From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference
Showing posts with label Lenovo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lenovo. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Lenovo N20p Chromebook: This $329 laptop has a touchscreen display that can flip 300 degrees
World Tech Update 3 days ago | By Melissa Aparicio World Tech Update: Ballmer bids farewell Also this week, hackers steal data on 4.5 million U.S. hospital patients, Sprint launches a bezel-free smartphone, and a Silicon Valley hotel tries out a robot bellhop.
Lenovo N20p Chromebook review: This $329 model stands out for its 300-degree hinge
Lenovo N20p Chromebook $329.00 Take your run-of-the-mill 11-inch Chromebook, add a touchscreen with a 300-degree hinge, and you suddenly have a model that's a lot more versatile and interesting than most of its cohort. It's a touch...Lenovo’s N20p Chromebook comes close, oh so close, to being a truly groundbreaking Chromebook. If its 300-degree hinge were to bend back juuust another 60 degrees, we’d have a Chrome-based tablet. There: I said it.
Even if Lenovo stopped short of such a daring move, the N20p Chromebook’s versatile design still puts it well ahead of all other small Chromebooks (those with 11.6-inch screens). It’s a little more expensive at $329—most of its cohort aims to stay below the $300 price point—but if you can swing it, it’s worth the upcharge.
Image: Michael Homnick The hinge on the Lenovo N20p Chromebook allows 300 degrees of free movement, including fully flat.
The 300-degree hinge lets you flip the N20p‘s display backward all the way into what Lenovo calls ‘stand’ mode (and others might call ‘tent’ mode), for viewing movies or showing presentations. The image flips automatically with the display, which is fun to watch.
The screen also boasts 10-point touch, which is still pretty rare among Chromebooks—just Acer’s C270P and the super-expensive Google Chromebook Pixel share this trait. In any mode, you can navigate the Chrome OS easily with your fingers. If the image is flipped, a touch keyboard is automatically enabled for your typing needs—just touch in any text box, and it pops up. You can also enable the touchscreen keyboard in the settings to work in any mode.
Image: Michael Homnick The Lenovo N20p Chromebook has an 11.6-inch, 10-point touchscreen.
The 11.6-inch, LED backlit display itself is nothing special otherwise: It’s the same, old 1366x768 resolution of all other 11-inch Chromebooks. The brightness and viewing angles are middling. The shiny glass grabs a lot of reflection, which can be annoying.
The performance is nothing to write home about, either. The 2.16GHz Intel Celeron N2830 with 2GB of DDR3L/1333 memory managed a mediocre PeaceKeeper score of 1355.3.
Image: Melissa Riofrio This is one of two, very small speakers on the Lenovo N20p Chromebook. That's a little rubber foot next to it, that's how small it is.
I was also disappointed with the sound quality from the N20p’s two puny speakers. Located underneath the chassis, the speakers get a little more air in stand mode, where they actually project toward you. Nevertheless, the sound was just as tinny and bass-deprived as is sadly the norm for sound in most small laptops. I’m just surprised that given the N20p’s video-watching talents, the audio hardware wasn’t more special as well.
The battery life is very good. Lenovo promises up to 8 hours from the 34.8-watt-hour battery. Our battery test is pretty tough, but the N20p still posted a solid 6 hours before running out.
Image: Michael Homnick The left side of the Lenovo N20p Chromebook has ports for DC power, USB 3.0, mini-HDMI, and audio.
The N20p’s keyboard is one of the few on a Chromebook that I’ve actually enjoyed using. Most small Chromebooks I’ve tried have suffered from hard-plastic keys and a jarring travel that makes it uncomfortable to type for long periods. The N20p’s keys have a slightly softer feel, and the travel has a little cushion to it.
On the left side you’ll find four ports: DC power, USB 3.0, mini-HDMI, and headphone/mic.
Image: Michael Homnick The right side of the Lenovo N20p Chromebook has an SD card slot and a USB 2.0 port.
On the right, you’ll find a USB 2.0 port and an SD/MMC slot, plus the power button and the battery indicator. There’s also a 720p webcam over the display, and 16GB of onboard SSD storage.
I’m on the fence about small Chromebooks. Yes, they’re affordable and portable, but the limited dimensions, especially of the display, just frustrate me. While the N20p stops short of what I’d love to have—a full, 360-degree hinge that would give me a Chrome-based tablet—it still offers more than any other Chromebook of this size.
From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Lenovo Y50 gaming laptop review: Great performance spoiled by a sub-par display
Lenovo Y50 $1,299.00 The Lenovo Y50 is a bargain among gaming laptops—provided you can tolerate its subpar display, keyboard, and trackpad.
We’ve finally arrived at the long-foretold future where gaming laptops can be slim and light enough to fit comfortably on your lap. Heck, even a non-gaming company like Lenovo has managed the feat. Lenovo’s 2014 Y50 isn’t quite as slim as, say, the 0.7-inch thin Razer Blade, but at 0.9 inches and 5.4 pounds, the Y50 is still incredibly small for a powerful gaming laptop.
The Lenovo Y50 is impressively thin for a gaming laptop with a Core i7 processor and a discrete graphics processor.
The Y50 delivers a strong price-to-performance ratio. This $1200 laptop ships with an Intel Core i7-4700HQ CPU clocked at 2.4GHz, supplemented by an Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M graphics card. That’s pretty much the same core hardware as the Razer Blade Pro for half the cost, making the Y50 one of the best bang-for-buck mid-priced gaming laptops.
Lenovo worked with JBL on the Y50's speaker design.
The video card features Nvidia’s Battery Boost technology, which dynamically adjusts the GPU’s power draw to keep games at a steady frame rate while putting the lightest load possible on the computer’s battery. And Nvidia’s ShadowPlay technology allows you to record game footage without a performance hit. You can read more about Nvidia’s latest mobile GPU architecture in this story.
The Lenovo Y50's battery life isn't all that impressive considering that the Alienware and Razer machines have larger displays.
The Y50 comes with 16GB of DDR3L/1600 RAM and a 1TB, 5400-rpm hybrid hard drive with 8GB of solid-state memory. A hybrid drive is better than a purely mechanical one—especially one that spins its platters at just 5400 rpm—but it’s still something of a letdown considering that most gaming laptops are moving exclusively to SSDs. SSDs are expensive, though, so I’m sure that was one of Lenovo’s key cost-cutting moves.
The Y50's backlit keyboard looks much better than it feels.
The left side of the machine features two USB 3.0 slots, an HDMI-out port, Ethernet, and the power input. The right side has one USB 2.0 port, a memory-card reader, a headset jack, S/PDIF digital-audio out, and a security-lock slot.
The Y50 is a steal at this price. It doesn’t compare to the raw power of something like the Alienware 17, but that’s also a much more expensive machine. Lenovo packed a lot of power into this machine while keeping the price low.
The Y50 delivered a middling Laptop Worldbench score of 90, which is lower than our baseline model (a Dell XPS 15 with an Intel Core i7-4702HQ and a Nvidia GeForce GT 750M) and much lower than the Alienware 17’s score of 122.
The Y50's WorldBench score is 10-percent lower than that of the Dell XPS 15 we've been using as a reference point.
Much of the problem resides with the Y50’s hard drive, which drags down the whole system. When you move over to games—in other words, experiences that are less restricted by the hard drive—the Y50 begins to hold its own.
The Y50 pumped out a perfectly respectable 92.5 frames per second (fps) when running Battlefield 4 at 1920x1080, medium settings. That’s pretty much on a par with the Alienware 17, which delivered 98 fps, and it’s definitely better than the 60 fps most PC players would consider “standard.”
The full-sized gigabit Ethernet jack has a spring-loaded hinged jaw.
As for BioShock Infinite, here the Y50 managed 73 frames per second—slightly better than the Razer Blade Pro’s 70 frames per second with comparable hardware, although it falls far short of the Alienware 17’s 121 frames per second.
The presence of an Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M graphics processor means the Lenovo Y50 will have no trouble delivering playable frame rates with hardcore games.
Like the Blade Pro, the Y50 doesn’t offer much in the way of longevity. You’ll need to play games on low settings in a few years, and it will be obsolete soon after that. But that’s less of an issue with a $1200 laptop than a $2000 machine like the Blade Pro.
The Y50’s battery clung to life for three hours and 16 minutes—almost exactly the same as the Blade Pro’s three hours and 18 minutes. That’s about 20 minutes longer than the Alienware 17 delivered—in other words, it’s pretty standard battery life for a gaming laptop.
The Y50 has enough I/O ports to serve as a desktop replacement.
The Y50’s performance isn’t mind-blowing in the grand scheme of things, but bear in mind that I just compared it to two machines that retail for around $2000 each. The Y50 is clearly no slouch, and it costs much less than some other laptops delivering equal performance.
So what enabled Lenovo to create such a powerful laptop that sells for less than its competitors? Compromises. Many, many compromises.
Lenovo’s most egregious sin was choosing an absolutely abysmal LCD panel. It’s one of the worst HD screens I’ve ever used. It’s dim, it’s lousy at color reproduction, and it looks even worse when viewed even slightly off-axis. It just looks blurry to me. The screen is so ugly I found myself not wanting to use the laptop even to watch movies, let alone play games.
If only the Y50's display looked as good as its aggressively designed enclosure.
The keyboard’s red backlighting is attractive enough, and the keys have a soft and silky finish. By shrinking the keys to squeeze in a numeric keypad, however, Lenovo renders typing a pain. The Enter and Right Shift keys aren’t liable to give you problems, but the comically small Backspace key probably will. I found it hard to locate without looking down. The keys feel a bit mushy, too. Despite how little they need to travel to register, I found myself dropping strokes with regularity.
The trackpad is also annoying. Because it’s off-center, I found myself accidentally dragging my left palm or the heel of my thumb across the trackpad while typing. Even when I could refrain from accidentally triggering the cursor while hammering out a Word document, the trackpad’s recessed elevation makes for an uncomfortable palm rest. Finally, you can click on the bottom left and right edges of the trackpad, but they’re loose enough to produce an unpleasant squawking noise when tapped. The whole contraption feels flimsy.
On the bright side, the Y50’s speakers pump out decent audio with better bass response than the typical treble-heavy laptop speakers deliver. Manufacturers building computers that retail for much higher prices could learn a thing or two from Lenovo’s partnership with JBL. These speakers won’t beat any decent pair of headphones or external speakers, but they won’t disappoint when you’re on the go.
In terms of gaming performance, Lenovo’s Y50 is one of the best laptops in its class. It’s a great choice if you’re looking for a portable gaming rig on a budget. Unfortunately, Lenovo compromised several key components—the keyboard, trackpad, and (most importantly) the display—in order to offer the Y50 at a mid-range price. Hook up a mouse, keyboard, and external display and you’ll have a solid gaming machine. If you can’t tolerate those compromises, you might have to bite the bullet and spend more money for a competitor’s offering.
From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Lenovo C260 review: This inexpensive all-in-one PC performs more like a tablet
Lenovo C260 All-in-One PC $480.00 Penny pinchers in need of a very inexpensive all-in-one desktop PC will be happy with the Lenovo C260 only if their computing needs are truly minimal. The best all-in-one PCs bundle solid desktop features in a sleek display—no unsightly tower required. But because they include a display, they often cost a lot more than traditional desktops, a problem Lenovo seeks to address with its C260 all-in-one, a 19.5-incher which goes for $480 (Amazon was selling this model for $450 as of this writing).
The C260 is pleasing enough to look at. It’s compact, with a medium-sized black bezel surrounding its 10-point touchscreen (at this price you don’t really expect the edge-to-edge glass we see in higher-end models). And at first glance, its feature list—which includes four USB ports, gigabit ethernet, HDMI out, a DVD burner, and an integrated 720p webcam—sounds good.
Frankly, we'd have happily traded the optical drive for better wireless networking hardware and more USB 3.0 ports.
But you get what you pay for, and the C260 skimps in many ways to achieve its low price. It might be adequate for someone with truly minimal computing needs—email, light web browsing, or simple word-processing tasks—but others will find at least some of the many compromises annoying.
Boo! There's just one USB 3.0 port, and no HDMI input for connecting a videogame console or set-top box.
Performance is the obvious starting point. Powered by a Pentium J2900 CPU with integrated Intel HD graphics (the latest branch on Intel’s Bay Trail family tree) and 4GB of DDR3/160 memory, the C260 eked out a dismal Desktop WorldBench 9 score of 28, despite having a relatively fast, but low-capacity hard drive. It’s only 500GB, but it spins its platter at 7200 rpm (we’ve seen all too many inexpensive PCs with 5400-rpm drives).
The Lenovo C260 produced one of the most anemic Desktop WorldBench 9 scores on record.
Granted, our 100-point baseline PC consists of an Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, discrete graphics and a solid-state drive, but very few of the PCs we’ve tested have scored below 50. The Pentium chip, which lacks hyperthreading, likely is the major culprit, although the minimal amount of RAM combined with integrated graphics almost certainly contributes as well (the system can be upgraded to 8GB of memory).
Intel's Pentium J2900 CPU might be better suited to a tablet than a desktop PC.
This is not a unit you’d want to use for multitasking, which would severely challenge its memory resources. Even YouTube videos with lots of movement showed signs of strain, including pixelation. I also found touchscreen response to be less than snappy.
The YouTube issues, however, may also relate to another significant drawback: The unit’s Wi-Fi client adapter is a 1x1 model that supports only 2.4GHz, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. A 1x1 adapter like this can support just one spatial stream for transmission and one for receiving. This adapter is also limited to operating on the very crowded 2.4GHz spectrum, which will be problematic in environments where lots of other wireless networks are operating.
A halfway decent wired keyboard is better than a crummy wireless one, but did I mention this machine needs more USB 3.0 ports. Oh well, at least it has gigabit Ethernet.
That’s why we recommend using the less crowded 5GHz frequency band for media streaming (most PCs we review these days are outfitted with adapters that support both the 2.4- and the 5GHz bands, and new models increasingly support the faster 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard). Anyone trying to stream media would be well advised to use this computer’s hardware gigabit ethernet port.
You'll be limited to the playing very simple machines on this all-in-one.
There are other irritants as well: Only one of the C260’s four USB ports supports USB 3.0—the others handle only slower USB 2.2 connections. And unless you pay extra to upgrade to a wireless keyboard and mouse, two of those four ports will be occupied by the wired peripherals that come with the unit.
The C260’s audio sounded OK, and its webcam worked fine for Skype calls. But multitaskers, people who depend on Wi-Fi for streaming media, and anyone seeking tools for any computationally intensive work should seek a more powerful system.
From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga review: Yoga flexibility melded with ThinkPad muscle
Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga $1,299.00 This business-oriented Ultrabook hybrid is a successful marriage of Yoga design and ThinkPad durability, features, and docking options.The Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga isn’t as slim or sexy as its colorful consumer-oriented sibling, the IdeaPad Yoga 2 Pro, nor does it have the Yoga 2 Pro's alluring 3820-by-1200-pixel display. But this hybrid Ultrabook checks all the must-have business feature boxes, as befits its place in the ThinkPad lineup. And it does so in typical Yoga style.
So what does the ThinkPad Yoga have that the "darn close to perfect" Yoga 2 Pro doesn't? Both models have touchscreens with 360-degree hinges, so they can be used in tablet, laptop, stand, and "tent" modes. ThinkPad Yoga adds business-oriented goodies such as a matte Gorilla Glass display, a tough magnesium-alloy case, a port for a desktop docking station, and that classic TrackPoint button in the center of its keyboard.
ROBERT CARDIN Lenovo's ThinkPad Yoga has that famous hinge that allows it to be used in notebook, stand, tent, or tablet mode.
The ThinkPad Pro also has an innovative "Lift 'n Lock" feature that raises the frame surrounding its backlit keyboard so that it’s flush with the keys when the laptop is in tent or tablet mode. This helps prevent damage from dirt and spills. Contrast that with the Yoga 2 Pro, which simply turns it keyboard off when it’s flipped around.
The Yoga comes in a pedestrian gray case with rounded corners, unlike the sleek tapered design of the Yoga 2 Pro. It's not ugly, but where is it written that business laptops can't have sexy looks or come in a color scheme other than gray or black?
The main attraction of the Yoga line is the backflip hinge, which lives up to its promise. I flew cross-country twice during this review, and the "stand" mode, where the screen is upright with the keyboard flat on the table behind it, proved to be perfect for such cramped quarters. It’s much more stable in bumpy airspace than tent mode. I could watch videos or use the touchscreen to surf.
Lenovo: Best and Worst Laptop Brands of 2014
The world’s biggest PC maker once again turned in a very impressive performance in our report, finishing second out of nine brands. As expected, Lenovo continued to rock the keyboard and touchpad category, but it also fared well in the design, value and selection, and software categories. Lenovo fell a bit flat in tech support compared with the previous year, but overall, we highly recommend this brand for PC buyers, whether you’re looking for a consumer or business laptop — or a notebook-tablet hybrid.
In our reviews, 11 Lenovo laptops received a 4-star rating, and five of those received an Editors’ Choice award. The highest marks generally went to the brand’s business-minded systems, such as the ThinkPad X240 and T440s. But we also praised the gaming- and budget-friendly IdeaPad Y510P and the innovative IdeaCentre Horizon 27.
MORE: 9 Best Lenovo Laptops
By our count, Lenovo’s tech support has grown steadily worse over the past three years. The company’s website is cluttered, its Community Knowledge Base is too specific to be helpful in general cases and its new social media support is inconsistent. Phone-call service is particularly frustrating and time-consuming: Our average call time with Lenovo was a whopping 49 minutes and 18 seconds, almost twice as long as for any other brand.
MORE: Lenovo: Tech Support Showdown Rating
All hail Lenovo, king of the hybrid. Just look at the IdeaPad Yoga 11, Yoga 11s, Yoga Pro 2 and ThinkPad Yoga to see the right way to create a lightweight, portable tablet-notebook. However, the company dropped to the No. 3 spot in design because of the Flex 14; it’s the boxy, chintzy, less-flexible cousin of the Yoga. Lenovo also lost the fun splash of color we’ve come to expect from the IdeaPad line. Instead, the company has been serving up plastic gray (s400 and s405), with a heaping side portion of dark brown (z400 Touch and G580). At least the Y510 boasts intense red keyboard backlighting.
Thanks to their strong tactile feedback, wide key spacing and curved key shape, Lenovo’s keyboards — on both its business and consumer laptops — continue to set the gold standard. The company’s touchpads offer smooth, accurate navigation, and its TrackPoint pointing sticks are the most precise pointing devices you’ll find anywhere, even though the company compromised the TrackPoint experience slightly by eliminating the stick’s dedicated buttons, and building left and right click into the stiff top of the touchpad.
While Lenovo’s notebooks offer generally pleasant audio and visuals, there are few instances in which its devices stand out from the competition. For example, the IdeaPad S405 was brighter than some competitors, but its viewing angles were poor. The IdeaPad Flex 14's 1366 x 768-pixel display boasted colorful visuals but was dimmer than the average notebook. In general, Lenovo’s laptop displays, which averaged 267 lux, were more luminous than the average notebook (242 lux).
The business-minded ThinkPad T440s suffered from muffled audio, but more multimedia-minded machines, like the IdeaPad Y510p, boasted booming JBL speakers. Lenovo’s laptops matched the 85-decibel category average during our testing.
Lenovo’s innovation score dropped from 10 points last year to 7 this year, but the company is still doing some interesting things. For instance, the ThinkPad Yoga has a keyboard deck that raises to hide the keys when you’re using the hybrid in tablet mode. We are also pleased to see the voice and motion control features in such devices as the IdeaPad U430 Touch.
From business laptops to Ultrabooks, Lenovo has one of the broadest range of laptops of any brand. Within its three main lines — the G Essentials, ThinkPads and IdeaPads — you’ll find good options at a variety of price points. For instance, the ThinkPad line ranges from the rugged X140e ($489) to the $1,343 Helix Ultrabook. You can also customize your laptop via Lenovo’s website. Plus, fans of the traditional Start button will be glad to find a Windows 7 option on many of the company’s laptops.
MORE: Best Windows 7 Laptops Still Available For Sale
Lenovo continues to impress with its software selection, providing handy utilities across flagship notebook lines. IdeaPads, like the Flex 14, feature One Key Recovery for instant backup, a stylish Energy Manager and Lenovo Companion for quick app discovery. Business-minded Lenovo laptops, such as the ThinkPad T440s, pack QuickConnect for controlling your notebook with your Android phone, as well as QuickCast for transferring data between machines on the same network.
From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Lenovo ThinkPad X240 review: A no-nonsense business laptop
If Lenovo’s spendy ThinkPad X1 Carbon is the laptop every corporate drone craves, Lenovo’s thrifty ThinkPad X240 is the laptop their employer is more apt to spring for (assuming, of course, that the company’s IT department has standardized on Lenovo and not Dell, HP, Toshiba, or some other commercial laptop builder).
You might think the ThinkPad X240 is too thick and too heavy to qualify for Ultrabook designation, but it’s only 0.79 inches thick and it weighs just 3 pounds. And there’s a very good reason why the X240 doesn’t taper to a knife edge like the X1 Carbon does: The X240 is outfitted with two batteries and a battery bridge that enables you to swap a depleted battery for one that’s fully charged without turning the machine off. That’s slick.
ROBERT CARDIN Lenovo's ThinkPad X240 looks thick only next to wafer-thin notebooks like Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon. This machine is only 0.79 inches thick and it weighs three pounds.
PCWorld’s Worldbench suite rewards laptops equipped with SSDs—the configuration reviewed here includes a 256GB model—but the X240’s score of 282 leaves it slightly behind Dell’s XPS 12 Ultrabook Convertible (which has the same dual-core CPU) and Samsung’s Ativ Book 7 (which is powered by a third-generation Core i5-3337U, another dual core). This is a little surprising considering that the ThinkPad had twice as much DDR3/1600 memory: 8GB versus 4GB in the Dell and the Samsung.
Worldbench favors machines with SSDs, and the ThinkPad X240 we reviewed has a 256GB model.
The x240 packs a fourth-generation Intel Core processor, so you can expect strong battery life. Our eval unit came with a Core i5-4200U, but you can make other choices when you place your order. The three-cell battery in this one ran for 6 hours and 26 minutes, which is typical of Haswell-powered notebooks, but Lenovo also offers an optional six-cell battery that should run much longer than the average workday. That large battery will add weight and about a half-inch of thickness to the X240—it will protrude from the bottom rear of the laptop.
If you don't mind toting an extra battery, the ThinkPad X240's hot-swap feature will keep you productive for many, many hours.
The X240 has a number of I/O ports you won’t find on the 2013 X1 Carbon, including a gigabit ethernet port, a smart card reader, 34mm Express card socket, a VGA port, an always-on USB 2.0 port, and a docking port on its bottom. Like the X1 Carbon, it also has two USB 3.0 ports, a mini DisplayPort, an SD card reader, and a fingerprint reader (an included option our eval unit).
You can also order your machine with several different 12.5-inch displays, but I recommend staying away from the 1366-by-768 touchscreen I evaluated. It’s a bright IPS panel that’s very responsive to touch, but it looked fuzzy and grainy to my eyes. Place it next to a laptop with a 1920-by-1080 display and you’ll experience severe pixel envy. Ordering one for this machine will add $330 to its $1555 price tag.
I was also a little disappointed in the X240’s backlit, island-style keyboard. I've used a number of Lenovo keyboards, and this one just doesn't feel as nice (for lack of a better term). The spacebar has an oddly stiff feel that made me miss-tap it frequently, and the key spacing didn't feel as comfortable. It's not a terrible keyboard, but it's not as outstanding as I've come to expect from a ThinkPad.
ROBERT CARDIN The 1366 by 768 display left me wanting more definition.
TrackPoint fans will still find the nubby red dot in the center of the keyboard, but the dedicated buttons are gone. You'll need to depress the whole glass trackpad and hope your finger is in the right zone (there are five) to get the type of click you want. I found middle clicks especially hard to hit accurately. Speaking of the one-giant-button trackpad, it depresses easily and quietly. Its generous size enables you to make the most of Windows 8’s multitouch gestures, but I ran into a few frustrating moments when it registered two-finger scrolling when I only had one finger down. Apart from that, I found it to be smooth and responsive for navigation.
If you’re looking for a workhorse laptop with incredible battery life, Lenovo’s X240 is a solid choice. Its graphite-black chassis won’t turn heads, but it will help you travel light and get a lot of work done. Just think hard before you order one with the 1366 by 768 touchscreen. This machine deserves better, and so do you.
From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference
Monday, February 3, 2014
Lenovo Flex 20 review: This tabletop all-in-one makes too many compromises
Lenovo Flex 20 $800.00 The Lenovo Flex 20 makes a lot of compromises to achieve its light weight and low price. Most people would be better off saving a little more cash to buy a machine they won’t outgrow so quickly.PC manufacturers seem convinced that everyone wants a Windows tablet, be it 8 inches or big enough to double as a TV tray. The larger models are effectively all-in-one PCs that can lie flat to allow several people to interact with the touchscreen at once.
Lenovo scored a 4-star win with its 27-inch Horizon. The Flex 20, which the company describes as a “dual-mode desktop,” is smaller, lighter, and less expensive than the Horizon, addressing two of the complaints we lodged against that machine. Regrettably, in the Flex 20 those advantages come at the cost of performance and resolution, two shortcomings that pretty much ruin the table-gaming experience.
ROBERT CARDIN The spring-loaded hinge on the Lenovo Flex 20’s back panel allows you to position it at nearly any angle, including completely flat.
The Flex 20’s specs read more like those of a bargain-basement cheapie than of a machine you’d expect to play games on. Powering the Flex 20 are a dual-core fourth-generation Intel Core i3-4010U processor, integrated Intel HD 4400 Graphics, just 4GB of DDR3/1600 memory, and a 500GB mechanical hard drive that spins its platters at 5400 rpm. The saddest spec of all is the screen resolution of 1600 by 900 pixels—a 19.5-inch IPS display needs 1080p.
ROBERT CARDIN Perhaps Lenovo’s engineers don’t want you to reduce the Flex 20’s portability by hanging too many devices from it. But to provide just two USB ports? Really?
The performance is what you’d expect of a machine with such specs. The Flex 20 managed to post a WorldBench 8.1 score of just 78. That’s 22 percent slower than the benchmark results of our reference all-in-one desktop, an Acer Aspire U A5600U-UB13 powered by a third-gen Intel Core i5-3230M. The 27-inch Horizon, meanwhile, delivered a WorldBench 8.1 score of 111. And Dell’s XPS 18 Touch—another all-in-one tablet/hybrid—scored an impressive 171 (with the assistance of its 32GB SSD cache drive).
The Lenovo Flex 20’s battery life is very good, but the machine turned in an otherwise disappointing benchmark performance.
What does that mean for family game night? A lot of waiting. Lenovo created a custom interface called Aura, designing it in a ring so that users can control the tablet from any side of the screen. Launching a game in Aura left me on a blank screen long enough for me to start wondering whether the game was actually launching or if the whole thing had crashed (which it did, on occasion).
Battery life is adequate for a quick evening of gaming. The Flex 20 lasted 3 hours, 25 minutes playing high-def video in our run-down tests, which means the kids could grab it for movie night—and considering that it’s just 7.7 pounds, they could probably get it to their room without your help. Gaming will eat that up a little faster: In our tests, 2 hours of play left the battery with a 25 percent reserve.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon review: An enterprise-class notebook to fall in love with
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch $1,215.00 This quietly elegant executive notebook is small, slim, sturdy and a dream to use. It's expensive, and its battery life is short, but it's one of the best business-travel companions we've seen. ThinkPads have been a class act among business laptops since IBM launched the line over two decades ago. As a Lenovo brand, they remain pricey, but they’re also exceptionally easy to carry and comfortable to use. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch stands out even from its forebears.
I recently took this Windows 8 Pro model with me on a flight from San Francisco to the East Coast and quickly fell into serious like with it. Fabricated from carbon fiber, it’s one of the thinnest and lightest 14-inch Ultrabooks around, and I found its low-glare touchscreen big enough to view spreadsheets without stressing my wrists and fingertips while panning and scrolling. The display was easy to read even in the constantly changing lighting conditions inside the aircraft’s cabin.
ROBERT CARDIN The wafer-thin ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch weighs just 3.4 pounds.
The X1 Carbon Touch comes with other intelligent design elements, too: A perfectly tensioned screen panel that I could quickly flip open to the exact viewing angle I wanted; a quiet, cushy keyboard that’s a pure joy to type on; a large, smooth glass multitouch trackpad with excellent palm rejection to minimize fly-away cursors while I typed; and a case that’s tough and stiff, yet soft enough I could comfortably perch my palms on the keyboard deck for long stretches while I pounded out notes for this review.
I do have a few complaints. My biggest beef is the short battery life. I flipped open the X1 Carbon Touch soon after we lifted off from SFO, and it expired more than an hour from Boston. I’m used to getting to New England with juice to spare. I have a few other gripes, which I’ll mention later. All in all, though, the X1 Carbon Touch is a terrific machine. It’s one of the most comfortable and easiest-to-use notebooks I’ve laid eyes and hands on, and it’s amazingly tough for such a thin and light model.
If all you’re after is speed and feeds, you can find much of what the X1 Carbon Touch offers in machines costing hundreds of dollars less. Its most exciting silicon is the lightning-fast 180GB SSD that gave it the edge in our performance tests (more on that below). The processor (Intel’s 1.8GHz Core i5-3427U, with its HD Graphics 4000 integrated GPU) and the 4GB of memory are standard fare on small notebooks, and you can’t upgrade either.
ROBERT CARDIN Not that you'll be playing a lot of games on the company's notebook, but it's good to know the X1 Carbon Touch can keep up with the competition on that metric.
The Carbon Touch shines—truly shines—when you take it with you and actually use the thing. It’s so light and slim I hardly noticed it in my carry-on bag. It weighs only 3.4 pounds and measures 0.75 inches thick. Still, this ThinkPad hardly flexed at all when I gripped its ends with both hands and gave it the torque-twist test.
Getting down to business with the X1 Carbon Touch is an almost unbridled pleasure. The screen panel slightly overhangs the keyboard deck; that, plus the slightly tacky, almost rubbery case surface makes the laptop easy to grip and flip open, and it almost instantly wakes up from Sleep mode. Even from a dead start, the Carbon Touch fires up in 10 seconds, among the fastest full boots we’ve seen among little notebooks.
The 14-inch screen is based TN (twisted nematic) technology, so colors are less vivid, and viewing angles aren't as wide compared with an IPS (in-plane switching) display, but the viewing angles are exceptionally good for a TN panel, even from the top or the bottom. The screen resolution of 1600 by 900 pixels is a good match for the display’s size.
ROBERT CARDIN You'd never guess that the X1 Carbon Touch's display is based on what's widely considered to be inferior twisted-nematic technology.
And that brings me to input, one of this ThinkPad’s greatest strengths. You won’t find anything better on any computer this small. The display responds nimbly and accurately to touch gestures, and so does the touchpad. The keyboard is hands-down the best I’ve used on any notebook under 4 pounds. Lenovo spaced the keys an eighth-inch apart (only slightly less than the gaps you find on full-sized keyboards), the keys are slightly concave from side by side, they have the same slightly tacky surface you find on the case, and the tactile feedback is spot-on. The end result: I cranked out loads of typo-free copy even while wedged into my window seat on the 737. Plus, the keyboard is so quiet, it has almost no clacking sound to it at all.
This ThinkPad comes with two pointing devices: the eraser-head-like TrackPoint nestled within the keyboard keys, and the trackpad below the keyboard. The TrackPoint’s big benefit is that you don’t need to move your hands off the keyboard to use it. Touch-typists will love it, but I found the TrackPoint overly sensitive. Your mileage may vary. I could do multitouch gestures on it like pinching to zoom, so I didn’t have to move my hands up to the screen very often, and I worked blissfully free of flyaway pointer problems—the first notebook I’ve reviewed with that perfect record. The touchpad, though, is a little finicky when I tap on it to mimic left-mouse key actions.
Lenovo's Ultrabook delivered an excellent WorldBench 8.1 score. (Click charts to enlarge.)
The X1 Carbon Touch has some great usability features, such as the dedicated buttons underneath the screen for adjusting the volume and muting the onboard mic. These are very handy when making video calls. The speakers themselves are mounted near the front of the PC, beneath the keyboard deck. The bottom edges of the laptop slope up, so the sound bounces off whatever surface the computer is resting on. That’s fine if it’s a desktop or table, but it can sound muffled if the PC’s sitting on a soft surface like a seat cushion (although that’s not a good practice anyway, since that could block the cooling vent).
So where could Lenovo most improve this ThinkPad? Battery life and expandability. Our battery-rundown test puts battery life at 4 hours, 9 minutes, but it seemed even less in my day-to-day use. A saving grace: The battery recharges really fast. I charged it to 75 percent in 30 minutes, which is great even if you have tight flight connections.
Bring a portable battery charger with you on long trips. The X1 Carbon Touch's battery poops out much too early.
The X1 Carbon Touch also has fewer connections than I expect: just two USB ports (one 2.0 and one 3.0), a mini DisplayPort, an SD Card slot, and a headset/mic jack. You can use the USB 2.0 connector to charge a tablet or smartphone even when the computer is powered down. You get no ethernet port, so it’s good that Lenovo provides an ethernet dongle, but that’s something extra to remember to pack—and possibly lose. Lenovo also sells a VGA dongle for $35, if you really need one. I also found a SIM card slot on the back of the notebook for mobile broadband. But you’ll need to buy a 3G card and make sure that the needed WWAN (wireless wide-area network) antennas are installed inside the computer.
As is often the case with superthin notebooks, hardware upgrades are limited and a pain to accomplish. Your IT department might love the X1 Carbon Touch less than you. The Core i5 processor and the 4GB of memory, for example, are fixed. Apart from adding a WWAN card, you can bump up only the size of the SSD.
Not that you'll be playing a lot of games on the company's notebook, but it's good to know the X1 Carbon Touch can keep up with the competition on that metric.
The X1 Carbon Touch performs quite well compared to its ultraportable peers. Thanks to its superfast SSD, it chalked up a 289 on our WorldBench 8.1 score, beating out nearly all its Core i5-based challengers and even some Core i7-based notebooks. As for real-time gaming, this ThinkPad plays them better than most small notebooks, but it’s still nothing to tweet about. Running BioShock Infinite at a resolution of just 1024 by 768 and with image quality set to low, the Carbon Touch delivered only 24 frames per second. That’s not awful, but it’s less than the 30 fps threshold you need to have a great experience.
You’ll want to keep the ThinkPad X1 Carbon's AC power brick close at hand, which will raise your carrying weight to 4.2 pounds. Apart from that and the too few connectors, it's a truly great notebook. It costs a pretty penny, and its performance won’t knock your argyle socks off, but it delivers enough power to cruise through all your typical business tasks, it’s tough as nails, and it’s an eminently easy machine to carry around and use. If you travel for work, those are the things that really matter.
From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference
Monday, January 6, 2014
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Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro review: Great performance and a better-than-Retina display
Lenovo has come darn close to creating the perfect laptop/tablet combo design with its 3-pound, $1000-plus IdeaPad Yoga 2 Pro. It brings Windows users a better-than-Retina display, has speed to spare, is sturdily constructed, and is remarkably thin for a dual-role design. The only thing missing is Lenovo's famously excellent typing experience.
The first thing you'll notice when you boot a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro is how silky, yet sharp everything on the screen appears. Even putting your eyes right up to the display, it's extremely difficult to spot the gaps between pixels. That's what happens when you put 4,560,000 (3800 by 1200) pixels in a mere 13.3-inch diagonal space. Movies, text, icons—wow. Aside from the glare produced by the touchscreen glass, it doesn't get any better.
The Yoga 2 Pro's 3200-by-1800 pixel display is a joy to work on.
The Yoga 2 Pro sports double-jointed hinges that allow the display to flip 360 degrees for use as a tablet. Since it's only 0.61-inch thick, it doesn't feel as awkward in that role as previous convertibles I've tested have. The design also lends itself to being propped open with the keyboard portion serving as base or kickstand. Flip it on end, and you can use it on a desk or table in portrait orientation as well. The Yoga 2 is currently available with a silver-gray or clementine-orange upper shell.
The very thin Yoga 2 doesn't have a whole lot of space for ports and switches. Indeed, the power switch on the front right (in laptop mode) is about as tiny as you'll find on a laptop. The only thing tinier is the Novo button next to it that initiates recovery operations when pressed to start the unit.
Tent mode takes great advantage of Windows 8's touch-oriented user interface.
The right side also has the screen-orientation lock, the volume rocker button, a headset jack, and an always-on USB 2.0 port. The left side has a USB 3.0 port, a mini-HDMI port, and an SD memory card slot. The Yoga 2 has 802.11 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0, but the Wi-Fi is only 802.11b/g/n, not the newer, faster 802.11ac, which may cause regret in the future. There's no ethernet port, so you'll need a USB adapter if you need to work tethered.
Our review configuration came running Windows 8.1, with a Core i5-4200 CPU, 4GB of DDR3/1600 RAM, and a 128GB Samsung SSD as core components. A number of configurations are available, with the beefiest model on Lenovo's site sporting a Core i7-4500U and a 512GB SSD for $1500.
The Yoga 2 Pro posted an excellent WorldBench 8.1 score. (Click charts to enlarge.)
Our Yoga 2 Pro racked up a more-than-acceptable WorldBench 8.1 score of 289, with gaming frame rates typical of Intel integrated HD 4400 graphics. Games such as BioShock Infinite are playable at resolutions up to 1024 by 768. Tested battery life is 5 hours, 29 minutes, which is quite good.
Lenovo is renowned for delivering the best laptop typing experience in the business. The Yoga 2 Pro does not measure up to that level, though not for lack of effort. The dual laptop/tablet design forced the company to recess the back-lit, Chiclet-style keyboard further into the keyboard deck than usual. That makes for more finger travel and is initially disconcerting—especially when the key depresses below the bottom of the well. The unsculpted keys don't help.
Although it's not designed for gaming, the Yoga 2 Pro delivers acceptable frame rates with BioShock Infinite.
When I propped up the back of the laptop to tilt the unit forward, the tactile and aural feedback were okay, but I was still banging the joints of my thumbs on the keyboard deck every time I went for the spacebar. That's partly owing to my miserable typing habits, but the Yoga 2 is not a typist's laptop.
The Yoga 2 Pro lasted 5 hours and 29 minutes during our battery-rundown test.
Some users have complained about being able to feel the keys when holding the Yoga 2 as a handheld tablet. My advice? Get over it. Currently, there's no way to address that issue in a laptop this thin.
The Yoga 2 Pro's touchpad, on the other hand, is supersilky to the touch and nicely, but subtly, distinguished from the keyboard deck by its rim and the rougher texture of the deck. The touchscreen is responsive, and the webcam's image streaming is as smooth as a baby's behind. Lenovo provides motion control for the camera as well as the company's usual array of mildly useful utility applications.
The Yoga 2 is a great laptop/tablet combo. Overall, it's one of the best I've seen at any price and quite usable in either role. Just don't expect the usual stellar Lenovo typing experience. I also wish Lenovo would do some future-proofing by offering an integrated 802.11ac adapter.
From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference
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