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I haven’t had this laptop for long, but I think I can provide a pretty comprehensive review of what it’s actually like to live with this laptop. Yes there are plenty of reviews on laptop sites that sing the Yoga 720’s praises, and for good reason. But let’s face it. These guys that are reviewing these machines are not real consumers. They’re nerds, yes, but they’re just providing an overview of a laptop they got on loan. They didn’t have to shell out their own cash on this machine. They didn’t have to do extensive research before choosing this one over any other. That being said, let’s get started. The other day, I was shopping around at our local Best Buy for a laptop for school. The standard items were on my shopping list. Not too big, but not too small Good battery life, somewhere around 8 hours or more Half decent CPU for CAD and video editing SSD IPS screen Light weight My dad wasn’t exactly impressed with buying a Lenovo, a company that the credit card fraud analyst had never heard of, but I assured him that Lenovo knows what they are doing when it comes to building a productivity laptop. And oh boy do they. Everyone knows Lenovo for the ugly business laptops with the nipple in the middle of the keyboard, but they have certainly upped the sex appeal of their brand. The Yoga 720 embraces modern and sleek design with simple lines on a nice aluminum body. The build feels nice. There isn’t much flex to the case and they clearly use some high quality materials. The hinge isn't quite a one finger design, but I can't detect any drastic wobble, so that's not bad. And oh my god that screen. Now maybe I'm just so impressed by this guy because both of the panels I've been using on my desktop are okayish TN panels, but this IPS display is gorgeous. 1080p at 13.3 inches gives it a nice PPI, but the colors are just amazing. Only downsides of this screen is that it doesn't get that bright, and it's a touch screen. The fact that it's a touch screen isn't that big of a deal, but I think it's a gimmick. A side effect is that the screen is glossy which of course makes it one hell of a finger print magnet. However, I like glossy screens on IPS panels. I think it makes the colors look even better and allows them to pop even more. The bezels aren't bad either. The top, left, and right bezels are nice and thin, about 1/4" I think, but the bottom bezel is healthy. But I don't mind that. The fact that the rest of the bezels are so slim distracts from the thiccccc one on bottom and I really don't mind that choice. As a side effect, it raises your taskbar a little closer to what you're working on so you don't have to shift your eyes as far I think the pros out weigh the cons on the screen. I can't really complain about all that much. Yes finger prints are annoying, but it just looks so damn good that I can't really complain. Update: I disabled the touch screen in device manager which prevents the screen from freaking out when I want to clean it. I've also gotten better at not touching the screen, but dust and other particles are still very noticeable. Also getting fingerprints on the top bezels is impossible to avoid because there's nothing else for your finger to grab on to to open the laptop. Not that big of a deal, but I still carry a microfiber cloth with me to clean the screen once a week or so. I'd like to move on to this glorious keyboard. Lenovo's extensive experience in business machines really shines through on this guy. The keyboard travel is a little shorter than your average laptop, but just something about it feels amazing. I feel like my fingers are like precision sports shooters, darting around the keys at insane speed with high accuracy. The keystroke is a tiny bit heavier than your average Apple laptop, but the short travel distance allows you to fly across the keys. The backlighting is a nice touch, in a cool white, but I found that on my unit, the J, K, and L keys are noticeably dimmer than the rest. No biggy, I don't look at the keys when I type anyway, and if it bugs me, I can turn it off. The backlit keys have three settings, low, high, and off. There isn't much difference between low and high, but there's a nice, gradual fade between each setting when you hit FN+SPACE to toggle through the modes. It's not a requirement in a laptop for me, but it makes the machine look and feel more premium to see that ever so subtle glow. But like, I can't convey how much I love this keyboard. At my desk, I have a TKL Cherry mx blue board that I've been using for about 5 years. I instantly felt at home on the Yoga's board, getting rather close to my usual typing speed of 75wpm on my first typing test. The keyboard is honestly what sold me on this machine. It's simply a joy to type on. It's not very loud, but it just feeeeeeellllllssss so good. Update: After about three months with the laptop, I have noticed that the backlight is completely unnoticeable in any environment where there is even a modicum of light. In a dark room, it's a nice glow, but the two brightness settings are more like dim and slightly dimmer. I think I'll just keep it off unless I'm in the dark and I need special characters or something. Touch typing FTW I am writing this next part of the review after the honeymoon euphoria has worn off. As mentioned in the last update, I have been using this machine for school for about 3 months now. I must say that the battery life is disappointing. As I write this, I simply had my laptop open in chrome for an hour (with four tabs) occasionally browsing the forums or copying a quote from my hilarious econ teacher around once every 10 minutes, then it sat in my bag for an hour, now after about another 15 minutes of use in Chrome, I am down to 75%. That's with power saver on and the brightness at 70%. This is problematic. As I mentioned earlier, the IPS panel doesn't get very bright at 100%, so 70% is just dim. Also I feel that I shouldn't have to turn on the power saver mode to get barely reasonable battery performance. SMH. Yesterday, with a similar load, but with a couple hours of photo editing in Light Room, I made it down to 20% by the end of the day. This laptop uses a USB C port to charge, which is awesome, but you need the 45w power adapter to put any power into the machine in a reasonable amount of time. An hour on a Qualcom Quickcharge 2.0 adapter I carry with me for my phone puts in around 5-7%. Also, I tried charging the laptop of a power bank at 10W and was unsusccessful. The laptop would just not accept charge. Maybe it was the fault of the cable, but this is my experience. It would take power for about 5 seconds, then the charge light would go out and the battery status would read "plugged in, not charging". RIP. Performance leaves a little bit to be desired. I know I bought a thin and light, not a desktop replacement, but the 4gb RAM model was a mistake. I think my expectations were a little high for the 7200u, but rendering in Premiere kinda sucks on here. It's not bad, but it's time consuming. Lastly, why the hell isn't there an SD card reader? Like, not even a micro SD, there's just nothing. That was really disappointing when I brought this and my camera on a trip. Luckily, my phone has a micro SD reader, so I transferred photos to there, then to the computer. I really would have liked to see a card reader on here and a little more I/O, 1 USB 3 type A, one 3.0 type C, and one Thunderbolt 3. A bit disappointing, but I fortunately have't needed more than that. So conclusion time. Overall, I am very impressed with what Lenovo has brought to the table in this mid range ultrabook bracket. While this isn't the top end model, this Yoga 720 does everything I ask of it with moderate confidence and looks damn fine while doing it. I probably ask too much of it when I decide it's a great idea to try to get some work done on that video project I have going on, but the it's glorious in the classroom. The keyboard is just such a joy to dance across, and the glossy IPS screen delivers a beautiful picture, though it could be brighter. However, you will have to start carrying the charger, a microfiber cloth, and some USB (A and C) adapters if you want to get some real productivity out of it for a whole day or more. Unless you're one of those people that actually uses the touch screen on a laptop, I recommend turning the touch screen off, but if all of that isn't enough to dissuade you, I highly recommend this machine to just about everyone.

Amazon: http://geni.us/2sO7 NCIX: http://bit.ly/1NSJVac The GeChic 1303H On-Lap Monitor provides an interesting way to test PCs and have dual monitor setups on the road. But is it right for the price?

Hey all, I recently bought an Asus UX303LN for school and i want a hard case for it. Pretty much what i'm looking for is a hard box i can put my laptop in so it won't get broken at school cause usually were pretty rough with our bags. After a bit of looking i found this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DGHSUB0/ref=s9_simh_gw_p147_d1_i2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=desktop-4&pf_rd_r=138KZ52W214DS1TRKWZ0&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=1970566842&pf_rd_i=desktop which is quite good but after spending $1500+ on the laptop i don't want to spend another $70+ on the case, which might seem odd, i might buy a more expensive one later but for now i'm looking at $50 or less, mainly all i want is drop and crush proof. Here are the dimensions: 12.7 x 8.8 x 0.7 Thanks all'

Hey all I'm in the market for a 13.3" ultrabook and i'm fairly set on the ASUS UX303LN. Now, Asus offer both a 3200x1800 and a 1920x1080 display. I was going for the QHD+ but then i saw some reviews saying a 1080p display would be better. I haven't really used many laptops but i would think the QHD+ display would be better considering its touchscreen and that the screen would be a lot closer than a desktop monitor, but some are saying the colours are off and that the QHD isn't worth the adverse effect on battery life. any advice would be great, cheers

Samsung Chromebook 2 13.3 inch review Intro I bought this for just School work as it doesn’t have all of the features notebooks with other operating systems have. Also all of my school work is done on my google drive account so this notebook makes it easy to have a completely integrated experience. This honestly works better for me than any other solution that I have tried. Lets delve into the review Chrome OS This is my first experience with the chrome OS. It is a very basic operating system that is highly optimized for the hardware that it possesses. Thanks to this it one of the most snappy computers I have used even though it is probably one of the least powerful. Boot up is fast and is similar to windows as it gives you user options depending on whether you have multiple accounts logged in. For each google account you have logged in it is like a new user in windows. For the people that used the chrome browser your history add ons and passwords will all be synced. SO if you have Chrome save a password for any website it will change over. One of the cooler features that the Chromebook possesses is to edit your google docs offline and then it will automatically upload them to the drive. There is one problem with this and that is the fact that they are not contained in their original folder they are just downloaded docs. so if you are an organization freak than that will be a problem because your offline sync is just a bunch of docs with no folders. The offline usage is fine as it is still snappy saving your edits to your docs. Switching between accounts is seamless again as it is like switching users on any other operating system. Screen The screen is a 1080p TN pane. As far as tn panels go this one is bad, the viewing angles are atrocious vertical color shift is huge. Although since it is a notebook you can adjust the screen for the optimal viewing angles. Compared to my 13 inch retina macbook pro the viewing angles are utter crap, as the retina has no color shift on its vibrant ips panel while the chromebooks tn panel is worse than the one on the original razer blade. Keyboard The keyboard is a chiclet style keyboard with Chrome specific functions. These are the caps lock switched with a search key, there is a full screen button on f4 and a expose button on f5. One odd thing about it is that the brightness adjust keys are in the shape of gears. The actual keys are covered in a textured matte plastic this makes them feel good and have some grip when your hands are on them. Unluckily the instant you depress the key it feels mushy although it does have a semi tactile bump. The closest keyswitch that I could compare them to are a very mushy cherry mx browns. Although something odd I noticed was that I typed faster in this notebook than any other keyboard I have ever used before. The key spacing is perfect for my hand size which is long and this although it seems to be a good spacing for most people. This is interesting as it is very small keyboard. Even compared to my macs keyboard this keyboard crushes that one as far as typing speed goes. Build quality The build quality is better than that of most chromebooks that I have seen before it as it has flex but it is much better than you would think possible for a purely plastic notebook. The flex is mostly by torque and is very small. The four rubber feet on the bottom of the chromebook are very grippy and it is hard to slide the notebook around while they are touching the ground. When the screen is facing upwards it has a little bit of wobble if you are an aggressive typer like I am. The top of the notebook is made out of a fake pleather material which is similar to that on the galaxy note 3 if not exactly the same. Samsung must have a fetish for plastic leather as they have put it on all of their high end products. So overall the build quality of this notebook is great for the price. Camera The camera was probably one of the parts that samsung had to severely cut in their design. It is usable for conferencing and google hangouts but the image looks like the ISO is at 12,800 as their is a lot of grain. Speakers The speakers are horrible everything is muddled and the speakers are placed downwards exactly where your legs rest when you are using it on your lap so the noise output is severely reduced. This causes you to raise the volume to high and then when one of the speakers is exposed it blasts the music without the muffling so that can be a huge surprise. Touchpad The touchpad is very nice for the price of the notebook. The tracking is decent and it feels very nice. The clicking of the trackpad is awesome it is more tactile in my opinion than most mice microswitches. The right click is the two finger click like on most apple laptops. Personally I like this more than the left and right click buttons on the trackpad. This style gives it a very interesting look especially with the chrome accents on the outside.(no pun intended) there is an option that is automatically turned on which is tap to click which drove me crazy. There is an option for reverse scrolling which is called Australian scrolling, this is an option that I appreciated greatly as it made my life easier for reading articles and documents. Wifi The wireless connectivity is decent for the price and even includes bluetooth, although the range isn’t that far as it will show lower connectivity than other notebooks. For example at 1 bar it will still be pretty fast. Except at that same time it shows much lower connectivity than similar notebooks although those notebooks are at a much higher price. This is interesting as this a mainly online based notebook. Bluetooth is a nice inclusion if you don't want to use the two usb ports for a mouse. Headphone test Sound okay with my ie 80’s, the sound is more flatline with losing some sound on the bass and raising the high's making it a piercing sound. Overall they sound worse than macbook pro and iphone but not a significant margin. Comparison to Macbook pro retina The Macbook pro is honestly less snappy and responsive than the chromebook, But of course you are using a full fledged Operating system on that notebook which obviously has more overhead than that of the highly optimized light chrome OS. Obviously there is much more you can do on the Macbook pro retina and it has more powerful hardware but for the things that the chromebook is focused on it does them better than the macbook pro. One of the huge parts of the Retina Macbook pro is its screen a 2560 by 1600 IPS screen with superb viewing angles this is where the Chromebook really falls behind as on the Retina macbook pro there is no color shift while on the chromebook there is huge color shift. Processor The processor on the samsung chromebook is an Octo-core samsung skew the same on that is used on the S5. Anandtech has a great article on this but I will summarize it. The samsung processor is really two different processors in one skew one a7 and one arm a15 both have 4 cores but the a7 is lower power and lower clocked. The a7 is the one that you would use if you are doing not that intensive things on your chromebook this is their version of Intel speedstep. The a15 cores are only used if you are doing something more intensive like having multiple apps open and browser tabs open. You can only use 4 of the cores at any time and they can only be from one of the processor packages as both can’t be used. This is plenty of processing power for chrome OS as 4 arm cores are plenty because of the extremely light footprint and overhead of the OS. Although there are some times that the Chromebook Stutters this is when more than 6 browser tabs are loading at once it will stutter for a second or two and then be fine. Ram This is one of the few Chromebooks with 4GB of RAM as most models have 2GB. THe 2 extra GB of ram help a lot while running multiple browser tabs as I tend to do. This lets it have 20 browser tabs open at the same time without stuttering unless they are all loading then you will have noticeable stutter. Bootup The bootup is about 8 to 9 seconds depending on how I left the Chromebook. SSD The Chromebook has a 16GB SSD. This makes opening apps super fast and adds to the silent footprint of the chromebook. You have about 10GB usable as the OS is also stored on that SSD. But if the 16GB ssd isn’t enough there is micro SD card expansion slot on the side. Battery life The battery life on this Chromebook is awesome I have been using it for about 7 hours and my battery is at 23%. This is with a relatively heavy load for this Chromebook. Its charging speed is fast, as once it is plugged in it takes an hour or two to charge from dead to full. Side I/O The side I/O is minimal, there is as follows on the left side there is the power cable receptor a usb 2.0 port a full sized HDMI port and a MIcro-SD card expansion slot. On he right there is a kensington lock a second usb 2.0 slot and a 3.5mm headphone jack. I don't find myself even using the usb ports as there aren't really any use for them in the Chrome OS. The hdmi is a nice inclusion if you were to do a board meeting or school with the Chromebook and needed to hook this up to a projector or an external display. Weight and size The chromebook is a very convenient size and lives up to the name notebook as it can easily slide in my bag with all of my binders and papers. The weight and shape feels much less clunky vs. my macbook pro. I find myself grabbing this instead of the mac because of this and how much snappier and less clunky the OS is. Glamor shots Conclusion The samsung Chromebook 2 is great for the price. The build quality is decent and the Google integration is awesome especially if your workplace or school uses Google services. It is a easy notebook to get used to if you are a frequent windows user while if you are a mac user it will be more difficult. Many of the multiwindow and tasking features are similar to windows. So if you are a heavy Google app user and are on a small budget than this would be a great option. As long as most of what you do is internet based. As for this Chromebook the octo-core exynos 5 processor and 4gb of ram are plenty for anything that you plan to on the notebook. The battery life is awesome the only thing that lets it down in my opinion is the screen but that is expected from a 340$ dollar notebook. Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Chromebook-13-Inch-Luminous-Titan/dp/B00J49ZH1U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411585568&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+chromebook+2 Anandtech Article on the Processor http://www.anandtech.com/show/7164/samsung-exynos-5-octa-5420-switches-back-to-arm-gpu