Lenovo Yoga Book
Hats off, Lenovo. In a time where most smartphone are black slabs that look like iPhones and laptops are silver ones aping MacBooks, the company has created a product like no other. The Yoga Book is a svelte, light, futuristic 2-in-1 laptop/tablet that can do an awful lot while looking like it’s from the set of Minority Report.
It is this desire to break away from a decade of design stagnation that drives the unique look of the Yoga Book. It’s like nothing we’ve seen before, but with the functionality of several devices including Apple’s iPad Pro and the Microsoft Surface Pro 4. Yet the Yoga Book is more compact and debatably even more useful than that device, though it depends on the use cases. Either way, this is an outstanding product from a company that has stagnated in recent years.
The Yoga Book is available with Windows 10, with prices starting at £549.99; however, it is the Android version we review here.
Design
While this is to our mind one of the most interesting tablet designs ever, it’s still a device that is an acquired taste. Once you’ve taken in its space age looks and the light-on light-off keyboard, you’ll probably think, “what is it for?” Lenovo has decided to leave it open. It’s not for work or play; it can do both.
Because the device has a hinge and open like a laptop to display a keyboard in landscape mode, we used it more often this way round than folding it back completely to use as a normal tablet. Our Android review unit was Gunmetal Grey, though a Champagne Gold version will also be available. If you prefer a Windows 10 setup, you’ll have to get one in Carbon Black.
The metal Yoga Book folds open at a hinge that wouldn’t look out of place on the arm of the Terminator to reveal a generous 10.1in screen. The bottom panel springs to life with what Lenovo calls a Halo keyboard, a touch-sensitive panel with a QWERTY keyboard lit up underneath. You have to see it to fully appreciate that there are few products on the market to invoke this level of initial disbelief, such is its sci-fi vibe. It’s a bold design choice and one that we have to congratulate Lenovo on before investigating whether it’s actually practical to use. One expects not, but that isn’t always the case with this beguiling machine.
The dimensions when closed are 256x170.8x9.6mm and it weighs just 690g. The Lenovo logo is subtle, and suggests the device be held like a book (as does the name Yoga Book, of course). Yet when you open it, the Lenovo naturally becomes a laptop.
For comparison, a 9.7in Apple iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard attached weighs 662g, so in essence, you won’t notice a difference between the two setups. The design of the Yoga Book stands out also in comparison to a device like the iPad Pro because it is a unibody design, with no need for the extra expense of a fiddly keyboard accessory. Having said that, the keyboard here does take some getting used to.
The design is surprisingly featureless when closed, though this is how Lenovo achieved such a remarkably thin design. There’s a Micro-USB port for charging and data transfer, a mini HDMI port to hook up to displays, as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack. Aside from that, our version had a SIM slot for a 4G data SIM, a speaker grill on each top and bottom edge (when held vertically with the hinge on the left). That same top edge also has the power/lock button and a volume rocker. The two cameras are safely hidden when the device is closed
– you open the unit completely into tablet mode to use the then rear-facing lens.
What we like so much about the Yoga Book is that it not only includes a full keyboard in a 2-in-1 design but that this keyboard area doubles as a pressure sensitive canvas for use with the included ‘Real Pen’. At the touch of a button, the lit keys dim to give a black slate that you draw or write onto digitally (see left), but there’s also a physical paper pad that has a clever trick up its sleeve. With the biro refill for the Pen, you can draw directly onto the included Book Pad thanks to a conductive magnetic back, and the Yoga Book digitally recreates and stores your work onto the device.
This will be preferable for some people, because although the iPad Pro lets you draw directly onto the screen, some will miss the tactility of using an actual pen. The Yoga Book lets you write or draw as normal but effectively creates an automatic digital library of all your work with the Note Saver app. Just be aware that you can only use the included Real Pen with the ink refills to do this, so you won’t be getting out the charcoals unfortunately.
We’ll come on to how it works in practice, but the first time you use the pen it’s hard not to get excited. It will bring out the purest love of tech in you, such is its uniqueness compared to anything else on the market. It’s easiest to achieve what you want from the note taking app when using the biro and paper, as if you use the digital pen you are not drawing directly onto the screen (like you would on iPad Pro) and the image is replicated on the screen opposite. The stylus, however, has a sensor that relays a white circled dot onto the screen when you hover over the Create Pad, as a guide to where the nib will land.
The digitiser inside is supplied by Wacom, the company famous for its stylus and tablet technology.
We won’t use the tired Marmite cliché here; whether or not you want to buy the Yoga Book is dependent on your potential use for it. With such a focus on the pen, if you write or sketch and want a device that will digitally store it all automatically for you, bingo. Yet even more than the iPad Pro, it’s a device that we fell for simply because you just want to get your hands on it and play.
The display is a 10.1in full HD IPS with a resolution of 1920x1200. It is a capacitive touchscreen, but this is only for finger input when in tablet mode or tapping icons in tandem with keyboard use. The screen displays the standard Android tablet setup, with the taskbar housing the three icons (menu, back and open apps), as well as the currently open apps on the bar. The Windows 10 version will obviously differ, but we have not yet tested it.
The screen is as responsive as you’d expect from a high-end tablet in 2016, and it’s a good things, as you’ll find yourself using it a lot. Although the keyboard houses a trackpad when turned on, it’s a frustrating experience on the Android platform. We would imagine it’d be very useful on a full operating system such as Windows, but on Android it’s just easier, quicker and more reliable to tap on screen. This doesn’t detract from the day-to-day use of the machine, thankfully.
Screen brightness needed to be high, particularly when viewing darker colours, but editing documents in Google Docs is no problem. The display is also excellent in tablet mode, with good viewing angles and barely a trace of pixellation.
Performance
With 64GB of on-board storage and 4GB RAM, the Android Yoga Book can take a surprising beating when it comes to multitasking. The processor is an Intel Atom z5-Z8550, which is quad-core and can run up to 2.4GHz. We think Lenovo opted to include this lower powered processor rather than the increasingly popular Core M series to keep the price down.
While we feel the Atom is sufficient processing power for an Android tablet, we suspect that the Windows 10 version will struggle – it uses the same one. Android on tablet is in essence the smartphone OS with some minor tweaks, but an Atom processor will likely creak under the load when running full Windows 10. So be warned.
We used the Yoga Book for two weeks as a main device, installing many personal and work-focussed apps, using it to write copy, read the news, read Kindle books and play about with the Real Pen (disregarding our amateur drawing abilities) to write extensive notes.
When not trying to draw, our attentions were on the keyboard. When the keys light up on the completely flat surface (see below) you have a full-size QWERTY with function buttons and more besides. There is, undoubtedly, a learning curve here. It doesn’t feel like typing on glass, such is the matt finish of the surface and the zero feedback from the material.
You can have vibrating haptic feedback at two levels of intensity should you wish to emulate keystrokes, but we found it easier to get to grips with when it was switched off. You’ll make mistakes, and the Android autocorrect and predictive mode are fiddly, but it is a much more pleasant experience to type on than we had expected. It is no substitute for a laptop and keyboard, but the Yoga Book isn’t trying to replace one.
With a press of a virtual button, the lights of the keyboard disappear
and the black Create Pad remains. This is the surface onto which you can draw directly with the digital Real Pen. There is no haptic feedback for this, but Lenovo claims the pen can detect 2048 levels of pressure. That’s more than enough for anyone but the most needy of digital illustrators. The stylus itself needs no batteries, and the digital pen nib can be removed to insert a biro for using with the Book Pad.
The way the Yoga Book transitions physical notes straight into a digital file is great, and you can either watch them appear on the opposite screen as you write, with the device open like a book, or fold it the whole way round. If the latter, then it still records the notes, you have to press a button when you reach the end of a page to let the device know. It all works seamlessly once you know the score.
There’s also a big battery on board. At 8500mAh, Lenovo claims 15 hours of standard usage with Wi-Fi, which we can confirm as accurate, though we feel its estimate of ‘over 70 days’ standby time is an huge over estimate. The Yoga Book easily lasted us two- to three days when using it, though bear in mind it wasn’t our sole device during that time. Unfortunately, we found that the device took forever to recharge even when connected to mains power, so it’s essential to charge overnight from our experience otherwise you’ll be sitting by a plug all day and the included cable is frustratingly short. For a device that you can use as a laptop, we expected the cable to be much longer.
Our usual benchmark testing for the Lenovo was tricky as it is hard to compare it to other products. We went with the iPad Pro 9.7in and the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 because of their hybrid nature and the ability to use a stylus, like with the Yoga Book. But – and it is a big but – the specs aren’t directly comparable. Lenovo has massively undercut the price of both of those products and, by running Android (on this version at least), using a lower-spec processor and, above all, not trying to ape those products either.
Whether you are a casual illustrator or hardcore note taker with the need for an ultraportable device that won’t break the bank, then this hits the sweet spot.
Software
The presence of Android Marshmallow 6.0 is a welcome one. We love that you can ping your way around in and out of apps with relatively little confusion, even on first use. The inclusion of a keyboard in the design opens up the touchscreen to be used for tasks. The Android version ships with Google Docs, Sheets and Slides preinstalled, and it’s easy to hook up to other Google services from the Play Store.
Its limitations are shown in the primitive multi window feature. You can minimise some apps, but only to one uniform size, so while you can have three apps on the screen at once they are very small. Some apps don’t support the feature either, but we didn’t mind hopping between apps in full-screen mode.
Lenovo’s own software Note Saver, for use with the Real Pen and Book Pad, is primitive but allows you to easily view, edit and organise your digital note collection via a choice of pen effects and colours. We can see real potential for this to be a great way for writers to archive their notes. Paper refills are expensive but you can supply your own. You must use the bundled pen, though.
Verdict
We love the Yoga Book. It isn’t pretending it can replace your laptop, so don’t expect it to. You won’t get all your work done on it, but we are surprised by how much we did managed to do. It’s an excellent addition into the consumer tech world.