A full-time laptop meets a part-time tablet
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NThe
good: The Lenovo
IdeaPad Yoga 13 looks as good as any 13-inch ultrabook, with the added
attraction of a 360-degree screen and a laptop body that can fold into a tent,
stand, or slate.
The
bad: Tablet mode leaves the keyboard exposed, and the Yoga 13 costs
more than standard ultrabooks with similar components.
The bottom line: The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 is a
convertible touch-screen laptop/tablet that most importantly doesn't compromise
the traditional laptop experience.
The biggest hardware
trend marking the launch of Windows 8 is theproliferation of touch-screen laptop/tablet
hybrids. Some have screens that
pull apart to become separate tablets, while others have screens that flip,
twist, or rotate to give you a tabletlike shape to hold. We call those latter
models convertible laptops, and one of the best examples to date is the new
Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13.
The name Yoga is
suggestive of the system's big selling point, that the display flips fully over
to become a tablet. In fact, it has four basic usable positions -- clamshell
laptop, tablet, stand, and tent.
The reason the Yoga
stands out from the suddenly crowded touch-screen laptop scene is that it does
something other convertible or hybrid laptops do not. When set up as a
traditional laptop, the 13.3-inch Yoga doesn't compromise the all-important
clamshell experience. The excellent double-hinge design means that it looks and
works the same as any other ultrabook laptop, unlike the complex and often
clunky mechanisms in systems such as the HP Envy x2,Sony Vaio Duo 11, or Dell XPS 12.
The Yoga works best as a
full-time laptop and part-time tablet, because when it's folded back into a
slate, you still have the keyboard pointing out from the back of the system.
Although the keyboard and touch pad are deactivated in this mode, it's still
not ideal. Plus, despite the hype, Windows 8 is still not a 100-percent
tablet-friendly OS, and there are some frustrations that span all the Windows 8 tablet-style
devices we've tested.
The Yoga certainly seems to be everyone's choice
for a great Windows 8 ambassador -- both Microsoft and Intel have touted it as
a best-in-class example, and Best Buy is currently featuring it in a television
ad. At $1,099, you're paying a bit of a premium, but not outrageously so, for
an Intel Core i5/8GB RAM/128GB solid-state drive (SSD) configuration (note that
our early review unit had only 4GB of RAM installed), but a less expensive Core
i3 version starts at $999. If I had to pick a single first-wave Windows 8
convertible touch-screen laptop, the Yoga would be at the top of my list.
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