Lenovo Yoga 900 review: What this laptop gives up in size, it gains in power - washingtondrathey

At a Peek

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Greatly improved carrying out over the Yoga 3 Pro
• Longer run fourth dimension than the Yoga 3 Pro
• High pixel density touchscreen display

Cons

• Thicker and heavier than parting year's model
• Slenderly underperforms congeneric to other ultrabooks with the Lapplander specs

Our Finding of fact

The Yoga 900 is a fully reversible laptop computer with a great 13.3-inch, 3200×1800 reveal and a bounteous watchband hinge. Performance is greatly improved over the preceding Yoga 3 Pro, as is battery life, only this newer model is a little thicker and heavier.

Unlike its predecessor, the Yoga 900's isn't trying to be the slimmest reversible laptop around. It's 18 pct thicker than the Yoga 3 Professional to accommodate a more powerful Intel Core i5 or i7 mainframe—the Pro used a Core M come off—and the larger battery and additive cooling information technology requires. That means considerably better performance and a yearner runtime. Those are improvements that nary peerless volition complain about, unless they prefer a skinny machine.

Lenovo

The Yoga 900 starts at $1,150 and is available from Unexceeded Buy and Lenovo.

Thin to come through

That same, Lenovo claims that the Yoga 900 is the thinnest Core laptop happening the securities industry. That may well be, but at 0.59 inches stocky and 2.8 pounds, information technology's still large than the older 0.5-inch, 2.6-thump Yoga 3 Pro. However, with its slenderly minimized depth (8.86 inches versus 9 inches) and width (12.75 inches versus 13 inches), the Yoga 900 has crossed over into looking passably generic due to its squatter profile.

Lenovo

While an 18-percent increase sounds like a lot, the excess thickness ISN't all that a great deal.

But though I prefer the tone of the Yoga 3 Pro, the Yoga 900 is an bewitching laptop, peculiarly since it also boasts the Yoga line's take to watchband hinge. Information technology's regrettable that motif isn't applied subtly to the sleep of the laptop, but if you want to turn heads, you can always opt for the Clementine Orange color.

Lenovo

The directly famous watchband hinge on the Clementine Orange model Yoga 900.

Details, details…

The Yoga 900 is a fully reversible laptop with a 13.3-edge, 3200×1800 IPS touchscreen display. Its picture is great under almost circumstances, especially playing movies in low-light conditions, and has a becoming amount of brightness. On the minus side, the screen reflects quite a bit of light, and it has a instead healthy amount of money of bezel. Information technology's gruelling not to deprivation something sleeker after the example set by Dell's XPS 13.

The port selection on the Yoga 900 is minimal just adequate for everyday use. You get two USB 3.0 Group A ports, a USB 2.0 charging port, an SD/MMC card reader, jazz band analog audio jackstones, and a USB Type C larboard. That Type C gives you standard USB 3.0 (5Gbps) speeds. IT doesn't support Thunderclap 3, nor charging. You don't get a dedicated video-tabu port, but the Type-C port provides DisplayPort concluded USB if you manipulation an optional dongle.

Lenovo

The Yoga 900 in tablet mode.

The Yoga 900 is available with an Intel Core i7-6500U CPU, a 256GB or 512GB SSD, and improving to 16GB of DDR3-1600 store. All versions go with 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. Our $1,400 model had its specs maxed out, while the minimal Gist i7 constellation runs $1,150.

Performance

With a faster CPU, it was no surprise that our Yoga 900 zipped by its predecessor in our PCMark benchmarks, scoring 2,531 versus the Yoga 3 Pro's 1,723 in the Home plate Conventional test, which runs the system through canonic tasks like word processing, web browsing, and Inner Light photo redaction. It also scored 2,778 versus the Yoga 3 Favoring's 1,988 in the Work Conventional test, which is similar to the Home Conventional test but with a stronger cente work-orientating tasks the likes of spreadsheet editing. This advance in performance will show more clearly the more you throw at the Yoga 900.

While the Yoga 900 smokes the Yoga 3 Pro, it does slenderly underperform competition with the exact same processor. That said, the difference is so small you North Korean won't really notice it.

The Yoga 900's SSD keeps things flaring along quickly. Our AS SSD bench mark clocked the Samsung SM871 M.2 SATA SSD at a high of 473MBps for serial record pelt along and a high of 437MBps for sequential write speed. That's decently quick, if not as fast A an M.2 PCIe SSD would feature been in the very scenario.

Battery life is decent, even if it's not the nine hours Lenovo touts. The Yoga 900 lasted 6 hours and 37 minutes during our picture rundown test, in which we pass around a 4K immoderate-HD video on loop using the native Windows 10 media player. Thanks to the Yoga 900's big 66WHr electric battery, that's all but 50 percentage longer than the Yoga 3 Favoring, with its 44.8WHr power cell.

As for watching movies with the sound going through with the laptop speakers—you get a amazingly decent experience that way. No single will mix their following album using the Yoga 900's speakers, but the clarity is better than average, and in that respect's even a modicum of bass. They'll do if you're too lazy to back off your headphones.

Lenovo

The Yoga 900 in reverse-stand mode.

Input ergonomics

I've broadly speaking praised Lenovo for its keyboards, and the Yoga 900's is about As good as it gets. It even offers consecrate functions keys—the Yoga 3 Pro as an alternative had combined them with the top-row numeric keys. I do have a personal write out with the lack of forward rake to the unit of measurement and the keyboard bedight, because I chance scads of accidents with the blank bar. That's easy fixed with a few mortal-adhesive rubber feet for the rear of the Yoga to add the incline that I take, though.

Lenovo

The Yoga 900 in normal laptop orientation.

The touchpad feels very comfortable to use: It doesn't deman much effort to click, and it's very smooth when slow your fingers across it. Information technology also isn't overly sensitive to tapping. As for the touchscreen, I can't speak highly decent of it. I wish they made touchpads that were as smoothly responsive.

Software and warranty

On that point was a fair amount of money of "value-added" software package spurting in the Windows 10 Dwelling house system tray, a great deal of it courtesy of Intel. Removing IT (wind: remove and so Ra-establis the Intel drivers using Twist Handler) arsenic well as McAfee made for a somewhat smoother experience.

The base warrantee on the Lenovo Yoga 3 900 is a one-class carry-in. You can increase that all the way to trey years with inadvertent wrong protection for $219, Beaver State pick an option in the midway.

Ratiocination

If the Yoga 3 Pro was like a stick-thin runway sit, the Yoga 900 is like a muscle-toned fitness model. The Yoga 900 has more Thomas More of an butt ended the Yoga 3 Pro when information technology comes to specs and performance, rather than in purely chic looks. It'd be Nice to have seen features on that like 10Gbps USB and a PCIe SSD, but all things advised, it's still a chart-topping reversible. And everybody will dig the flexible joint.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/420241/lenovo-yoga-900-review-what-this-laptop-gives-up-in-size-it-gains-in-power.html

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