In other words, don't lose the pen cap.
When the time comes to put actual pen to paper, Lenovo has you covered with the Book Pad. Essentially, a swanky notepad attached to a magnetized holder, the pad lines up perfectly with embedded digitizer. If you find yourself out of paper, you can replace it with any A5-size (5 x 8 x 8.3 inch) pad.
Lenovo Yoga Book Performance
Its 4GB of LPDDR3 RAM means this computer can handle running a few applications at once, but will bog down if asked to handle more. The 10.1-inch screen isn’t particularly conducive to having more than two apps open at the same time anyway.The Yoga Book looks like a high-end device, but it doesn’t have a high-end processor… which isn’t unreasonable because it also doesn’t have a high-end price. Still, potential buyers should be aware that its quad-core Intel Atom X5-Z8550 processor (1.44 GHz, 2.40 GHz burst, 2M cache) is best suited for light office work, including note taking, as well as general personal use.
Lenovo Yoga Book Camera
In case you feel like snapping a photo or video, the Yoga Book has you doubly covered with its 2-megapixel and 8-MP cameras located on the front and rear of the device. Both cameras offer HDR mode, so your images will deliver rich color and sharp contrast in tricky lighting.
The rear camera did a fairly good job on detail, as we could see the overhead lights glistening off my colleague's hair. However, his red-and-gray-striped shirt took on a more pinkish hue, with the camera blending the two colors.
Lenovo Yoga Book Ports
Of course, a natural downside of having such a thin device is its sheer lack of ports. Still, the Yoga Book tries its best, as you get a micro-USB port, a micro-HDMI output for connecting it to an external display, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. As far as network connectivity goes, there's built-in 802.11ac wireless, along with Bluetooth 4 to hook up some external peripherals.
Lenovo Yoga Book Speakers
For such a slim chassis, the Yoga Book gets surprisingly loud. Not only that, the audio is surprisingly clear, as I discovered listening to Chris Stapleton's "Tennessee Whiskey." The singer's smoky vocals meshed with the gentle strumming from the acoustic and bass guitars. The Dolby Audio software definitely made for a better listening experience. Out of the six settings (Dynamic, Movie, Music, Game, Voice and Personalize), Dynamic delivered the best audio overall.
Lenovo Yoga Book Battery
Lenovo promises that this computer will run for up to 13 hours on a single charge. To test this claim we used the Yoga Book under what we consider a fairly realistic usage pattern: almost continuous web browsing and video streaming over Wi-Fi with the screen set to about 80% brightness. The device lasted 8 hours and 36 minutes, which is more than enough to get through a standard work day.
The 2-in-1 gets its power through its micro-USB port, so it can have its battery topped off with an average mobile phone charger.
Conclusion
The Yoga Book is the futuristic convertible that we want somewhere down the line. Lenovo definitely gets points for taking a risk and creating such a bold product. The Yoga Book's superthin, superlight chassis is the thing dreams are made of, while the Halo keyboard is straight out of a science fiction novel. The Create Pad gives you a realistic pen feel.
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