Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 12 review

Lenovo's convertible ultrabook offers great design but weak battery

Immediately, the Thinkpad Yoga 12 sounds like a winning formula. The Thinkpad series has long maintained a reputation for offering well-built, highly functional business notebooks, while the Yoga line has given Lenovo plenty of experience in crafting modern laptop/tablet hybrids.

Indeed, this is no consumer tablet with some flimsy clip-on keyboard. With the Thinkpad Yoga 12, Lenovo is looking to combine ultrabook-level performance with the flexibility of a convertible device.

Design
The Thinkpad Yoga 12's headline feature is, of all things, its hinge. This enables the keyboard segment to pivot a full 360 degrees, effectively turning it into either a base or stand for the touchscreen. A full rotation turns the device into a flat tablet configuration, though measuring 316x221x18.8mm and weighing 1.58kg, it's a bit too clunky and heavy to be comfortably used in this way.

That said, the hinge itself is superbly constructed. It doesn't resist too much when opening the lid, but holds firm enough to minimise wobbling when using the keyboard as a base for the touchscreen.

That build quality extends to rest of the machine, too. As with previous Thinkpads, the Yoga 12 is built with a magnesium alloy chassis, giving it a pleasant matte look and impressive durability. After a week of use as our main laptop, including several trips in an unpadded bag, it suffered only some very minor scuffing, most of which could be buffed out with a cloth.

Similarities with Lenovo's older designs don't end with the chassis. The keyboard layout, signature mouse nub, chunky left/right click buttons and slight red highlights make the Thinkpad Yoga 12 a dead ringer for its more conventional ultrabook cousin, the Thinkpad X250. That's not a complaint, of course - the keyboard in particular is fantastic, with well-spaced keys that press with a satisfyingly generous amount of travel.

Plus, when the keyboard has been rotated further than 180 degrees - when using one of the tablet configurations, in other words - it will lock to avoid accidental presses. A small feature, but one that's certainly useful when on the move.

Connectivity options are also pretty good. Two USB 3.0 ports join a mini HDMI socket, four-in-one card reader and Lenovo's proprietary OneLink charging and data port. This is adequate by ultrabook standards and exceptional by tablet standards, since most don't even offer a single full-size USB port.

Our test model also included an optional, Wacom-made stylus. It's impressively precise and doesn't require a battery, making it slim enough to slide into a slot on the side of the chassis. It's a nifty little extra to plump for, though the decision to place said port right next to the power button might be questioned by those with large hands.

Display
There's a lot going for the Lenovo's 12.5in screen. It's multitouch compatible, boasts the great viewing angles we'd expect from an IPS display, and at 1920x1080 resolution with a 16:9 aspect ratio, we could fit a lot of tasks on-screen while keeping everything looking crisp and sharp.

Colour quality, however, was a letdown. Reds and oranges appear fairly rich but blues, greens and yellows often look washed-out. It's far from a ruinous level of desaturation, but still disappointing, considering the display's considerable qualities otherwise.

Next: Operating system and performance

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 12 review

Lenovo's convertible ultrabook offers great design but weak battery

Operating system and software
The Thinkpad Yoga 12 comes pre-installed with Window 8.1, Windows 8.1 Professional or - demonstrating the enduring popularity of Microsoft's older OS - Windows 7 Professional. This can be upgraded to 8.1 Professional for free after purchase, but doing so requires applying to receive physical update media that can take weeks to arrive.

Our test machine was pre-installed with Window 7, and to be honest, we weren't especially pleased. Windows 8.1's Metro interface would be much more at home on the Thinkpad's touchscreen, and its advantages over Windows 7 - such as vital security updates, synchronised Work Folders and Device Encryption as standard - would surely make it a superior enterprise tool.

It's baffling that Lenovo would intentionally downgrade their products to include an older, less secure OS, even if it can - eventually - be upgraded for free. Of course, many organisations are still using Windows 7, and as has been well-documented the much older Windows XP. But we'd think the default would be the latest OS even for a business purchase.

That's not to say that Windows 7 isn't a perfectly workable OS. It could certainly have been better-optimised for touch controls, but when using the laptop configuration, it performs very well indeed.

Besides, regardless of which OS is chosen, they'll all be compatible with Microsoft's business-oriented programs like Office 365 and OneDrive, as well as the wealth of third-party applications designed for Windows.

A free upgrade to Windows 10 will also be possible when it launches on 29 July, bringing with it a more touch-friendly UI and enhanced security to Windows 7 users without needing to have 8.1 sent in the post.

As for bundled software, Lenovo has kept the Thinkpad Yoga 12 largely unbloated. ‘Lenovo Thinkvantage Tools' is installed as standard, but we actually found some of these tools to be quite handy. Lenovo Communications Utility, for instance, is a video conferencing wizard that includes a useful range of customisation options for the integrated camera. Also, 'Airbag Protection' will temporarily stop the hard drive (if one is installed - see battery and storage) when it senses the device taking a sudden knock, potentially saving files from unfortunate drop-related accidents.

Performance
It's possible to customise the Thinkpad Yoga 12 with a choice of CPUs, all using Intel's latest Broadwell architecture: the i3 5005U, i5 5300U and i7 5500U. Our test machine included the dual-core, 2.3GHz i5, along with the maximum 8GB of RAM (an obviously cheaper 4GB is also available).

Although the i5 5300U is the middling option here, it's still a speedier processor on paper than that of the Thinkpad Yoga 12's nearest competitor, the HP Spectre x360 convertible ultrabook - not to mention the similarly-priced Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro. This power allowed the Thinkpad to shine in our benchmark tests, averaging scores of 215.5ms in Sunspider and 1323.9ms in Kraken (lower is better).

These performances are a good argument for choosing a convertible ultrabook over a keyboard-compatible tablet, as the Thinkpad handily crushed the same benchmark scores of Microsoft's Surface 3 - one of the more powerful tablets on the market.

It easily kept pace with everyday usage as well. There was no stuttering or slowdown when multitasking, allowing us to jump between word processing and video editing with ease. In fact, the i5 processor coped so well, so consistently, that it actually made the pricier i7 option seem like overkill. We can see the latter's appeal for particularly intensive design and 3D modelling work, though.

Next: Camera, battery and storage

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 12 review

Lenovo's convertible ultrabook offers great design but weak battery

Camera
A front-facing 720p camera sits atop the Thinkpad Yoga 12's screen panel. It can handle video calls satisfactorily, but the quality is too fuzzy and noisy for taking decent stills, while colours are also quite muted by default. It was simple enough to adjust brightness and saturation levels with Lenovo Communication Utility, but such a process shouldn't really be necessary in the first place.

Battery and storage
The Thinkpad's main weakness is its short battery life. Lenovo says the 8-cell, Lithium-polymer battery can last up to eight hours on a single charge, but in our burn tests - where we played a video file on permanent loop - it only averaged seven hours and 10 minutes. Not only is that 50 minutes short of the average work day, but it definitely looks like a losing number when the Spectre x360 can promise up to 12 hours without recharging.

At least the Thinkpad's battery can be removed and swapped out, although this involves the considerable inconvenience of unscrewing the keyboard's base.

Storage is a more positive story. Our test model featured a Samsung-built 256GB SSD, the largest of four possible solid-state options. It was never anything less than lightning fast, but if 256GB is a little on the small side for certain enterprise users, a 500GB HDD, 1TB HDD or 500GB SSHD hybrid can be chosen instead. Although we love the nimbleness of a good SSD, it's great that so many storage options are available to suit different needs.

Overall
Even with display and battery issues, there's a lot to like about the Thinkpad Yoga 12. It's fast and reliable enough to serve well as a productivity tool, and whether it's being used for work or play, the build quality and keyboard are among the best in the business.

However, these qualities come at a cost; specifically, £679.99 and upwards. That's the price of the most basic model, and the test machine we used (which approaches the highest end of hardware configurations) is a cool £1,110. That makes it a luxury purchase, rather than something that can be rolled out to staff en masse.

What's more, if a convertible device is needed, much cheaper options exist which aren't vastly less powerful, such as the Surface Pro 3 and Lenovo's own IdeaPad Yoga 11S. Even staying within the higher price range, the Spectre x360's battery makes it seem like a more practical top-end alternative.

There's one last problem: considering the size, the weight, the quality keyboard and the fact that it might arrive running Windows 7, there's a nagging sense that the Thinkpad Yoga 12 is a far better laptop than it is a tablet. For a product designed to switch regularly between the two, that's not a very desirable trait to have.