Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 2 (2017) Review: Nearly Perfect With OLED
ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 2: Our Final Analysis
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga OLED Gen 2 Performance Summary
In terms of performance, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 2 is one of the fastest utlrabooks on the market, especially for its weight class. In most benchmark runs the new X1 Yoga was among the top 3 to 5 ultrabooks we've tested to date, even scoring top marks in PCMark 8 and SunSpider. On the battery life side of the equation, the new X1 Yoga hangs with the best of them and was able to stay up for nearly six and a half hours on a single charge with continuous use in our HD video loop test.
It's a rare day when we have so few shortcomings to cover with a product. This indeed is a case where we find ourselves looking for nitpicks to point out, with the fairly minor exception of the X1 Yoga's tough-to-reach combo SD/SIM card slot on the back edge of the machine. If there's anything prominent that we'd love to change about the machine, it would be moving these slots to the side edge for much easier access without having to close the lid. Further, maybe we could ask for thinner bezel on the display, but that's only because we've been spoiled by machines like Dell's XPS 13/15 and Lenovo's own newly redesigned 2017 ThinkPad X1 Carbon. But, oh, that OLED display with the X1 Yoga. Be still our geek hearts with its inky, rich saturation and contrast. We want all the OLEDs, please. We're familiar with the production scaling limitations of larger OLED displays and the higher potential for burn-in issues, but until we see an alternative, nothing beats it. Period.
Find Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 2 At Amazon
The other small (in our opinion) caveat with this iteration of the ThinkPad X1 Yoga, is that Intel's 8th gen Kaby Lake refresh chips are now in production and we're starting to see laptops hit the market with quad-core variants in the same 15 Watt TDP than dual-core, 7th gen Kaby chips that power this machine. It might be a tough call for hardcore enthusiasts and you can miss some pretty great products trying to catch the "next gen," so we'd say this is really a non-issue. Could 8th gen come to the X1 Yoga in the near term? It's anyone's guess but totally feasible we suppose, if you want to play the waiting game. Regardless, as you saw in our benchmark charts, the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 2 is a robust, capable performer.
Couple that great performance with one of the best laptop keyboards in the business, a gorgeous 14-inch WQHD OLED panel, a few nice chassis refinements, and better battery life and you have a HotHardware Editor's Choice product. Starting at $1682, but listing for $2429 as tested with its OLED display, faster CPU, 512GB SSD, and 16GB of RAM, it's not cheap but still is priced competitively to other premium offerings that don't have the OLED options. You can also find some pretty good promos out there right now on the machine; we found our test config on Amazon for a lot less. Regardless, congrats to Lenovo for making one of our current favorite ultrabook platforms even better.
Couple that great performance with one of the best laptop keyboards in the business, a gorgeous 14-inch WQHD OLED panel, a few nice chassis refinements, and better battery life and you have a HotHardware Editor's Choice product. Starting at $1682, but listing for $2429 as tested with its OLED display, faster CPU, 512GB SSD, and 16GB of RAM, it's not cheap but still is priced competitively to other premium offerings that don't have the OLED options. You can also find some pretty good promos out there right now on the machine; we found our test config on Amazon for a lot less. Regardless, congrats to Lenovo for making one of our current favorite ultrabook platforms even better.
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