Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro review
For the most part, the Yoga 2 Pro feels like any other laptop. The Yoga 13 was actually one of the more restrained, inside-the-box visions for what a Windows 8 device might look like, how it might marry touch with mouse and keyboard. This year’s model is just a hair over 3 pounds, and 0.61 inches thick — imperceptibly both thinner and heavier than the same-size MacBook Air — with a soft, matte gray shell and a textured black palm rest. It's softly tapered on the sides, with rounded edges that feel comfortable against my wrist. The Yoga isn't particularly exciting, nor does it feel very high-end, but it’s nice to look at and it’s plenty rugged.
This would be just a normal, thin ultrabook, except when you open the screen nothing stops you from continuing to push. You can open the lid to any angle, including by flipping it all the way around to the underside of the base, so when you hold it the keyboard and screen both face outward. It feels weird the first time, as if you’re about to snap the thing in two, but that hinge is really the story of the Yoga.
Thin, light, comfortable — unexciting but unimpeachable
There are four "modes" in which the Yoga 2 Pro is meant to be used. First and most self-explanatory is "Laptop Mode," which is how I used the Yoga probably 80 percent of the time and is fundamentally what this device is. It’s a laptop, and a pretty good one at that. The base model has a 1.7GHz Core i3, but it can go as high as a 1.8GHz Core i7; it also has 4GB or 8GB of RAM, and between 128GB and 512GB of solid-state storage. My review unit has a 1.6GHz Core i5, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage — I’d rather have more RAM and less processing power, personally, but that mix worked pretty well for me.
It’s an utterly standard set of laptop specs, and the Yoga 2 Pro performs in kind. It’s fast and responsive, Windows 8.1 apps open and swith without so much as a hiccup, but the machine bends under the pressure of anything more strenuous than watching video. Photoshop runs, but not especially well, and anything resembling a high-end game is basically unplayable.
It lasted 6 hours, 18 minutes on the Verge Battery Test, a once-solid score that has been rendered decidedly average by the impressive efficiency of Intel’s Haswell processors. The MacBook Air lasts nearly twice as long, and even Acer’s ultra-thin Aspire S7 lasts longer — the Yoga could at least get me through the evening when I left my charger at work, but I want more from high-end Haswell machines.
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