The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga 2-in-1 Notebook Review

X1 Yoga Display

The X1 Yoga is available with your choice of three panel options; with a 2560×1440 IPS matte display, a new 2560×1440 OLED display, and our review unit's 1920×1080 IPS display. The screen is 14 inches, and this FHD resolution works well with scaling enabled in Windows (125% provided the best results for me).

Colors look rich, and the contrast is good for a conventional IPS display. Having seen first-hand the OLED panel that Lenovo offers at CES, I would suggest that if such an option is in your price range it is absolutely worth it. Still, our unit's screen looks quite good, though a calibration is going to be required if you plan on doing any photo editing (but that's almost certainly the case with any business-oriented notebook).

The screen can be quite bright when needed, hitting 340 lux on our light meter. For comparison, our notebook battery test uses 180 lux brightness, which is as about as bright as I would ever personally set a screen backlight unless I was outside.

Viewing angles are very good, as one would expect with an IPS panel. There is the usual shift in contrast and brightness from more extreme angles, of course.

Moving to the side, however, we see a more dramatic shift – which was mainly due to the glare from the photo lighting through the lightbox in this picture:

The screen is something of a semi-gloss finish, and while it's more muted than a glossy screen it will reflect quite a bit, as you can see. I didn't find this to be troublesome in my indoor use, with occational glare but no distracting reflections, however those needing a truly matte screen will likely want to look at the available anti-glare panel option (which is also a higher 2560×1440 resolution) when purchasing.

Overall I had no complaints about the display, which produced lively color and crisp text. I was pleasantly surprised by how well 1920×1080 scales on a 14-inch screen, as well. Incidentally, I found scaling to work equally well using both Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, so your preference here should not affect your experience with the display.

Touchscreen and Pen

This X1 Yoga is a 2-in-1 notebook, and in tablet mode you can have a completely different experience. The X1 Yoga immediately detects the change in orientation, and offers to switch to tablet mode when you have the notebook in that position. But this is just the beginning, as even the base model of the X1 Yoga is equipped with a Wacom digitizer and active pen (which is held conveniently in a slot on the side of the notebook).

You won't need to worry about batteries, as the pen charges while being stored in the notebook – and does so very quickly. 15 seconds is all you'll need to get 100 minutes of use, which means your pen should already be charged and ready whenever you need it.

Pen input felt precise, and fluid. My experience with handwriting recognition in OneNote was excellent, as well. Beyond applications like OneNote, Lenovo offers their own solution for a system-wide handwriting recognition:

"With Lenovo's exclusive WRITEit technology, you can enter handwriting into any input field across hundreds of apps, and it automatically suggests and corrects your writing."

The pen can of course also be used for more creative pursuits, and while I didn't linger on this I nonetheless sketched a bit during my time with the X1 Yoga. This felt very natural, and, depending on what applications you might have access to, really adds to the versitility of the notebook. We seems that we aren't dealing with a purely "business" machine, after all.

Next we'll check out the X1 Yoga's audio performance, and see how well the system kept the Core i5 processor cool (and how quietly it did so).