Thanks to Lenovo, I’ve been using a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro for the last few months, and I have to say I’m quite impressed with the laptop, so I thought I’d share my thoughts and experience with it.

First, there’s a bit of naming confusion. There are several similar sounding laptops, some even run Android such as the Yoga Tablet series. Wikipedia has a list of all Lenovo Yoga devices which may help clear things up.

The Yoga 2 Pro isn’t the newest iteration either, there’s the Yoga 3 Pro that’s now out, but you may be able to pick up the 2 Pro still and hopefully at a cheaper price than the 3 Pro.

Spec wise, this is a beefy laptop. Lenovo’s website covers a lot of information about the Yoga 2 Pro, but I’ll point out the important bits of the laptop I received:

The CPU is a 4th Gen Intel Core i7 – that’s pretty grunty, and like most thin laptops these days, you can really feel the heat coming from the laptop if you push it hard enough and long enough.

RAM wise, 8gb of the stuff should be more than enough for a laptop user. Enough said!

The display is very impressive – it’s rich, bright and has a crazy high resolution, called Quad HD Display. This means you might be winding it down when running certain applications or games that don’t like the newer high resolutions, but that’s not difficult to do. If you need to run the whole laptop in 1920 x 1080 it still works perfectly fine and looks great.

The onboard Intel HD Graphics 4400 is more than adequate, and does very well unless you’re expecting to play games that require a dedicated graphics card.

256gb of SSD is plenty, and fully dedicated SSD – none of this hybrid nonsense. General use of the laptop is very speedy, and I’m now running Windows 10 Technical Preview on it without a hitch.

The sound that comes out of this laptop is better than most due to the Dolby Home Theater Stereo Speakers. No tinny noises from this laptop!

Battery life is really good too – this is a thin, light laptop but still goes for several hours of usage.

Until I read the specs, I didn’t know what sort of Orange the colour of the laptop was – but now I know it’s Clementine Orange. At first I was a bit taken aback, but to my surprise it didn’t take long to get used to the colour and now I really like it. It’s orange enough to look rather different, but not hypercolour orange which you might see construction crews wearing.

The Yoga 2 is a laptop/tablet hybrid, and converts really well. The screen bends all the way back, 360 degrees and disables the keyboard for handy tablet usage. I prefer this to the laptops that undock from the keyboard, or other swivel display type laptops. It’s quite robust and easy to change back and forth.

One of the interesting design choices was moving the power button to the right side of the laptop, near the front. It’s not the first place I’d look for the button, but it does keep it out the way – plus it’s designed to not easily be pressed, so no accidental shutdowns.

Other notable features are the backlit keyboard, which is handy for typing in bed. The surface around the keyboard is slightly grippier than other laptops, which I’m guessing is designed to help when in tablet mode. I’ve also found myself using the laptop in stand mode, which puts the keyboard behind the screen. It’s easier to use as a touchscreen that way, without having to hold the laptop with one hand.

Do we even call this thing a laptop? I’m not sure, but I’m a fan of any device that seems to work just as well in any mode you want it to be in.

I’ve used similar Lenovo laptops, but in the Thinkpad space – that is, the ones designed for business. My work laptop currently is a Lenovo Carbon X1, but I’ve also used the Lenovo Helix of late. Of these, I like the Yoga 2 Pro the most. The Carbon X1 comes close, but it’s a bit heavier and doesn’t have the tablet mode option.

Read the customer reviews on Lenovo’s website and you’ll see similar comments to mine – this is an impressive laptop, which I really can’t fault.

Update:

Regarding Superfish, this particular laptop didn’t have it. The manufacture date on the back is May 2014, well before the September 2014 – February 2015 period that affected several Lenovo laptops, including this one.

Superfish can be uninstalled with Lenovo’s Superfish Uninstaller.

Update 2:

Here’s Lenovo’s announcement on the issue: http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1934

I look forward to zero bloatware on new Lenovo PCs running Windows 10!