The Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro: Laptop First, Yogi Second

The Yoga 2 Pro represents Lenovos effort to take full advantage of Windows 8s touch-centric Metro interface.

It is a far cry from the chunky, black Thinkpads Lenovo has typically produced.

The Yoga 2 Pro is thusly named because it does poses (modes).

These modes all have uses, though the value of all but laptop mode, is fairly specific.

Its a pragmatic approach considering Windows 8 is trying to be everything to all devices.

Whether or not you actually want to, is another thing altogether.

And to that end, the Yoga 2 Pro fits the bill perfectly.

Whether this is actually good for my poor, aging eyes is debatable.

This makes it useful for table/desk or couch/bed use.

When placed in stand, tent, or tablet modes, the Yoga 2 Pros keyboard turns off.

Still, I found tent mode most useful such as when cooking.

Tablet mode

Everything wants to be a tablet, but a 13-inch, 3-pound slab?

Configuration and Build Quality

The Yoga 2 Pro can be had in Silver Gray or Clementine Orange.

Our review sample came in Silver Gray.

At first blush, it looks a lot like theMacbook Air.

Our review sample came configured as follows:

Exterior

Overall, build quality is top-notch.

Its almost impossible to find any glaring weaknesses in its construction.

The whole thing is put together well and feels solid and looks gorgeous.

Usually if I go looking for something negative, I can find it.

In defense of that, it is a nice soft feeling plastic that resists fingerprints and smudges.

The back is well vented.

The unit never got hot, making it a wonderful addition to my lap.

Remember this is an ultrabook so everything is minimal and its up to you to provide further external functionality.

Towards the back is a rotation lock, volume rocker, headphone jack, and USB 2.0 port.

Around the keyboard is a grippy, rubber finish that gives the hands a yielding but steady resting place.

The rubber cleans up fairly well, which was a concern at first.

That said, I wasnt overly taken with the Yoga 2 Pros keyboard either.

Then theres the arrangement.

For a $1200 laptop, you cant do much better.

Its touchscreen responded well to any swipes, flips, and pinches I could poke at it.

Popular apps like VLC player and the desktop Dropbox program are going to challenge your patience and pointer skills.

Buttons and controls may appear extremely tiny, while text may overrun buttons, and other foolishness.

It can be quite frustrating.

But, there is some reluctance on my part to wholly throw my support behind it.

Sound

The speakers are located on the bottom, toward the front.

Sound on the Yoga 2 Pro is delightful.

I was really pleased with its evenness and wide range.

With a lot of laptops and tablets, sound is spotty and tinny.

The Yoga 2 Pros sound seemed to fill the machine, getting nice and loud without distorting.

When evaluating performance, we tested the Yoga 2 Pro on its battery, processor, and graphics performance.

Rather than belabor you with benchmark after benchmark, we elected to keep it simple.

How-To Geek employs two battery life benchmarks.

To test, we disabled battery saving features such as auto sleep and screen timeouts.

With Windows, we cant drain the battery all the way down to zero.

This is meant to simulate normal browsing.

The result was a modest but uninspiring 5 hours and 28 minutes.

Not bad but not great by stretch.

Realistically, a blend of browsing and video watching is going to give you between three-and-a-quarter to five-and-a-half hours.

In the second graph we see 64-bit (single core in grey, multi core in blue) results.

There are two different 3DMark benchmarks, Cloud Gate and Fire Strike.

In this case, we simply used existing 3DMark scores available online.

What the Yoga 2 Pro really has going for it are a killer feature-set at an extremely competitive price.