Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro Review: Slim, light, flexible

[Scorpus]

Lenovo's Yoga series is one of the most highly regarded line of thin and light laptops on the market at the moment. Not only are they stylish and portable, the multi-mode design allows it to act as a tablet in one moment and a laptop in the next. Sure, they're not meant for heavy gaming or video editing, but they are a great option for day to day usage.

The highest end model in the Yoga line is the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro, the laptop I've been using over the past couple of weeks. It features an aluminium body with an intriguing watchband hinge, a high resolution display, and a bleeding edge Core M processor that promises decent performance with lower power consumption. At least on paper it ticks all the right boxes.

When I first took the Yoga 3 Pro out of its surprisingly nice packaging, the first thing that struck me is how thin and light the machine is. The 13.3-inch frame is just 14mm thick at its thickest point, and 1.19kg heavy, making it both thinner and lighter than the latest MacBook Air. It's also a decent reduction on the last-gen Yoga 2 Pro, which came in at 15.5mm thick and 1.39kg.

Read the complete review.

 

[David Robinson]

Thank you for an excellent review.

 

[amstech]

You said a lot of good things about this particular unit and I enjoyed the review. I am a little surprised to hear you so critical on the battery life expectations (and it looks like your overall score reflected that). Even for being a $1K laptop I think 6 hours of battery life is pretty good for a 2 core/4 thread 14NM CPU that boosts to 2.6GHz.

I will say that just by glancing at the name 'Intel HD Graphics 5300' I would have expected more from its performance. But after looking at the specs I can see why it bombed. Did you test sample have the 64bit or 128bit 5300?

 

[Guest]

Nice review Tim and I agree the battery is a letdown .. Hope Lenovo rectifies this and installs a battery of much improved performance . Maybe next year ??

 

[Scorpus]

You said a lot of good things about this particular unit and I enjoyed the review. I am a little surprised to hear you so critical on the battery life expectations (and it looks like your overall score reflected that). Even for being a $1K laptop I think 6 hours of battery life is pretty good for a 2 core/4 thread 14NM CPU that boosts to 2.6GHz.

I will say that just by glancing at the name 'Intel HD Graphics 5300' I would have expected more from its performance. But after looking at the specs I can see why it bombed. Did you test sample have the 64bit or 128bit 5300?

These days I'd expect 6 hours from a notebook that focuses more on performance, something in the 15-30W segment. For a 4.5W CPU, I don't think it's too hard to ask for 8+, which is what tablets deliver.

I believe the GPU is 64-bit as there's no dedicated graphics memory, so it has to use the standard memory bus (which is 64-bit DDR3L).

 

[Guest]

On high res Windows machines, Chrome chews through batteries much more than IE does. I get close to 7 hours on my Core i7 Yoga 2 Pro when using IE (desktop version), but less than 5 hours when using Chrome.

I hope they improved the shell's finish, by getting rid of it. My Yoga 2 Pro looks the same, but it's just painted silver. The paint started rubbing off where it rubs against my laptop bag, within a month of ownership. If it's really aluminum, paint shouldn't be needed.

 

[Guest]

I think the hinges is an interesting take by Lenovo. I believe they made the hinge like this to make it more ridged so that the screen doesn't wobble as much when you're using it in presentation mode. The one thing that concerns me is that there's 200+ moving parts in this mechanism, however Lenovo has been known to have great build quality.

 

[ShallBeNotNamed]

I knew that Lenovo was going to put out a new yoga pro. But I decided to get the 2 before knowing the specs of the 3. So I don't feel screwed
Better battery life and slightly better cpu are way better advantages over the slimness of the device
p.s I got the i5 version

 

[Guest]

Great, in-depth review - much appreciated. I'll return to Techspot for sure.

I'm interested in an ultraportable with enough horsepower and graphics capability for photo processing. I plan to connect an external monitor for the photo work, so what I really need is a decent graphics card capable of driving two screens (presumably at different resolutions). Not lots of info to help me decide if the Yoga 3 is the machine I want, aside from your brief PhotoShop comment. I would have also liked to see some specs on color capability (% Adobe or sRGB).
Thanks for a very good article.
-nbeiii

 

[Scorpus]

Great, in-depth review - much appreciated. I'll return to Techspot for sure.

I'm interested in an ultraportable with enough horsepower and graphics capability for photo processing. I plan to connect an external monitor for the photo work, so what I really need is a decent graphics card capable of driving two screens (presumably at different resolutions). Not lots of info to help me decide if the Yoga 3 is the machine I want, aside from your brief PhotoShop comment. I would have also liked to see some specs on color capability (% Adobe or sRGB).
Thanks for a very good article.
-nbeiii

The Yoga 3 Pro can photo process, but isn't designed for it. I'd wait to see what comes out at CES, there might be something for you then...

 

[Guest]

Been using a Yoga for over two years and I find it is one of the nicest laptop/tablet that I have ever used. Very dependable and sturdy to use. Battery life is acceptable for what I do and I use the Yoga for about 90% of my computing needs. Only go back to desktop tower when I need to do heavy gaming.

 

[SuperVeloce]

On high res Windows machines, Chrome chews through batteries much more than IE does. I get close to 7 hours on my Core i7 Yoga 2 Pro when using IE (desktop version), but less than 5 hours when using Chrome.

I hope they improved the shell's finish, by getting rid of it. My Yoga 2 Pro looks the same, but it's just painted silver. The paint started rubbing off where it rubs against my laptop bag, within a month of ownership. If it's really aluminum, paint shouldn't be needed.

I agree. While I use chrome on desktops, on mobile it just eats through your baterry and makes your laptop warm(er), so I revert to firefox there.

 

[amstech]

These days I'd expect 6 hours from a notebook that focuses more on performance, something in the 15-30W segment. For a 4.5W CPU, I don't think it's too hard to ask for 8+, which is what tablets deliver.

I appreciate the direct response Tim, its very much appreciated.