A Damn Fine, Affordable Ultrabook: Lenovo Yoga 720 13.3

[Hackentosher]

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.

Spoiler

 

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.

Spoiler

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. 
 

Spoiler

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. 

Spoiler

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.

Spoiler

[Howitz]

i've had terrible experience overall with lenovo regarding a y510p, very badly designed laptop that would overheat itself to death. also the keyboard stopped working out of nowhere after a year of good use.

 

seems like they make good stuff too... i wish your laptop lasts

[Hackentosher]

12 minutes ago, Howitz said:

i've had terrible experience overall with lenovo regarding a y510p, very badly designed laptop that would overheat itself to death. also the keyboard stopped working out of nowhere after a year of good use.

 

seems like they make good stuff too... i wish your laptop lasts

Interesting, was that a more budget oriented machine?  The build on this one is very very nice.

[Howitz]

8 minutes ago, Hackentosher said:

Interesting, was that a more budget oriented machine?  The build on this one is very very nice.

it was a cheap side 1200$cad gaming laptop, it was a mistake on my part of buying their mistake

 

had a gt750m and i7 4700 i think.

 

http://www.notebookreview.com/notebookreview/lenovo-ideapad-y510p-review/specs/

[Hackentosher]

2 minutes ago, Howitz said:

it was a cheap side 1200$cad gaming laptop, it was a mistake on my part of buying their mistake

 

had a gt750m and i7 4700 i think.

 

http://www.notebookreview.com/notebookreview/lenovo-ideapad-y510p-review/specs/

You were probably paying for the hardware there, not the case lol. 

[Hackentosher]

36 minutes ago, CUDA_Cores said:

Real question though:

 

Can you upgrade it?

 

My laptop died before I went to college and my parents decided to let me pick my new one as long as it wasn't super expensive. I went with the HP 

15-1y011ar laptop because It had a 1080p screen (TN though), and upgradable Hard drive and RAM. 

 

The thing came with a 1TB HDD. The second I got it before even trying it out, I installed a 256GB SSD from my old laptop and it runs like a champ. The next upgrade will be 8GB of RAM to 16GB, when I can justify the upgrade however (like when windows starts consuming close to 8GB of RAM).

The SSD is replaceable (it's a samsung NVME drive, 100 write, 1700 read in my testing), but the ram is unfortunately soldered. That's what I read on the FAQ of the product page. I'm thinking about swapping in a 960 evo at some point in the future.

[Hackentosher]

27 minutes ago, CUDA_Cores said:

Being able to upgrade a laptop is always at the very top of my list. Second is battery life. Third is weight. I don't mind carrying around a heavy laptop, Then I can strengthen myself.  I used to have an HP laptop and I got the thing to last for 5 years because I upgraded the RAM, replaced the HDD with an SSD and even upgraded the CPU to an i7. The thing that killed it was a power surge one day, well after it was out of warranty. 

 

Since I am no longer a hardware enthusiest, I am honestly considering selling my desktop and my current laptop and buying a Dell E6530 laptop and upgrading the RAM, SSD and CPU when it comes time to do so. The laptop itself tend to go for around $100 so I would pocket money from selling my current laptop and pocket even more money when I sell my desktop.

You may want to consider the higher spec version of the 720, or maybe the 15". I certainly like it, but I don't know how you'd manage with so few ports if it's your only machine.

[genexis_x]

6 hours ago, Howitz said:

i've had terrible experience overall with lenovo regarding a y510p, very badly designed laptop that would overheat itself to death. also the keyboard stopped working out of nowhere after a year of good use.

The old Ideapad Y series laptops are badly built, however the new Legion Y series is a decent improvement (although still have things to be improved)

[NumLock21]

Nice to see Lenovo redesigned their keyboard layout with the YOGA that you have. Their older models have full size arrow keys, and to achieve that, they have to shrink the right shift key in down to half the size so the up arrow can be next to it. This causes major problems when trying to type in commands like the colon symbol because your pinky will always hit the up arrow key, instead of the shift, which at the very right edge.

 

Spoiler

 

Old keyboard design

 

New one