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

Performance

The base model of the X1 Yoga we are reviewing here is powered by a 6th-generation (Skylake) Intel Core i5 processor; the Core i5-6200U. This is a dual-core, four-thread processor operating at 2.30 GHz, with turbo frequency up to 2.80 GHz. Comparing performance against the group of laptops tested in our review of the Dell XPS 13, which was powered by a 5th-generation (Broadwell) Core i5-5200U, should give us a good idea of what Skylake brings to the table for this new generation of thin-and-light notebooks.

First we'll take a look at processor arithmetic, with integer and floating-point performance measured using the SiSoft Sandra benchmark.

We see an impressive boost in integer performance with the X1 Yoga's Skylake CPU, though floating-point performance is slightly lower than the Broadwell parts in this test.

Next we'll check out rendering performance with Cinebench:

Here we have an impressive boost in single and multi-threaded performance, with the IPC (instructions per clock) improvement from Skylake quite evident in this rendering test.

Moving on to graphics, we'll take a look at the Cloud Gate benchmark from 3DMark 2013. Of course, the X1 Yoga is certainly not a gaming machine. and I didn't even try loading up any games from my Steam library. Still, a peek at some theoretical numbers will give us an idea of what graphics improvements the Skylake i5-6200U might offer (if any) over the previous-gen CPUs in this test.

An impressive showing from the X1 Yoga and the Core i5-6200U's HD 520 GPU, as it was the top performer in both physics and graphics scores to claim the overall win. Comparing the HD 520 against the HD 5500 from the prior Core i5-5200U, we find that both feature the same number of EUs (Execution Units) with 24, though the Skylake GPU is clocked faster at up to 1 GHz, up from 900 MHz with the Broadwell CPU.

And what about storage? The X1 Carbon (in our base configuration) arrives with the Samsung PM871 SSD, a drive that Samsung lists as capable of writes up to 540 MB/s, with reads of up to 280 MB/s.

A 256GB Samsung PM871 SSD is standard in this base configuration

I ran a quick test using the ATTO Disk Benchmark to see how it fared:

Very good numbers here, with performance that was very close to Samsung's stated sequential throughput on reads (up to 530+ MB/s), and well over on writes (300+ MB/s). In actual use the drive felt like the typical desktop SATA SSD, and I had no complaints. Expect quick boot times and a fast resume from sleep, which was my experience with the X1 Yoga.

I'll briefly add that network performance was excellent, with the X1 Yoga's Intel 2×2 Wireless AC providing excellent connectivity around my home and using the full bandwidth of my internet connection. No proper network bandwidth testing was done to report here, but my experience was happily uneventful (we won't speak of the driver instability I had with my TP Yoga S1's Wireless NIC).