Finally - they made the portable computer I've been looking for.
The quick overview: perfect weight.. perfect functionality... good battery life ... great screen resolution ... the best laptop keyboard I've used ... and a bunch of bonus features that make it just that much better.
Compared to the Surface Pro -- Yoga's 14 inch screen gives it much needed real estate I found wanting in the Surface Pro. It also has a much, much, MUCH better keyboard. Surface Pro's full size stylus is better to work with than Yoga's twig pen... but Yoga's stylus fits into the computer so you don't have to fumble around your backpack to find it like the Surface pen. I find that drawing on the Yoga is slightly better - it seems to exhibit slightly less lag and parallex The Ygoa is slightly heavier than the Surface - but not enough to be an issue.
That's the summary- for more details, here's the story that goes with it.
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What I've been looking for over the last 10 years is a laptop that I can carry in a backpack to bike to Starbucks... and while there to be as productive as I am at home or work... I use it to program so I need several applications open at once.
First I tried a netbook (remember those). It had a 10 inch screen. Main reason it was useless - it took forever to boot up. I'd be ready to go by the time it was ready to be used. Also the screen was way too small.
So I over compensated and bought an ASUS monster with 17 inch HD screen and Core I7 processor. Fast enough and enough screen real estate to be productive. Now we're cooking. But it weighed in at over 7 pounds and it needed a special backpack to fit it - sub-optimal, but not a deal breaker. The deal breaker - battery life. If I got an hour and a half that was good. So I had to carry the power brick also. That required I get one of 2 spots at my local Starbucks that had power outlets. Logistically not workable. I'd settle in and work on battery for a while. Then one of the 2 spots near a power outlet would open up and I'd quickly have to pack up and move... and then reset up . After 3 months, I just gave up.
Next came the Surface Book 3 a couple of years ago...finally, I thought. 12 inch screen, Core I5 processor. Light... great battery life... great screen resolution - and I had hopes of being able to do some light graphics on Adobe with the pen. But it too failed as a productivity tool... 12 inch screen is just not enough screen real estate. Although I could run several programs simultaneously. I could only view one of them at a time... unless the font size was made so small that it was barely readable. And the icons on programs like CorelDraw were so tiny that it was almost impossible to click on them. But the real downside of the Surface Pro was the keyboard. It's ok for a quick email or Google search, but any more than that - forget it. I even paid a $100 again to buy the Surface Pro 4 keyboard... better, but still not workable.
Now finally - the Thinkpad X1 Yoga... and so far it's perfect.
Start with the battery - worked 2.5 hours today at Starbucks and only used about 1/3 of the juice. The screen size and resolution make having 2 programs perfectly viewable on the screen at the same time. The Core I7 makes it fast and powerful enough to have 4 or 5 programs running in the background at the same time. Light and small for the bike ride. The Yoga pen works as well as, and maybe a bit better than the Surface pen for doing graphics.
The bonus features: I tried out the Yoga for a presentation today... spectacular. ..the change over from working mode to presentation mode was so easy and quick, that I didn't know how much fumbling I used to be doing on my other laptops.
Another great thing I didn't know I wanted - the buttons on the track pad and the little red mouse nub on the keyboard. Really really useful for cutting and pasting pieces text.
The only feature the Surface Pro has that i wish he Yoga X1 would do is the way it can stand at any angle... particularly like a drawing easel. I rolled up some shelving rubber to prop up the Yoga as a hack... but that Surface Pro stand is really cleaver and nice.
That's it - love it...
P.S. I opted not to get the new OLED version - great decision. Saved $700... but more importantly this 2550 LCD screen display is spectacular with the added bonus of an anti-glare coating. I hate seeing my reflection in the screen while working. The anti-glare fixes that. Also, in my research I read somewhere that OLED can deteriorate and become less brilliant over time. Don't know if it's significant or even if it's true - it just means it's an expensive risk for a pretty new technology. Believe me, unless your comparing the 2 screens side by side, you'll never know the difference.
| Standing screen display size | 14 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 2560x1440 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 2560 x 1440 Pixels |
| Processor | 2.5 GHz core_i7_6500u |
| RAM | 8 GB DDR3 |
| Memory Speed | 1866 MHz |
| Hard Drive | 512 GB SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Intel HD Graphics 520 |
| Chipset Brand | Intel |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Wireless Type | 802.11bgn |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 3 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 11 Hours |
