Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 2 (2017) Review: Nearly Perfect With OLED
ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 2 Software And User Experience
On the software side of things, Lenovo provides a suite of tools for managing and maintaining your ThinkPad, and not much else, which is just fine by us. Other than some slick Betta fish wallpaper, to show off its gorgeous OLED display, bundled-in are the Lenovo Companion app for device maintenance, firmware updates and support, as well as Lenovo Settings and that's about it (which is a good thing). As you might expect, these custom Lenovo utilities allow for fine-grained control of various subsystems and devices in the machine.
Beyond Lenovo Companion's obvious maintenance feature advantages you can see above, the Lenovo Settings app let's you dial things in for devices like the web cam, the display, and audio. The X1 Yoga's Audio settings are somewhat useful for providing a bit more dynamic range in movies and music but again, you're working within the confines of the X1 Yoga's tiny speakers, so set expectations accordingly.
On the display side, however, professional workstation types will appreciate having a number of color presets to work with for the system's punchy OLED display, that does support 100 percent of the sRGB color gamut. These presets adjust color space coverage, gamma, and white balance. Photo Pro is a setting we'd work with a lot here as it does seem to dial up gamma without over-saturating images and looks just a touch more balanced. This setting targets the AdobeRGB color space. The Native setting seems a touch too punchy actually, and if you'd rather tame things down a little more, go with Standard. As always, for real color accuracy requirements, we'd suggest plugging in a colorimeter and calibrating the display manually. However, for the average professional, these quick settings from Lenovo are close enough for rock 'n roll, as they say.
On the display side, however, professional workstation types will appreciate having a number of color presets to work with for the system's punchy OLED display, that does support 100 percent of the sRGB color gamut. These presets adjust color space coverage, gamma, and white balance. Photo Pro is a setting we'd work with a lot here as it does seem to dial up gamma without over-saturating images and looks just a touch more balanced. This setting targets the AdobeRGB color space. The Native setting seems a touch too punchy actually, and if you'd rather tame things down a little more, go with Standard. As always, for real color accuracy requirements, we'd suggest plugging in a colorimeter and calibrating the display manually. However, for the average professional, these quick settings from Lenovo are close enough for rock 'n roll, as they say.
ThinkPad Pen Pro And Windows Ink Workspace
Another input option you get with the ThinkPad X1 Yoga, beyond its great keyboard, is the ThinkPad Pen Pro. The pen has 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity, and it does a really nice job of precision tracking of strokes on the display and sensing pressure to determine line thickness. It also has left and right-click buttons and because it uses Active Capacitive input technology, there's no need for a digitizer to be integrated into the display, adding to cost and possibly affecting image quality. All told, the ThinkPad Pen Pro, though a bit of a tongue-twister, works quite well, especially in the Windows 10 Ink Workspace app.
