The Lenovo Yoga Book is amongst the most unique of tablets this year. It looks like it's straight from the future, with its halo keyboard, watchband hinge, and metal design. How well does this futuristic device work in the present? Let's find out.
Hardware
The Lenovo Yoga Book looks like something from the future, with its super weird yet cool halo keyboard, that turns into a 10" digital writing surface when you need it. When you don't need to type or write, you can flip it 360 degrees into a normal tablet with the Yoga watchband hinge.
It's extremely thin and light - only 0.16 in (4.05 mm) thin, and 1.5lbs (690 g). Speaking of the sides of the tablet, you'll find a microUSB port, mini-HDMI port, along with a headphone jack. There's also a microSD card expansion slot if you want it, and dual speakers that sound pretty good- more on that in a bit.
Type!
Now you see it, now you don't. One of the biggest selling points for the Yoga Book is the on-demand halo keyboard and create pad. It comes on when you need it, and turns off when you don't.
So how is typing on the halo keyboard? It's surprisingly well! Of course, typing on a flat surface won't give you any tactile feedback, so it took me a few hours to get used to it. There's haptic feedback when you type which helps a bit, but will vibrate your table when typing, so I keep it on weak vibration intensity, which strikes the balance between good tactile feedback and acceptable noise from the vibration motor. After about a month of use, I'm about to type with about 90-95% accuracy, thanks to the pretty accurate auto-correct. The surface isn't just a slippery pane of glass; there's some type of coating that gives your fingers a little traction. Here's a demo on typing with the halo keyboard.
... and Write!
Now the beauty of the halo keyboard is when you don't want the keyboard anymore! There's a capacitive button on the upper right hand button that instantly turns that keyboard into a large Wacom sketch pad. Included in the box is a Real Pen, with 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity, There's two different types of tips included, one where you can write directly on the surface, and another where you can actually write on paper to digitize all your notes. The surface is able to detect pressure through a notebook, which means you can put the Yoga Book under your notebook, press the pen button, and all your notes will be digitized. Here's a quick little demo:
As a student, I absolutely love using the Yoga Book to capture all my notes. Instead of bringing around a 3 pound laptop on a crowded train to get some work done, I can just bring my 1.5 pounds Yoga Book. It's by no means a laptop replacement; but a supplement to your laptop. I can easily jot down some notes with the halo keyboard, or instantly write some things down with the Real Pen. Carrying the Yoga Book around is far more convenient than carrying around my laptop. There was one time where I needed to graph something quickly, but didn't have graph paper on me. In the Note Saver software, there's an option to write on a graph paper surface (along with many other features).
The portability and functionality of the Yoga Book makes it much more efficient to carry around when I don't need the full performance of the laptop.
Performance
Even though the Yoga Book doesn't quite have the processing power of a laptop, it still packs a lot of power for the on-the-go user. Inside is an Intel Atom x5-Z8550 quad core, up to 2.4GHz, coupled with 4GB LPDDR3 memory, and 64GB storage.
It scores decently well on Geekbench 3; on par with tablets this range. The 4GB of memory on board makes keeping applications in the background smooth, and jumping in between programs snappy. In my heavily memory usage (you can see about 10 apps open in the background), the tablet never slowed down, using only 50% of the total memory available. A combination of software optimization an increase in memory makes it a huge improvement over my Yoga Tab 3 Pro from yesteryear, which would start lagging with 5 backgrounds in memory.
Speakers
It has dual Dolby Atmos certified speakers that sounded surprising better than I expected. It keeps pretty loud, and has a respectable amount of bass, especially considering the form factor of the device. Take a listen:
Battery
With its full HD display, Android Doze, and 8500mah battery, the Yoga Book had no problem ending a moderate usage day with about 40% battery left. Playing video for an hour yielded a 7% battery percent drop, which is pretty decent. In short, battery life on the Yoga Book is quite decent.
Conclusion
The Yoga Book definitely won't be a laptop replacement, but works amazingly as a laptop supplement. It has more features than any other tablet on the market, and its beautiful design might just win you over.
The Yoga Book is great for a student like me, and I can see many artists picking up one of these. It costs $499 for the Android version, which is on pricier sides of the tablet market, but easily outperforms other tablets in this price category. There's also the Windows version for $549 if you're looking for that particular operating system.
If you're interested in picking one up, it's available at most Walmart stores, and directly at Lenovo.
The Yoga Book is great for a student like me, and I can see many artists picking up one of these. It costs $499 for the Android version, which is on pricier sides of the tablet market, but easily outperforms other tablets in this price category. There's also the Windows version for $549 if you're looking for that particular operating system.
If you're interested in picking one up, it's available at most Walmart stores, and directly at Lenovo.
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