Life with the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro
by Brett Howse on July 30, 2014 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Notebooks
- Lenovo
- Windows 8.1
- Yoga
Final Words
The Yoga 2 Pro is a good Ultrabook that has a few flaws that keep it from being great. First is the battery life. In a light workload, almost seven hours of battery life would have been spectacular not that long ago, but with the Haswell U series parts, it’s definitely on the low side of what is expected from the current series of Ultrabooks. For my personal situation, 6 2/3 hours is plenty, as the device is mostly used around the house or on a short trip. If the user needs a full day of work out of the laptop, there are better choices out there.
Another major complaint is the Wi-Fi card used. It is far too slow for a device in this price range, and can make the laptop difficult to work with. File copies over the network are slower than they need to be, and for only a small amount more on the bill of materials, Lenovo could have stepped up to a better solution. It is doubly important due to the lack of an Ethernet port on the device, meaning that a user could be hindered by the network performance depending on the work load. Hopefully the reports of a faster Intel Wireless AC 7260 card shipping in the latest iteration of the Yoga 2 Pro are correct, as that will certainly help with this point.
For the display, RGBW PenTile is a solution to a problem, but it’s not the best solution. However it does allow Lenovo to shoehorn a 3200x1800 resolution screen into this 13.3” chassis. As we have discussed, high DPI screens can have their issues in Windows, but overall the display is one of the standout features of this laptop. We have seen the rise of high DPI displays in tablets and smartphones for a reason, and it is great to see it in a laptop like this as well. The modern side of Windows 8.1 has no issues at all with this resolution, and is fantastic to use in this form factor. There are still some desktop programs that have issues with high DPI displays, and if you do need to use one of those you can always set the resolution to 1600x900. The only real compromise with this display is the RGBW matrix and the low contrast ratios and high black levels it produces. It may not be the best solution to a dense display, but for the price range it is understandable.
Other than those three things, there is a lot done well on the Yoga 2 Pro. The build quality is excellent, and the choice of soft touch plastic is comfortable to use and carry around. The keyboard is good, and the clickpad is nice and smooth. At 3 lbs, it is a very portable laptop. Perhaps one could nitpick that the laptop only has two USB ports, but two ports combined with the inclusion of an SD Card reader has not been a problem for me.
And then we come to the part of the laptop that gives it the name Yoga – the 360° hinge. Something that retrospectively comes across as so basic transforms this otherwise normal Ultrabook into a great device for touch input. For a lot of my use cases, I actually prefer the Yoga 2 in Stand Mode over a standard tablet. It is better for a lot of the web content I access because I do not have to hold the device up, and the performance of a Core i5 is better than any ARM based tablet out there. It is heavier than an ARM based tablet, but the benefit of Stand Mode removes the need to hold up the device. For watching videos, it is likewise great to prop the device open and enjoy a larger display than most tablets have.
The other modes are less useful though, at least in my experience. I have used the tent mode from time to time with the device on a table or counter, but not as often as in laptop or stand mode. With the display folded all the way around, it comes across as a poor tablet due to the weight, and the keyboard feels odd tucked underneath.
As a laptop, it is great, and as a tablet, it can also be great, but it is certainly more laptop than tablet. If the user can live with the battery life and poor W-Fi, the Yoga 2 Pro is a versatile two-in-one machine, with a crisp high resolution display.
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Egg - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
It's fixed with a recent Windows update :Droom200 - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
You cannot upgrade the wireless card. Even though the card is a common Intel card, the card has to be on the "whitelist". Lenovo and HP have been doing that to ALL of their laptops. When you put in a card not sold by them, you will be met with "1802: Unauthorized network card is plugged in - Power off and remove the miniPCI network card." And you will find that the computer will not boot! Unless you buy the wireless card from them (even though it is the same as the card you can get on Amazon), they have hard-coded identification information into the bios of the card. Also, most times they don't carry an upgrade, and when they do it costs 4 to 7 times what the Ebay/Amazon/Tiger Direct card costs.Egg - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
Dude do you know how to read? I own a Yoga 2 Pro. I *typed* the comment on 5 Ghz Wi-Fi.All you need is the correct card. I bought mine at mfactors; it cost me $40. I can't guarantee that ones from eBay or amazon will work, for some reason FCC stickers are a good sign that it will work.
lolTyler - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
How much better is the AC card in your opinion? I'm still running the stock card and it's incredibly flaky. I tried updating my drivers using the Intel's latest and the wireless drivers broken my trackpad. (Shit you not) - I haven't checked up on it 2 months though, may of been fixed.I was a day -4 Yoga 2 Pro owner. I got my Yoga a couple days before release when Best Buy posted it for sale early.
Here's my list of things I've found wrong the device that hasn't been stated:
- Terrible driver support. The Yoga 2 Pro is "flagship" ultrabook from Lenovo, yet it hasn't seen a major driver update since November 2013, other than a "Lenovo Motion Control" update pushed out in April '14
- Mustard Yellow: (Already stated, but I really want to nail this one home) This still isn't fixed and Lenovo won't recognize it. I've done the fix and only in Daily (or High Performance) mode with the brightness on max is the yellow issue fixed. As a programmer who needs to also do a lot of design work, the lack of rgb accuracy in certain brightness modes is a huge problem.
- Shutdown problems: Ever so often I shutdown my Yoga and it just hangs on a black screen with the keyboard lit up and won't turn off without my holding the power button. Happens every 1 out of 10 times. Might be a program I installed, but this has happened since day one for me.
- Keys stuck/still enabled when switching modes: Sometimes when I switch my Yoga from laptop to stand/tent/tablet modem, Windows detects keys as being pressed and won't stopped repeating the key press until I switch my Yoga back to laptop. ~(1 out of 30 chance) Also, on rare occasions, the keyboard and trackpad aren't disabled in tablet mode. ~(1 out of 100 chance)
- Wireless: The stock wireless card is abysmal, but this isn't just a Yoga problem. I get better reception on my phone sometimes and other times my Yoga fails to connect or drops connection. Depends on the router. The lack of 5GHz dual-band and AC is a joke.
- Rubberized material: Apparently they fixed this on the lower end Yoga 2 (non pro), but the rubberized texture on the lid is a massive blemish magnet. I just went on vacation and something in my backpack rubbed up against my Yoga which was in a black case and left a dark smear across the lid of my Yoga. I tried cleaning it with Alcohol and also baking soda; but because of the material, it won't come out. http://i.imgur.com/x8fxa7t.jpg
- Yoga is cooking itself?: I noticed this right before my vacation. The corners of my Yoga by the heat vents are slowly turning brown: http://i.imgur.com/FlrPWiB.jpg & http://i.imgur.com/OTHQ37J.jpg - Notice these are opposite sides by the yellow AC jack in the first picture. I've never owned a silver laptop before, so I don't know if this is common. But for a device that's less than a year old and "premium," this is a let down. This might just be a lack of material experience on my part. I don't do anything too intense on my Yoga, most gaming I've done is for ~18h total over the live of my Yoga.
- Windows 8.1 Hidpi: (Everyone's saying this, but again, huge deal) Not Lenovo's fault, but Hidpi mode is a mess. Sure, it's gotten better, but it still sucks. Chrome, my primary browser is also a mess.
Papa - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
There is a bios fix for the mustard yellow issue. No need to fiddle with modes anymore.I think this is it:
http://mobilesupport.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/DS...
lolTyler - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
Oh wow, that's a new BIOs fix, less than a month old. I'll check it out, thanks!lolTyler - Saturday, August 2, 2014 - link
Just did this "fix," and it's still a no go. Yellows are as mustardary as ever.I also tried locating the "new" Energy Manager that was released recently, which is suppose to help. I couldn't find a legit download. Only users posting random fileshare sites on Lenovo's forums with 60 minute download times and questionable package names.
I tried updating my current install of Energy Manager and I get a network error. Lenovo is really dropping the ball on their customer service.
I have a huge love/hate relationship with this laptop. My feelings for it are bio-polar, changing on a dime. When it works, it's great. When it doesn't, it fails hard.
KingGheedora - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
The shutdown/restart problems will only get worse. BEWARE THIS LAPTOP. I have owned the Y2Pro since February, and at first the shutdown problem happened once every few weeks, but then I started getting random reboots and lockups with corrupt screen image while watching XBMC, which seemed like they were happening due to heat. Once that started happening everything went downhill. The laptop wouldn't boot up, it just kept trying to boot, the keyboard backlight would flash, and then it would try to boot up again. That just keeps happening over and over.Initially I could leave the laptop alone for a while and then it would eventually boot. But the problem got worse and worse until 3 weeks ago. I haven't been able to boot it up at all. I even opened it and disconnected the battery and then tried booting, still not working.
This is a common problem with this model. There are many users in the Lenovo support forums who have had this issue, had their laptop replaced, and had the issue again with the replacement model they got back. Some users eventually got a full refund. I just got the RMA set up and will be sending mine in for the first time this week.
lolTyler - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
Wow, mine hasn't been that bad. I got my first lock up two weeks ago. The funniest part about it is someone was admiring my Yoga when it completely seized up. I'm sure it's a software issue, but like I said, the drivers haven't been updated in forever, so go figure.I've thought about trying to RMA or get a refund, but I'm still "partially" satisfied with my Yoga and there's nothing else on the market that intrigues me outside of a MBA.
Egg - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
Sorry for late reply.I haven't experienced the mustard yellow problems, shutdown problems, key sticking problems, or the wireless problems. I've used stock wireless on other Yoga 2 Pros and haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary, but not for too long.
I haven't really bothered to update the drivers, but I think you're right that there aren't many new ones. I probably don't mind any but the graphics drivers. I guess I got lucky; a friend had the boot issues out of box, sent it back, and got a perfect one.
I just switched back to Chrome after discovering Chrome 37 (on the beta channel) has HiDPI support and fixes the kerning issue :)