Lenovo is one company that never stops innovating good products, the company won so many hearts with the original IdeaPad Yoga design, now we got the chance to spend some time with the IdeaPad Yoga 11s that was announced at CES 2013. The IdeaPad Yoga 11s comes with 11.6” HD (1366×768) IPS display with wide viewing angle 16:9 widescreen. The 11s is slightly thicker than the Windows RT-powered Yoga 11, and powered up to 3rd generation Intel Core i7 processor for running desktop apps on your Windows 8 or Windows 8 Pro. The question now is can the Lenovo IdeaPad replace your tablet or laptop?
Design
The IdeaPad Yoga 11s lid has the same look and feel as the Yoga 11 and 13-inch Yoga. The lid and the bottom part of 11s mini ultrabook it’s made of magnesium aluminum alloy with a soft-touch finish, while the inside has a black grittier texture, leaves you worrying less about wiping finger prints. For a multi-functional device like the IdeaPad Yoga 11s it weighs a surprising 3.08 lbs with a system dimension of 11.73″ x 8.03″ x 0.67″. There’s a lot to love about the unique hinge design that allows the system to fold 360° into these four different modes. Overall, squeezing all this into an 11-inch form factor, the Idea Pad Yoga 11S becomes an easy travel companion, allowing users to switch from laptop to different form factors when desired. No doubt, the IdeaPad is one beast of a mini ultrabook with all its cool features.
Usage Modes
The Yoga 11s literally bends over backwards with the help of the 360-degree hinge, allowing you to fold the screen all the way so you can use the device as a tablet. The keyboard and touchpad are automatically enabled and disabled upon reaching 190°
Tablet Mode: Lets you use the notebook like you would any tablet device.
Tent Mode: Tent mode is good for touch-based tasks like browsing recipes while
cooking, viewing photos, or playing touch games.
Stand Mode: The stand mode is a perfect choice for viewing movies and video chatting in tight places, like airplanes.
Notebook Mode: This mode lets you use the IdeaPad Yoga 11s as a classic notebook with functional keyboard and touchpad
Ports
The left side of the Yoga 11s houses a Headphone/Mic Jack, USB 3.0 port, HDMI and HDMI while a USB 2.0 port, SD Card Reader and AC power jack line the right side. A rotation lock button can also be found on the right side.
Keyboard
The Yoga 11s comes with an AccuType keyboard with rounded keys for accurate typing and easy to cleaning. Another big plus is the leather-touch palm rest that provides extra comfort when typing. There are multiple shortcut keys that might throw off a Lenovo notebook fan, I found myself holding the Fn command trying to increase the screen brightness level. These shortcut keys (volume, brightness) work without a Fn command.
Touchpad
The IdeaPad Yoga 11s comes with an intelligent touchpad optimized for Windows 8. It has smart sensors that implements palm rejection to prevent users from accidentally moving the cursor while typing unlike the Yoga 11 series. Additionally, it incorporates practical Windows 8 gestures like scroll, zoom, rotate, and other Windows 8 specific navigation actions.
Display
The Yoga 11s sports a vibrant 11.6 inch HD (1366 x 768) IPS display with wide viewing angle; 16:9 widescreen, 300 nit. The display provides you with a wide viewing angle for watching movies despite its size. The screen of the Yoga 11s is equipped with a projective capacitive touch (PCT) screen that supports a 10-point LED multi-touch, which is perfect for playing games using the tablet mode.
Configurations
Our configuration of the Yoga 11S comes with a 1.5-GHz Intel Core i5-3339Y processor with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and an Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU, and priced at $999.
Performance
The IdeaPad Yoga 11s is powerd by 3rd generation Intel Core processors up to i7 processor, Integrated Intel® HD Graphics 4000, Up to 8 GB DDR3L- [onboard 2G/4G/8G], and packs a 128/256/512GB SSD. With all these packed in this ultramini-notebook, we got a solid performance booting up, using apps and playing games with basically no downside we can lay hands on. Lenovo also made sure you don’t have any downside with entertainment, as this convertible comes with integrated stereo speakers supporting Dolby Home Theater v4 certification. Another cool function of the Yoga 11s is the motion control functions that to navigate photos, e-Books and PowerPoint slides by waving your hand in front of the web camera. As for battery life, productively using the Yoga 11s you can get up to 6 hrs battery life running on its batteries.
Overall
The IdeaPad Yoga 11s takes the saying “good things come in small packages” to a whole different level. With the Yoga 11s, you are not sacrificing performance for size, as it packs enough power to run your Windows 8 apps unlike the ARM-powered Yoga 11. It’s hard to find a con for a perfectly built product like this; the only thing we didn’t like was the glossy screen, which wasn’t a big deal because I was using it outside on a sunny day. The Yoga 11s is perfect for those who are always on the go, or just don’t like bulky notebooks. To answer the question I asked earlier, yes the Lenovo IdeaPad can replace your notebook or tablet, and I bet you won’t even miss them
Similar model from Lenovo $999 See it
