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Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 14

Editor's rating (1-5): Manufacturer: Lenovo List Price: $1,099 Class: Ultrabook, 2-in-1 convertible

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What's Hot: Lovely full HD display, NVIDIA GT 840M dedicated graphics, upgradeable internals, great keyboard, sturdy.

What's Not: Those who prefer sexy, skinny 2-in-1 and Ultrabook designs will find the Yoga dull looking.

Reviewed November 2, 2014 by Lisa Gade, Editor in Chief (twitter: @lisagade)

If you liked everything about the well-regarded Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga except the 12.5" size, its new bigger brother, the ThinkPad Yoga 14 might be your next Windows convertible laptop. The ThinkPad Yoga 14 has a 14" full HD 1920 x 1080 IPS touch screen, and a design that's nearly identical to the original model. It has two durable hinges that let you rotate from laptop to tent and presentation modes and even tablet mode. At 4.2 lbs., I'm not sure how many of you will take advantage of tablet mode, but it's there just in case. Sorry artists and note takers, there's no Wacom pen or active digitizer for the ThinkPad 14; it's not even an option. In the US, the ThinkPad Yoga 14 is available from Lenovo's website and Best Buy has the in-store exclusive. It sells for $1,099.

Dedicated Graphics, Specs at a Glance

The single available configuration has something special: switchable NVIDIA GT 840M dedicated graphics. Dedicated graphics, particularly mid-level, is a rarity among Ultrabooks due to cooling and space constraints. The 14" chassis gave Lenovo breathing room to add the 840M with 2 GB dedicated memory, and that means enough punch to play 2012 and even some 2013 3D games at 720p or even 1080p resolution with low to mid settings (in our video we demo Metro: Last Light). More forgiving games like the Left 4 Dead franchise will run at even higher quality settings. Since this is a business notebook, we'll note that it shaves processing time in Adobe Photoshop and in video editing programs too. We're also thrilled that the Yoga 14 uses standard NVIDIA drivers and GeForce Experience software rather than manufacturer customized drivers that typically get few updates. Thank you, Lenovo!

The ThinkPad Yoga 14 has an Intel Haswell Core i5-4210U 1.7GHz dual core CPU with 8 gigs of RAM, a 16 gig caching SSD and a 1 TB hard drive. Even better and more unusual for an Ultrabook: all except the CPU are upgradable. We're not complaining about the lack of a 5th generation Broadwell CPU since only the very low power Core M (used in the Yoga 3 Pro) will be available this year. Dual band Intel WiFi 802.11ac with Bluetooth is standard, and the machine has 3 USB ports, full size HDMI, 3.5mm audio, a OneLink dock connector and an SD card slot.

Top Notch Keyboard and Trackpad

The 0.8" thick laptop has Lenovo's Lift N' Lock keyboard that locks the keyboard when in tent, presentation and tablet modes. Only ThinkPad Yoga models get this feature, you won't find it on the Yoga 2, Yoga 2 Pro or Yoga 3 Pro that are under the consumer IdeaPad umbrella. The keys won't wiggle and jiggle, but they'll still face down against the table or your hands, and some folks find this discomforting. The keyboard has excellent tactile feel with Lenovo's smile-shaped keys with concave tops and it's backlit. While insanely thin Ultrabooks look nice, they don't allow for the ample key travel you'll find on the Yoga 14. By default the top Fn row handles multimedia and other controls, so you'll need to press the Fn key to use functions like F5. The buttonless trackpad with TrackPoint pointer is as ever excellent--ThinkPads have superb keyboards and solid trackpads. The ThinkPad's trackpad is one of the few that doesn't make me pine for the MacBook: it's precise, the cursor is easy to control and multi-touch gestures work well.

Design and Ergonomics

Build quality and design are typical ThinkPad: it's sturdy, matte black and meant to travel well. If the wafer thin Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro seems too flimsy for your needs, then the Yoga 14 is a hearty alternative. Those who prefer the MacBook Air/Asus Zenbook school of design, with its metal casings and super slim profiles likely won't find any ThinkPad sexy. But for those who are ThinkPad people, it's a fine looking machine with clean lines that also happens to be easy to clean and fingerprint resistant. It has a magnesium alloy frame and Gorilla Glass protects the display. The two large metal hinges inspire confidence and are stiff enough to prevent significant display bounce when using the touch screen. The ThinkPad Yoga 14 surprisingly doesn't have a much larger footprint than the 12.5" ThinkPad Yoga, so it won't be a significantly larger burden in your bag. The charger is also compact and light, typical of Ultrabook chargers, even though it puts out more watts to power the dedicated graphics.

The laptop has two USB 3.0 ports and a full size HDMI port on the right side. The power button, rotation lock and volume controls are also on the side so you can access them in tablet mode (there are volume controls on the Fn row of the keyboard as well). On the left there's a USB 2.0 sleep-and-charge port, the rectangular charging port combined with the OneLink dock connector, 3.5mm combo audio and a full size SD card slot (cards sit flush with the casing so they won't snag anything in your bag). The bottom cover is affixed with small Phillips head screws, 3 of which are under removable rubber plugs along the front edge (not the rubber feet). Stereo speakers fire from the bottom front area and they're surprisingly loud and full.

Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga Video 14 Review

13" Retina MacBook Pro vs. Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 14 Conparison Smackdown Video

Display

The good news first: this is a really lovely 14" IPS 1920 x 1080 display with 10 points of multi-touch. Color gamut is improved over the original ThinkPad Yoga, and the ThinkPad Yoga 14 does as well as the top laptop displays on the market. This is a gloss panel, so those who hate glare might want to source a matte display protector, but it's bright enough at 300 nits to combat bright ambient light. The bad news, at least for some of you, is that there's no pen and no Wacom digitizer built into the display. That means the pen from the smaller ThinkPad Yoga won't work, nor will any digital active pen. You can use a capacitive stylus, and that's it. We suspect that Lenovo believes that artists and note takers prefer something smaller and lighter for the task, and didn't see the use case for an active digitizer on a 14" laptop. Update 2016: Best Buy exclusively sells an updated ThinkPad Yoga 14 model that does have a Wacom AES digitizer and pen. The small pen stows in a silo in the laptop's side, and you can buy Lenovo's full size $40 ThinkPad Pro Pen from Lenovo. This is a very good active pen solution with no parallax and good pressure curves. It has palm rejection too.

The display has excellent viewing angles, a respectable 700:1 contrast ratio and a good 0.43 black level. Simply put, it's sharp for reading and movies look lovely. It represents 91% of sRGB and 71% of Adobe RGB, putting it a scant few points below the 95/75% average for top laptop panels. We won't quibble over 4 percentage points. Factory calibration as measured by our Spyder 4 colorimeter is fairly good, with little color shift visible after calibration with the Spyder. The 1920 x 1080 full HD resolution is a good match for the panel size in terms of scaling and readability. Though QHD and higher resolution panels were the marketing craze of 2013 into 2014, their practical benefits on smaller laptops are low given how unevenly Windows desktop programs handle scaling and how impossible everything but Metro Live Tile apps are to see at 100% scaling. If you have keen eyes, you can run the ThinkPad Yoga 14 at 100% scaling (which is really no scaling). If your eyes aren't so sharp, 125% scaling does the trick.

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