The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Review: OLED and LCD Tested
by Brett Howse & Brandon Chester on September 29, 2016 11:30 AM ESTPerformance
The X1 Yoga we have for review is likely going to be the last of the Skylake-U models to come across my desk. With the recent launch of Kaby Lake, many machines are going to be available with the updated CPU soon. But that doesn’t discount Skylake, which still offers some nice performance gains especially with Speed Shift coming with Windows 10, and a big update to the integrated graphics.
The review model came with the Core i7-6500U processor, while Lenovo also offers the Core i5-6200U, i5-6300U, and i7-6600U models. 8 GB of RAM is standard, and 16 GB is available as well, but on the Lenovo page, 16 GB appears to be only available with the most expensive CPU, which is unfortunate.
The X1 Yoga was run through the standard notebook lineup for tests, and will be compared against other Ultrabooks and 2-in-1s. The X1 Carbon from last year is a nice comparison because it’s the Broadwell version with the i7-5600U, so you will be able to see the progress with Skylake.
PCMark
Futuremark’s PCMark tests attempt to replicate real-world workloads, with lots of burst work and some sustained work with gaming and such. The Skylake X1 Yoga shows a nice performance gain over Broadwell here.
Cinebench
Unlike PCMark, Cinebench is a pure CPU task, with 100% CPU load for the duration of the test. There are both single-thread and multi-thread options as well. Here Skylake’s improved features like Speed Shift have less of an impact, and the overall performance is similar to Broadwell in the X1 Carbon, but remember the X1 Carbon is the i7-5600U as well, offering a tiny bit more MHz than the i7-6500U in the X1 Yoga.
x264
Like Cinebench, this test is a CPU bound test, where higher frequencies and more cores make a big difference. Unlike Cinebench though, Skylake does a bit better here and pulls a nice gap over Broadwell.
Web Tests
Although web benchmarks are an imperfect test, in the end we spend a lot of our digital time using the web, so it’s still important. With the launch of Windows 10, we switched from Chrome to Edge for our browser tests, and the different browsers will be pointed out in the graphs.
Once again, performance is pretty much in-line with other Ultrabooks, and the i7-6500U has the benefits of Speed Shift which can help out quite a bit on the bursty workloads of Javascript. It’s not a huge gain over the last generation, but it’s still an improvement.
Storage Performance
Storage is now a key selling point on laptops again. Most manufacturers are proud to say they offer PCIe storage, even if they tend to ship the cheaper TLC based drives. In the case of the X1 Yoga, we have both an LCD model and the OLED one to test, and they didn’t come with the same SSDs. The LCD model was outfitted with the Samsung PM871 which is a SATA TLC drive, and in this case 512 GB. The OLED one was a Samsung PM951, which is a NVMe TLC drive. On a premium device, it would be nice to see NVMe across the board, and preferably MLC storage, but margins tend to trump this and Samsung's TLC drives are a step above the rest. Lenovo also offers some drives with OPAL 2.0 certification, and NVMe drives up to 1 TB.
512GB SATA-based PM871 (left) vs 512GB NVMe-based PM951 (right)
The PM871 shows its SATA roots, capping out at less than 600 MB/s. The PM951 is pretty much the standard NVMe drive for the last year, and its read performance shows the big benefit of getting off SATA, although the write speeds are somewhat lower due to the TLC flash.
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Ej24 - Thursday, September 29, 2016 - link
Nope. There are at least two or three 15w "U" processors with Iris 540 and one 28w U processor with iris 550. The 580 graphics are only reserved for HQ (35-45w) and S (65w) processors. I'd love just to have iris 540. The typical 520, 4400, or 4000 Intel graphics are hardly good enough for light gaming at 720 or heavier loads during hardware decode/encode or the 50/50 software hardware hybrid pipelines Intel has been using.Ro_Ja - Thursday, September 29, 2016 - link
All of the GeForce with *40 and below are just a waste of good money now since the Iris HD 580 can stack up against even a 940M. I can hardly find a laptop in our country without any horrible AMD EXO Pros and NVIDIA's crappy entry-level cards. I just want less heat on the laptop I want to use.spikebike - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
I have a NUC with the Iris 540. It's pretty nice, handles the occasional light gaming, WebGL games, Minecraft, http://slither.io, and related much better than the non-iris graphics.forgot2yield28 - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
CAD. Not a huge niche, but Iris will outperform standard intel integrated GPU. Sometimes architects/engineers want to get work done on the road. The small footprint and lightweight of an ultrabook still has appeal.Byte - Thursday, September 29, 2016 - link
Would love to get this, but all the Yogas i've had had tons of hardware bugs that were near impossible to fix. Just getting the touchpad right took a few days of fiddling. If only they can get things working.Samus - Thursday, September 29, 2016 - link
Working in IT, I can back you up on one thing for sure. These machines are hell to work on. I've had to replace two fans in Thinkpad Yoga 12.5's and they are, in traditional Lenovo fashion, not detachable from the heat pipe (which is why they failed in the first place...the bearing is in direct-contact with the source) so the whole assembly needs to be needlessly replaced, instead of just popping the cover off with a latch and unscrewing two screws like you do in just about any modern HP Elitebook.The real insult to the Thinkpad Yoga line is the dreaded history of the battery "non-recall" that caused the Yoga 14 machines to hard power off if bumped in the front right corner where the battery is connected. This connection is very sensitive and the only way we found to help prevent this anomaly was to insulate the battery connection internally on every model we came across.
Routine repair by Lenovo would result in a machine returned with the same exact problems. Dealing with Lenovo support is like dealing with a car dealership. They don't listen to your problem and the mechanic runs their standard tests, says its ok, and returns it to the customer. They don't seem to have a system in place to diagnose specific issues.
Brett Howse - Thursday, September 29, 2016 - link
It already throttles GT2. Going to GT3e would help because of eDRAM but likely throttle even more.ajp_anton - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
Sure it throttles, nobody would expect an Iris 540 to go full speed at 15W. But with double the EUs and half the frequency, you get the same performance but at lower power (lower frequency allows for lower voltage). Wider GPUs generally have higher performance per watt because of this, at the expense of higher cost.Senti - Thursday, September 29, 2016 - link
I expect USB type-C in what you call "premium notebook" today. And better than Intel HD 520 graphics...It's sad to see that OLEDs are still "not quite ready". Battery life with web browsing was the last nail in the coffin.
BrokenCrayons - Thursday, September 29, 2016 - link
It's not bad hardware, but it does seem overpriced. Given the GPU choice, the panel resolution is too high for the graphics card to effectively drive it. 1080p is a stretch for the 520 doing anything intensive. Lenovo should offer a lower resolution & cheaper option. I can't see the usefulness of the hinge design either. Desktop operating systems work a lot better with access to a keyboard and mouse (or touchpad) so owners are probably paying for a novelty feature they'll rarely put to use.