The laptop-tablet hybrid is back in a smaller version with Windows RT
Windows RT
devices haven't exactly been flying off the shelves, and with delays
besetting the whole market as manufacturers struggle to work out the
demand, the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 is here to give RT a much-needed
boost.
The Yoga 11 is the little brother of last year's Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, one of the flagship laptop-tablet hybrids for the launch of Windows 8.
At
11 inches, it's smaller and runs the ARM-powered RT version of Windows,
which means it has more in common with an Android tablet than a
traditional laptop. While
the market has been disappointingly quiet, the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11
offers something a little different for Windows hybrid hunters. Its
screen is the same size as the Sony Vaio Duo 11, and an inch smaller than the Dell XPS 12, but those machines run full-fat x86 Intel chips and cost over £1,000/US$1,100.
Then there's the ARM-based Asus Vivo Tab and Samsung Ativ Tab, which run low-power mobile chips but take a tablet form, with a detachable transformer-style keyboard.
In fact, the closest competitor to the Lenovo Yoga 11 is either Microsoft Surface with Touch Type or the Asus VivoBook S200,
the £450 (around AU$687/US$725) Intel Core i3 based touchscreen laptop,
which we loved. However, while they are both touchscreen, the VivoBook
can't match the Lenovo's special bendy abilities.
The Yoga gets
its name because of its unusual design that enables the screen to rotate
fully backwards until it becomes an 11-inch tablet. This dual hybrid
use is part of the new drive from PC manufacturers to enable users to
carry a single device rather than a laptop and a tablet. However, while carrying the Yoga instead of two devices might save your back, don't count on it saving your wallet.
The Yoga 11 is overshadowed by a colossal price tag that will make most would-be iPad
hunters baulk. £699/US$849 (around AU$1,069) for a Windows RT device is
huge, and with the chips, cost of the operating system, RAM, cooling
and other costs reduced, we're not quite sure how it justifies this
asking price. There
are other disadvantages as well. Running Windows RT means it can't run
any app that's not from the fledgling Windows Store, and the tablet form
factor is nowhere near as svelte as the iPad - measuring 298 x 204 x
15.6 mm (11.7 x 8.0 x 0.61 inches).
So can it overcome these problems to become the perfect hybrid device, or will it simply disappoint on both fronts?
Specifications
The
Nvidia Tegra 3 processor that powers the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 is the
same as you'll find in heaps of Android tablets from 2012 and in 2013.
However, the Windows model isn't as powerful as the ones enjoyed by its
Android-based cousins, and when all four cores are used, it can run at a
maximum of 1.3GHz.
When powering an Android device, Tegra can
run at up to 1.6GHz, which means that the ferocious power we've seen on
the likes of the Asus Transformer Prime or Google Nexus 7 doesn't quite translate here. It's
backed up by 2GB of RAM, which is standard for an ARM-based tablet. The
smaller apps don't require the gargantuan amount of RAM needed in
full-fat Windows PCs, so don't get too hung up about the lack of memory.
Inside
you'll find a choice of 32GB or 64GB SSD hard drive (we tested the
64GB), which is a figure we are going to get hung up about. Most of the
Yoga's direct rivals feature a 128GB SSD at least, with the Dell XPS 12 boasting a colossal 256GB model, albeit at nearly double the price of the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11.
There's
plenty of connectivity in the shape of USB ports and an SD card slot,
so you can add storage via USB and cloud services such as Dropbox. But
we think that if you're going to plump for a single hybrid device, you
will need more space than a paltry 64GB.
Being a Tegra-based
laptop/tablet, there's no dedicated graphics like you'd find on a
beefier Windows laptop, so you'll have to make do with the mobile chip's
3D capabilities. That doesn't account for a great deal, and there's not
enough power for the latest games - not that it matters, since they
won't be compatible with Windows RT. However,
the Tegra chip does have enough power for HD movies and some of the
games in the Windows Store, which are starting to pick up.
The 11-inch IPS screen has a resolution of 1366 x 768, which is nowhere near the quality of the Sony Vaio Duo 11's 1080p affair. It's a real disappointment, and means that movies and games look bland and lifeless. In
this day and age the screen is not an area on which companies can
scrimp when you're up against hosts of top devices with IPS+ screens,
AMOLED and Retina. The Google Nexus 10
has upped its game to feature a 2560 x 1600 pixel display, which makes a
mockery of tablets with 1366 x 768, especially when they cost three
times the price.
Of course, Lenovo will argue that the
Windows-based ecosystem and laptop form factor make the Windows
RT-toting Lenovo Yoga 11 a better buy for people who want to work on the
move - and it has a point. The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 ships with Microsoft Office 2013
and has a full-form QWERTY keyboard, and an inch extra screen
real-estate to play with. However, with the lack of apps in the store
and the expansion of Google Play, we're not sure how long that argument
is valid.
We're fans of Windows 8, but if Microsoft Office ends up on Android, there's no reason to fork out £699/US$849 (around AU$1,069) for the Yoga 11.
The
build of the Yoga 11 will also divide opinion. On the one hand it's
well-built with a pleasing orange finish that looks stylish. The slim
chassis weighs a competitive 1.27kg (2.79lbs), which stacks up well
against full featured Ultrabooks that tend to weigh around 1.3kg
(2.86lbs), and transformer-style tablets, which weigh around 900g
(1.98lbs) with their keyboard docks.
The large, well-cushioned keys offer a far better experience than Microsoft Surface, and there's a large trackpad as well. However, many tablet buyers will see the Yoga 11 as a hulking slab of plastic compared to the aluminium-adorned luxury of the iPad 4 or iPad mini.
You can buy removable docks for these devices, and while there's not
the connectivity, they are making strides to become usable work
computers.
Performance
Being a Windows RT
machine, our standard PC benchmarking tools are incompatible with the
Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11, so we were forced to use the same tests we
subject our Android and iOS devices to.
While these are both
tests of browser performance primarily, SunSpider works the processor,
while the visual nature of Peacekeeper means that it's a better
indicator of graphics capabilities.
Our SunSpider test revealed a score of 1126.3ms, which is a marginally slower time than Microsoft Surface,
despite running the same processor. The reason for this is unclear,
since pound for pound they are nearly identical, so perhaps Microsoft
found some extra tweaks under the hood.
However, to put that relatively meaningless SunSpider score into some context, it's drastically faster than the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity,
which scored a comparatively high 1730ms. It should be noted that the
test was performed using IE10, which is much newer and more advanced
than the standard Android offering, and dare we say it, designed with
SunSpider performance in mind. In
real-life use the Lenovo performed adequately, yet still suffered with
some of the lethargy levelled at Microsoft Surface. We also found a
number of strange behaviours, such as being unable to close a video and
the multitasking feature disappearing, which required a reboot. It's not
the kind of experience you relish when turning your tablet on for the
first time.
In Peacekeeper, a score of 368 was par for the course for Windows RT machines, but is thoroughly outgunned by the iPad 4 (951) and even the relatively toothless iPad mini (515). If you had any illusions that a Windows PC was going to outgun the existing tablet establishment, you'd be mistaken. However,
like Surface, the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 managed a superb battery
score, which shows that Microsoft has achieved one major victory with
its new version.
While Microsoft Surface RT managed a whopping
7.5 hours of looping HD video, the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 topped it with
a staggering 9 hours and 32 minutes. It's a major win for longevity,
and shows that Windows RT has a solid basis on which to build - we just
need to see prices fall and apps increase, fast.
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