Lenovo Yoga 700 (14.1in) review: Flexible flaws

Lenovo hardly shies away from convertible laptops. From those high-end performance devices like that Yoga 900 all the way to their business end like the ThinkPad X1, Lenovo is well versed in the convertible revolution. They’re back at it again with the Yoga 700.

Now, from the offset you might be a little confused. Two Yoga 700’s showed up in early 2016. The one I have in front of me is the larger 14.1in model, best to read my other review if you’re looking for the 11.6in Yoga 700.

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Set aside those obvious size differences and you’ll spot so many differences between the two that you’ll be left wondering why lenovo didn’t opt for entirely different distinguishable model names. While the cheaper 11.6in Yoga 700 opted for a seriously low-powered Intel Core m chip and a fanless design, this 14.1in Yoga is all about raw performance. Packing a far more powerful dual-core sixth gen i7, the 14.1in Yoga 700 is on an entirely different level, with a far higher price point to match.

Design and Connections

Visually, the 14.1in Yoga 700 shares many of the same design principles as its smaller sibling. However, it’s when you pick them up that you begin to notice a more subtle difference between the two. While the 11.6in model has a slightly soft touch outer chassis, the 14.1in has a harder, more plastic-like texture which is less easy to grip. Otherwise, the 14.1in Yoga 700 is available in a similar assortment of colours to its little brother, and the white model I reviewed looks nice and understated, particularly with its contrasting black keyboard, compared to the eye-catching orange option.

The 14.1in Yoga 700 weighs around 1.6kg with a thickness of 18.3mm, so it won’t win any prizes for being the lightest or thinnest in its size category, but it’s still small enough to comfortably use on your lap for prolonged periods of time or throw into a messenger bag without too much trouble. While obviously larger and heavier than the 11.6in model, I still found the 14.1in form factor preferable for on-the-go use, as its larger screen was easier to work on.

However, one thing that’s slightly disappointing with the Yoga 700 is that it still has Lenovo’s old logo branding on the outer lid and bezel. It’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but compared to the Yoga 900, which comes with the company’s new logo, it does make both Yoga 700s seem a little dated and old-fashioned.

Of course, none of this really matters when you start using it as a convertible. As with previous Yoga laptops, the hinge can fold all the way back on itself, letting you use the Yoga 700 as a tablet or propped up in tent mode so you can take advantage of its touchscreen. Thankfully, the strong hinge holds up to most degrees of prodding.

Its ports are all located along the rubber-coated sides of the laptop, but most of them are cluttered along the right edge. Here you’ll find the power button, volume keys, a dedicated auto-rotate lock button and a recessed Lenovo Onekey recovery button all within close proximity, and a Micro HDMI and USB3 port further down. The left edge, on the other hand, only has an SD card reader, headset jack, another USB3 port and the power jack, which doubles up as a regular USB port when you’re not connected to the mains.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Like all Yoga laptops, the Yoga 700 has a chiclet-style keyboard. The keys are all comfortably spaced apart so it doesn’t feel cramped, but the Enter key is rather thin for my liking. The Home, End, PgUp, PgDn keys have also been placed to the right of both the Enter key and Backspace, so anyone used to Backspace being on the far right might find themselves accidentally hitting Home more often than not.

Otherwise, the keys have a respectable amount of travel and feedback. It can take a while to get used to the key placement, but apart from the odd typo I found I could type on it fairly quickly and comfortably. After a day or so I found myself managing upwards of 110WPM, which for me is quite good for a laptop. The keys are backlit, too, which is always welcome.

The touchpad, while not officially a precision touchpad under Microsoft’s guidelines, was responsive enough once adjusted. It’s nice and sensitive to swipes and all of Windows 10’s myriad gesture controls were recognised without any issues, making navigation feel incredibly slick. It’s a reasonable size, too, making good use of the available space on the palm rest.

Display and Speakers

This particular Yoga 700 has a 14.1in, 1,920×1,080 touchscreen display which uses an IPS panel. On my review model, there was a little bit of uneven backlighting from the left-hand side but nothing too serious. The 11.6in model I reviewed had a panel that distorted and rippled when you used the touchscreen, but thankfully this wasn’t evident again here.

What the display is lacking, however, is brightness. With white levels of just 190cd/m2, the screen isn’t very bright at all. Even indoors under office lighting, it left a lot to be desired. Outdoor use is just about viable but you’ll absolutely have to dial the brightness up to maximum, which will have an effect on battery life. The display is also very reflective, so overhead lighting and windows proved particularly problematic.

The lack of brightness is in part offset by its deep blacks of 0.16cd/m2, which is excellent as far as your average laptop goes, and a contrast ratio of 1,207:1 is very respectable. However, the display’s sRGB gamut coverage is lacklustre for the cost of the system at just 60.6%.

Out of the box, the display also appeared very warm, with a yellow tint to the whites. Uninstalling all of Lenovo’s pre-installed software (there’s no single piece of display software) seemed to do the trick, though, as this got rid of the yellow tint. When I retested the laptop under these conditions, the brightness improved marginally to 195cd/m2 according to our colour calibrator, but the perceived brightness was much greater, as I found it much easier to use indoors than I did before. The sRGB colour accuracy remained the same, however.

The speakers do a respectable, if unremarkable job at projecting sound. There’s a decent level of volume but like most laptop speakers, they lack any kind of bass. They’re fine for streaming Netflix or watching films, but they’re not particularly spectacular.

Performance and Battery Life

Inside is a 2.5GHz dual-core Core i7-6500U processor based around Intel’s latest Skylake architecture. This processor can Turbo Boost to 3.1GHz when conditions allow, and the processor is also paired with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. As a result, the 14.1in Yoga 700 is much better equipped to deal with more advanced tasks than its little brother, and is a much better fit for anyone looking for something that goes beyond basic computing tasks.

This was affirmed by our benchmark results which saw an overall score of 46, which shows the Yoga 700 is just as capable as Dell’s considerably more expensive XPS 13 and the Asus Zenbook UX303UA. Its overall score was brought down slightly by its multitasking score of 28, but provided you’re not using it for heavy media-intensive tasks or running several taxing applications simultaneously, you’ll get by just fine.

Without dedicated graphics, this is never going to be a decent gaming system. The Yoga 700 uses Intel’s integrated Graphics HD 520 chip and you shouldn’t expect anything more than some very light gaming. Dirt Showdown at 1,280×720, 4x anti-aliasing and High graphics amounted only produced an average frame rate of 24.4fps, for instance, which is just short of what would be considered playable. Drop the quality to Medium and you’ll see 31fps, which is an improvement, but still not great. As long as you keep your expectations in check, you’ll be able to play older games at around medium graphics just fine, as well as modern 2D indie games.

Playing a video at 170cd/m2 brightness saw 4 hours 59 minutes of playback before the battery gave out. The 11.6in model saw 6 hours 54 minutes in the same test, but considering the smaller display and low-power processor, this should come as no surprise. However, the 14.1in Yoga 700’s battery life is still a little disappointing. It’s half an hour less than the XPS 13, and the latter has a higher-resolution 4K display to power, and it pales in comparison to the Zenbook UX303UA, which lasted another four hours. The Yoga 700 also comes up short when stacked against powerful and demanding laptops such as the Dell XPS 15 as well, as the XPS 15 lasted just over half an hour longer under the same conditions.

Conclusion

The 14.1in Lenovo Yoga 700 is a rather frustrating device. Its build quality and high performance levels make it a very capable system to take on the road, but other aspects like its screen and battery life let it down. We’d expect better at this price, but that’s not to say it’s necessarily a bad choice. It’s still a very versatile laptop for everyday use, and provides just as much speed as more expensive ultraportables. However, when you can get the equally convertible Toshiba Satellite Radius 15 for a lot less, which has a superior display and longer battery life, it becomes harder to justify choosing the Yoga. If you need the extra horsepower, the Yoga 700 will get the job done, for if you’d rather save some money, the Toshiba is a much better buy.