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Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga Review

I’ve recently got the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga for business travel, and I absolutely love the design.  The Macbook Pro I’ve had before just don’t feel right in hand, and the keyboard and trackpad on the macbook pro is absolutely horrendous for prolonged use, not to mention the utterly ugly low res non-touch screen (exclude the overly priced retina models)

What I really like about the thinkpad yoga:

• Brilliant flip design, the Thinkpad Yoga can also be used as a tablet
• Super comfortable keyboard
• Wacom pressure sensitive pen for retouching in photoshop
• Excellent touchpad.  I miss the legendary physical buttons, but this touchpad is workable.
• Speedy performance (top of the line model features a Intel Core i7 4600u processor)
• Superior build quality (coated magnesium exterior and magnesium roll cage throughout)
• Anti-Glare IPS 1080p HD LED Screen with excellent viewing angle.

What I want to see improved:

• Speaker is sub-par
• Memory tops out at 8GB and it’s non-user serviceable
• Wacom pen is not very comfortable to hold (too thin and short)
• Just a tad bit heavy compared to the competition

Enough said, here are some photos that shows the beauty of the Thinkpad design.  And as always, you can purchase one directly from Amazon

I’m a big fan of the ThinkPad’s tough industrial design and bold style. And I’m lucky to obtain a ThinkPad myself just recently. The keyboard is legendary, I’ve never used any laptop with such comfortable keyboard. The business oriented laptop also features two pointing devices, a trackpad and a trackpoint. Both devices even have their own buttons. That’s lavish! The LCD display is asymmetrically placed on the laptop; it’s pretty obvious when the screen is not turned on, but during actual use, you do not notice it at all, a nice design touch. There is even a LED keyboard light that could be turned on when laptop is been used in the dark. I personally think this design is superior to illuminated keyboard, because you can actually read documents using the light, while a illuminated keyboard would do nothing for ya.

Lenovo’s technical support for the laptop is also top notch, the System Update software automatically picks correct programs for your ThinkPad, and update them through Lenovo’s server automatically. There is a technology called “ThinkVantage Active Protection”, which automatically monitor’s the laptop’s hard drive, and shut it down instantly in the event of an accident where you might have dropped your laptop, thus prevent data lose. An integrated fingerprint reader further enhances overall security by accepting your fingerprints as a source of authentication.

Performance wise, The ThinkPad T61 features a fast core 2 duo processor, upgradable to a relatively modern intel T9600 mobile processor. But even with its stock setup, which features a T7500 2.2ghz processor, the system runs windows 7 64bit very smoothly and play back HD contents just fine.

Sure there are some small quirks that need to be sorted out, such as the placement of USB ports are not ideal, and there is only a VGA output instead of a DVI port (although you can solve both problems with a docking station attached). The battery life is also not ideal, unless you use a 9-cell extended battery, which adds a significant amount of weight to your machine.