Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga OLED (2017) Review

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga is a masterclass of a convertible. With excellent build timbre, reliable operation, and a horn of plenty of useful features for both consumers and business users there ’ s a draw to like here. In fact, there wasn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate a whole draw we could find to dislike when we first reviewed the 2017 Lenovo X1 Yoga, save for the brooding display panel and expensive price rag. The Lenovo X1 Yoga OLED random variable features a jaw-dropping 14-inch QHD OLED display, but it besides comes at a noticeable price hike .
Are the better visuals worth the price increase ? Read the full review to find out .

Editor’s Note: This review is a postdate up to our original review of the Lenovo X1 Yoga ( 2017 ). If you want a more comprehensive review to be indisputable to read the full Lenovo X1 Yoga 2017 review.

Reading: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga OLED (2017) Review

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga OLED Build and Design

The black ( besides available in argent ) carbon fiber build provides a great cush find making the laptop easy to handle and hold. With shrill lines and moving slants, the X1 Yoga has an angular fashionable look despite its homely black color. The laptop absolutely toes the channel between an attractive consumer and classy occupation notebook .
Of course, the laptop is more than a pretty face though sporting the now well known 360-degree expose hinge design. The hinge allows the screen to rotate a full 180 degrees switching between a laptop and a pad and everything in between .
Measuring 13.1 ten 9 ten 0.69-inches and weighing 2.9 pounds the 14-inch convertible is fabulously light for a 14-inch laptop. however, as a pill, the device can feel a bite unwieldy specially when trying to hold the X1 Yoga with a individual hand. There are lighter convertibles on the commercialize, such as the 12.5-inch Toshiba Portege X20W ( 2.4 pounds ) and the 13.3-inch HP EliteBook x360 ( 2.8 pounds ). Of course, these devices besides come with smaller screens so there is a tradeoff .

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga OLED Ports

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga packs a surprise sum of connectivity into its thin frame. The right side features a Kensington lock in slot, an HDMI connection, a USB 3.0 port, a Mini-RJ45 Ethernet connection, and a 3.5mm sound recording mariner. The leave side features two USB Type-C ( Thunderbolt ) ports, and two extra USB 3.0 ports, the latter of which is constantly on. last, there is a micro-SIM and microSD card subscriber located next to the back right display hinge on the buttocks .

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga OLED Keyboard and Touchpad

There ’ s a reason we continue to guys over Lenovo ’ s ThinkPad keyboards, they ’ re fantastic. The black glossy square keys curve in to help cup and grip your fingers when typing. Key locomotion and action aren ’ t all that deep but the carry through is crisp and satisfying. That coupled with the consistent feedback makes for a comfortable and consistent typing have. The laptop offers a fresh roll feature where the keyboard recedes when the screen is traveling past 90 degrees or is closed. Because the keys lay apartment when the sieve is closed, this removes the want for a tray allowing the keys to lay charge with the deck .
Located below the touchpad is a blacken condom pad. The touchpad is soft and polish to the tint allowing for excellent travel and restraint. Equipped with synaptic drivers the touchpad performs beautifully corresponding to each swipe, click, and multi-finger gesture without delay .

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga OLED Stylus

The notebook besides features the Lenovo ThinkPad Pen Pro stylus, which supports 2,048 levels of pressure. The pen has a dedicated compartment along the lower right side of the chassis, which besides serves a charger for the pen. The write is a bit a small english, feeling more like the pencils you ’ five hundred find on a golf course than your traditional write utensil. With excellent track and sensitivity, the Pen did a consummate speculate capturing our quick tests of notes and doodles, which is in truth saying something given our hapless calligraphy skills .

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga OLED Screen and Speakers

The display is well the crown jewel of this version of the Lenovo X1 Yoga. It ’ south gorgeous. The OLED display besides helps to solve the reflective issue that that baseline model suffered due to the bright dialog box. OLED displays are typically brighter than IPS and TN LCD panels due to the fact that the screen substantial emits light, rather of relying on a back light to shine through the empanel. This besides allows for a crystal clear effigy and rich detail colors. In particular, NBR was blown away by how well the laptop captured the vibrant color landscape in Overwatch. The bright whites yellows and blues in truth popped right off the sieve. Overall the Lenovo Yoga X1 offers a pretty antic viewing experience .

The Lenovo X1 Yoga speakers are a bit on the quiet side, capable of filling a little room with audio. however, the sound timbre is rather impressive. NBR enjoyed listening to a number of Candyrat Records guitar instrumentals on the laptop. The speakers were capable of capturing the wide arrays of highs and lows and were even able to reproduce the faint harmonics with cheeseparing pristine quality .

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga OLED Performance

Another area where the Lenovo X1 Yoga is beefed up a morsel is in the specification department. The Lenovo X1 Yoga review unit that we tested was equipped with a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7-7600U CPU, with Intel HD Graphics 620, 16GB of RAM, and a 516GB NVMe PCIe SSD. The fast central processing unit decidedly makes a deviation ( though you may not need that much performance depending on what you ’ re doing ) but it besides comes at a price raise, as the whole that we tested is presently priced at $ 2,115. That ’ s a goodly startle from the $ 1,400 unit that we tested last time. Of course, it ’ mho worth noting that most of that cost increase is actually coming from the improved OLED expose .
As the benchmark scores indicate the Lenovo X1 Yoga is a power station. With a brawny Intel Core i7 under the hood and ample RAM, the laptop has no problem multitasking. While testing the device NBR was able to run 15 active Google Chrome tab, with two HD video streams, and listening to Spotify in the background without any drop in performance. The 516GB PCIe SSD besides performs beautifully with lighting fast read and write speeds. That means the machine boots up near instantaneously and programs and files alone take a few seconds to load .
The biggest bottleneck for performance on this machine has to be the Intel HD 620 graphics. truthfully the integrate graphics aren ’ triiodothyronine that bad, it ’ mho barely that everything else on this machine is rather good. The X1 Yoga is capable of basic HD video editing and playing less demand game titles like League of Legends and Hearthstone, but the machine will struggle with more demand tasks like 3D modeling, and more graphically acute games .

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga OLED reappraisal unit that we tested had the keep up specifications :

Windows 10 Pro
14-inch QHD ( 2560 x 1440 ) OLED display
Intel Core i7-7600U CPU 2.8GHz
Intel HD Graphics 620
16GB of RAM

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516GB NVMe PCIe SSD
802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 4.1
Dimensions : 13.1 x 9 adam 0.69-inches
weight : 2.9 pounds
price as configured : $ 2,115

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga OLED Benchmarks

PCMark8 Home (Accelerated) measures overall system performance in Windows 8 for general activities from web browsing and video streaming to typing documents and playing games (higher scores mean better performance):

PCMark8 Work (Accelerated) measures overall system performance in Windows 8 for work-related productivity tasks (higher scores mean better performance):

3DMark Fire Strike measures the overall gaming performance of the GPU (higher scores mean better performance):

CrystalDiskMark storage drive performance test:

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga OLED Battery Life

PCMark 8 Balanced Battery Test ( listed in minutes ) :

The one area where we were worried this notebook might take a hit is the battery life. As we said earlier OLED panels are typically brighter than their IPS counterparts, which besides means they ’ ra bigger energy hogs. The more herculean specification and the bright display did take their bell on the machine, but not about equally regretful we thought it might. In our tests, the Lenovo Yoga X1 ran for 8 hours and 56 minutes before shutting down. That lone puts the 27 minutes behind the IPS form. Considering that our tests are more strenuous than distinctive manipulation, you can expect to get upwards of 11 hours of consumption on a single appoint .

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Final Thoughts

We already know that the Lenovo X1 Yoga is a bang-up machine, so the better interview is : are the upgrades worth the price hike ? Well, that actually depends on what you want. There are entirely a handful of OLED convertibles on the grocery store and the X1 is one of the most sport full-bodied out there with an excellent built-in stylus, security system measures, improbable connectivity, and a first keyboard. The notebook could surely be a great fit for artists or media junkies that want a convertible with some sex appeal. NBR, in especial, can see this device being a great fit for corporate art departments with a great remainder between utility, dependability, and security .
That being said if you ’ re plainly looking for a all-around laptop that can do a piece of everything you ’ ll probable be far better served by the IPS form. sure the visuals are big, but they ’ re hard to justify if you ’ re not in truth going to get a short ton of habit out of the display. still, if you have the cash to burn, it is a big machine .
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