Categories: LaptopsNews

Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 11 Complete Review

The yoga gets its name from its ability to bend according to your seating position. It can morph into standard laptop mode, tablet mode, tent mode and stand mode. This is possible thanks to a cleverly designed hinge system that allows you twist the screen all the way back to 360 degrees. The chassis is made up of a scratch-resistant plastic shell that looks and feels extremely tough and durable-even the keys did not seem to do much damage. The Yoga is quite slim and light too, at around 1.27 Kg. so its actually quite comfortable to use in tablet mode. Single handed operation is still not possible for prolonged periods of time, unless you have forearms like Popeye.

The power button is placed on the front instead of the inside, so it can be powered on in any mode. Ports include a full sized HDMI port, two USB 2.0 ports, a headphone jack and an SD card slot. There’s no LAN jack or micro SD card slot. Physical buttons include a volume rocker and an orientation look switch. There are speaker grilles placed on either side of the notebook for stereo sound. The palm rest area inside has rubberized, anti scratch coating as well, and the matte test of time. The screen does not have too much flex to it and the LCD does not distort either, which is good. The lower half, however, is quite flimsy and slight pressure near the trackpad area causes quite a bit of flex.

The true beauty of the Yoga is when you bend the screen beyond its typical inclined position. The double hinge mechanism automatically disables the keyboard and trackpad once you fold the lid beyond 180 degrees. This second hinge then kicks in, allowing you to fold the laptop all the way around the back so that it becomes a tablet. Lenovo has pulled this off in spades and the hinges feel really strong and durable and don’t wobble at all. Lenovo claims up to 13 hours of battery life and we did manage to achieve close to 11 hours.

All said and done, the Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 11 is nothing more than a tablet with a keyboard and should not be mistaken for a real notebook. Windows RT is the main culprit here as it’s very limiting in terms of app support. The good thing is that you get a familiar working environment with Windows, but you can’t really do much with it since none of your standard EXE files will work and there is not any modern app equivalent for most of them either. What you are left with is a notebook that’s good for a bit of gaming. HD video playback, working on Office documents and internet surfing all of which can be done on an Android or IOS tablet, which are a lot cheaper. The yoga 11 would make an excellent buy at about Rs.30,000 ($440)or less, but nothing more than that would be justifiable.