What's Hot: Versatile and affordable 13.3" Windows tablet that transforms into a laptop. Excellent QHD touch screen, long battery life and silent operation.
What's Not: It's Intel Atom- best for light lifting rather than computationally demanding tasks. Keyboard magnets not that strong.
Reviewed February 3, 2015 by Lisa Gade, Editor
in Chief (twitter: @lisagade)
Lenovo's not a company that's afraid to take design risks, not unlike Sony in its heyday. The Yoga laptop with its 360 degree hinge was one of the few very successful Windows 8 convertible designs, and Lenovo brought a different interpretation to their Yoga Android and Windows tablets. They have a cylindrical battery at the bottom that not only allows for a bigger battery but also provides a hand hold and mounting point for the swiveling stand. It's an excellent design, but first gen models were hampered by mediocre specs. The Yoga Tablet 2 line improves display quality and specs while maintaining a moderate price tag. More importantly, the specs are now worthy of Lenovo's excellent industrial design. In this review we look at the largest Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows, the 13.3" model. Clearly at that size, it's a laptop replacement as well as a tablet, and the keyboard is included in the price (currently $599). For those who want something more portable, Lenovo sells 10 and 8 inch variants with largely similar specs.
The Windows Yoga Tablet 2 13" model runs on a 1.33 GHz quad core Intel Atom CPU with 4 gigs of RAM rather than the usual paltry 2 gigs for Atom tablets. Though this is a 64 bit CPU, Lenovo ships it with Windows 8.1 32 bit, and it has 64 gigs of internal solid state eMMC storage. Despite the low price tag and Atom CPU, the Yoga Tablet 2 13" with Windows has a striking IPS 2560 x 1440 touch screen that's sharp, bright and colorful. Other features include dual band WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth, stereo speakers with a JBL subwoofer on the rear and a front webcam.
The Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows is finished in black and at first blush you'd think the casing was all metal. The back is actually plastic while the swiveling stand is metal. It looks classy, feels solid and is attractive and modern. It would look good on a modern home design set, something we can't say of many tablets and 2-in-1 laptops. The 13" model is very thin and it weighs 2.27 lbs., though the weight rises to 3.2 lbs. with the included keyboard. That makes it as heavy as the lighter 13" Ultrabooks on the market, so you're not saving weight but rather money since it's less expensive than most Ultrabooks. That keyboard acts as a cover for the display and it's rigid and finished in matching black. The Yoga Tablet 2 looks like a slim Ultrabook with the keyboard attached via weak magnets. Since they communicate wirelessly using Bluetooth, you don't need to physically connect the keyboard to the tablet. For those who wish to stand the tablet on a desk and use the keyboard in their lap, this is appealing. Likewise if you're using the tablet for a presentation and want to keep the keyboard closer to you--no problem. Note that unlike the Android Yoga Tablet 2 Pro 13" model, there's no built-in Pico projector. It seems that Lenovo got it backwards here: Windows business users would likely rather have the projector for presentations. I've yet to find a good use for the projector in the Android model, other than the novelty of boring folks with vacation movies.
Keyboard
The bundled keyboard is slim yet rigid, and it inspires more confidence than the Surface Pro Type Cover, though honestly the Pro Type Cover actually provides nearly as good a typing experience as the Lenovo's island style keyboard (that's a compliment to Microsoft and not a dig at Lenovo's keyboard). The keyboard has good tactile feel and is less clacky sounding than the Surface Pro Cover, and even better--you don't have to pay extra for it. Like most Bluetooth keyboards, it lacks backlighting and you'll have to charge it every so often with the micro USB charger. Score two points for the more expensive MS Surface Pro 3: its keyboard is backlit and requires no charging, though it must remain physically connected to the tablet. We had no problems with the Yoga Tablet keyboard's Bluetooth connection and it was ready to go every time we booted the tablet (do remember to turn the keyboard on--it has a tiny switch on the side). You can use the tablet with the keyboard magnetically attached on your lap since the stand is fairly deep, but it doesn't feel extremely steady.
Deals and Shopping:
Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows 13" Video Review
Performance and Horsepower
Given the Intel Atom Z3745 CPU, this isn't a tablet-laptop hybrid for heavy lifting. The 1.33 GHz CPU with boost to 1.86 GHz is perfectly adequate for MS Office, social networking, web and photo editing. It's not the ideal choice for software development, 1080p photo editing (beyond recreational use) or calculating huge spreadsheets. Even Ultrabooks with Intel Core CPUs aren't an ideal choice for cutting edge 3D gaming, forget about the Atom and Intel HD integrated graphics. It's fine for Modern UI Live Tile games and casual games. Where the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows has an advantage over other budget Windows Intel Atom tablets is RAM. It has a very workable 4 gigs of RAM rather than the usual 2 gigs, and that makes multitasking more fluid, though the CPU may chug a bit when juggling 3 programs. The relatively large and high resolution display (by tablet standards) also makes multitasking easier because you've got more screen real estate to balance two windows side-by-side. The 64 gigs of solid state storage (not as fast as an SSD, rather more akin to an SD card) is adequate for a machine of this caliber--you probably won't install every PC program you own and it might even be your secondary machine for work and play on the go, so big storage is less of a concern. Since Windows and associated programs take up space as does the recovery partition, you're left with ~43 gigs free out of the box. The tablet has a microSD card slot where you can store movies, music and all manner of data, but Windows won't let you install programs to a removable card without a registry hack.
The QHD IPS display is a strong selling point, and one this large and high resolution is certainly an unexpected treat in a tablet this inexpensive. The 2560 x 1440 display works well at 150% scaling and it's a good compromise between seeing text easily and getting a bigger view of web pages and spreadsheets.
Thanks to the built-in stand, it simply begs to be your Netflix and Amazon Prime video machine, and the side-facing speakers and rear JBL subwoofer do a good job with audio. The speakers are loud enough to fill a small room and audio isn't as thin as the average tablet. There's a 3.5mm combo audio jack for those who prefer headphones or external speakers.
Battery Life
Thanks to the cylindrical battery design that allows for a simply huge 12,800 mAh battery and the power-sipping Atom CPU, Lenovo manages to get seriously good battery life from the tablet. Though they claim an optimistic 15 hours of actual use time, we clocked closer to 11 with brightness at 40% and WiFi + Bluetooth active. Compared to most 13" laptops that's extremely good and it even beats many 10" tablets. For the low requirements road warrior who doesn't engage in computationally demanding tasks but does need stellar battery life, the tablet is a good fit. It never gets blazing hot on the back and it's silent thanks to the fanless design.
Conclusion
If you want the creature comforts of a laptop in a tablet--big screen, 4 gigs of RAM, full Windows and a traditional keyboard but don't need the more powerful CPUs in Microsoft Surface Pro 3 and Ultrabooks like Lenovo's own Yoga 3 Pro convertible, the 13" Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows is one of the few crossover tablets that fits the bill. It's considerably less expensive than Surface Pro and Ultrabooks that hover around $1,000 and it lasts longer on a charge than most (the MacBook Air and Dell XPS 13 non-touch are the only two that rival it). That said, it lacks the horsepower to be a main machine for home and business users unless requirements are very easy going. If you simply do the web, email, Office and streaming full HD video (and not necessarily all at once), it's capable enough. Just don't expect it to be the ideal machine for Photoshop, Visual Studio, Eclipse or frequent 1080p video editing jobs.
Display:13.3", 2560 x 1440 IPS QHD touch screen. Intel HD integrated graphics. Micro HDMI port.
Battery:12,800 mAh Lithium
Ion rechargeable.
Performance:1.33 GHz Intel Atom Z3745 quad core 64 bit CPU with boost to 1.86 GHz. 4 gigs RAM and 64 gigs eMMC flash storage.
Size:13.1
x 8.8 x 0.5 (at thickest point) inches. Weight: 2.27 pounds (tablet only), 3.2 lbs. (tablet and keyboard).
Camera:1.6MP webcam.
Audio:Built-in stereo speakers with JBL subwoofer. Dolby audio and Wolfson Master Hi-Fi code. Built-in mic and 3.5mm standard combo mic-headphone
jack.
Networking:Integrated dual band
WiFi 802.11b/g/n with MIMO and Bluetooth 4.0.
Software:Windows 8.1 32 bit.
Expansion and Ports:1 micro USB host port,
microSD card slot.
