This model is the base model, and retails for $2099 from the Lenovo AU store<\/a>. An identical model with a 512GB SSD is available for $200 more.<\/p>\n At the moment, you can also pick both models up from JB Hifi (the 256GB<\/a> and the 512GB<\/a> models), each for $5 less than the price from Lenovo direct before shipping costs if buying online. Harvey Norman also stock both models, the 256GB model is currently $2097<\/a> and the 512GB model is currently $2296<\/a>, also before shipping costs if buying online.<\/p>\n A sound first impression is made with the box – as you lift the flaps covering the Yoga, it arises to meet your awaiting hands. When you pick it up, you\u2019ll swear that what you are holding isn\u2019t a computer but a dummy model – at 1.19kg light and 1.28cm thick, it\u2019s one of the lightest and thinnest PCs in the market at the moment. When you pick it up for the first time, it may seem like that you\u2019ve picked up a dummy model by accident. Don\u2019t fret, it really is that light and, yes, it is a real computer in there. That said, this lightness and thinness means it doesn\u2019t feel as sturdy as my ThinkPad T530. I did try and carry it around as I did my T530 (that is, by gripping it with one hand while it was open on the palm rest to the right of the touchpad) and it didn\u2019t feel particularly strong.<\/p>\n The orange colour that I received was, simply put, gorgeous. It\u2019s got a nice satin finish to it that is beautiful and, if you ever see one in person, will probably fall in love with too. If orange isn\u2019t your thing, you can also get it in Silver and Champagne Gold depending on what model you\u2019re after and where you\u2019re buying it from.<\/p>\n The hinge is also interesting, and the pictures do not do it justice. It really does look like an elongated wristwatch band, and it\u2019s very sturdy – I had no issues with the screen not staying in place when I was using the touchscreen.<\/p>\n On the right, from front to back, there\u2019s the power button, the recessed Novo button (for booting into the UEFI or the recovery partition), the volume control, then a headphone\\microphone combo port and a USB 3.0 Sleep and Charge port, in which you can plug in a device such as a phone and charge it as the laptop sleeps.<\/p>\n On the left, from front to back, there\u2019s an SD card reader, a MicroHDMI port, a USB 3.0 port and then a USB 2.0 port.<\/p>\n One thing you may have noticed – where\u2019s the charger port? Well, that\u2019s what the interesting USB 2.0 plug is – it has an additional divot sticking out on the right hand side that accommodates a charging cable (so as to prevent you from plugging the charger into another port). It\u2019s a rather novel concept, really – instead of wasting space on a charger only port, you get a port that\u2019s useful for when you\u2019re not charging.<\/p>\n Probably the only downsides vis-\u00e0-vis the ports on this machine are the MicroHDMI port, which will require you to buy an adaptor or cables to plug it into any HDMI cables you already have. That said, if you look on eBay you\u2019ll find these cables for decent prices – a 2 metre MicroHDMI to HDMI cable was $6 with free postage when I looked. Another potential issue might be that, if you\u2019re charging, you lose out on the third USB port – so if you have a number of USB devices you will want to get a USB hub.<\/p>\n One of the downsides to a thinner laptop such as an Ultrabook is that you have less space to make the keyboard have a good amount of travel. Another downside is that sometimes you get weird layouts on Ultrabook keyboards. As a result, a lot of Ultrabooks have had disappointing keyboards.<\/p>\n This aside, while the Yoga\u2019s keyboard doesn\u2019t have the greatest keyboard travel, it makes up for it by being nice enough to type on. The keys are firm and they\u2019re comfortable, with a satin-like finish on them. The keyboard is also backlit, something I have derided in the past as being a rather useless feature (\u201cI touchtype, so why would I need to look at my keyboard\u201d has been my argument), but even in a well lit room it did make the keys easier to read. From my perspective, it was nice, but I\u2019m certainly not going to go out of my way to find (or indeed pay extra for) a laptop with one. But, if this feature is important to you – it\u2019s there.<\/p>\n That said, there is some weirdness to this keyboard, specifically, there is no dedicated F row. Instead, you have to press the FN key and the appropriate number key to activate the F key. Brightness and volume controls are activated with the FN and arrow keys. Home and End, alas, have been demoted to being activated by the FN key, and are accessible on Page Up and Page Down respectively. FN and Print Screen mute and unmute the audio, while FN and Space toggle the backlight off and on and FN and Delete turn the touchpad off and on.<\/p>\n Another complaint, and one that is the same as the U310 – no media controls! You have to open your media player to do basic music operations like skip, pause and play.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll preface this section by saying that I\u2019m not a huge fan of clickpads. I don\u2019t understand why people wouldn\u2019t actual buttons for clicking on things (probably because \u201cew buttons are ugly\u201d) but there we go. That said, I wasn\u2019t unimpressed with this particular unit.<\/p>\n The clickpad responded well to my input – like the clickpad on the U310, it\u2019s got a smooth glass finish, but unlike the clickpad on the U310, there was very minimal glitchiness and it always responded when I wanted it to. Two finger scrolling in all directions worked well and I was usually quite happy with it.<\/p>\n The only real issue I had with it (and one I seem to have with most touchpads) was that I sometimes had trouble trying to get it to right click – you have to have your finger in just the right spot to trigger this response.<\/p>\n Manufacturers seem to have touchscreens pretty much down to a fine art these days, probably helped by the fact that Windows 8.1 can interact with them all pretty well. The touchscreen always responded correctly and accurately to my input, and can accept up to ten fingers worth of input, so you should have no issues playing multiplayer games on it with a couple of people.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve never really used a Yoga or Yoga style laptop before, you\u2019ll probably think that being able to rotate the screen all the way around is just a gimmick and a poor excuse for a tablet. You\u2019d be wrong.<\/p>\n Once you start having the opportunity to bend the screen around, the practicality of it becomes immediately obvious and you wonder why nobody came up with the idea beforehand.<\/p>\n I found myself often using Tent mode while eating dinner and watching media on Netflix or from my desktop PC, for instance – I could get the screen close to me and I wouldn\u2019t drop food on the keyboard which would be difficult to clean up if I got too close.<\/p>\n Stand mode I found myself using a lot – it was handy when I was sitting on the couch setting up the Xbox for Netflix, for instance, as the keyboard was out of the way, it was propped at an appropriate angle for good reading and it was closer to me as a result. I also found it useful in bed for sitting on my lap for Netflix and similar, and when space was cramped – again, propping it on my lap when sitting down in a tight space meant that the screen was closer to me and I could still interact with it because of the touchscreen.<\/p>\n This was the first Broadwell based notebook released to market. Unfortunately, it\u2019s Broadwell-Y, designed for low power small devices. This should be a blessing (better battery life, can be done fanless due to lower heat output), but a curse as performance suffers because even Intel can\u2019t make a processor that runs like a mad thing at the moment that has a TDP of 4.5W.<\/p>\n In saying that, most of the time the processor didn\u2019t really hamper it – the biggest culprit was Chrome, which would often show a checkerboard pattern as it re-rendered pages if you scrolled too quickly. Performance for tasks like Office, Metro Apps, and browsing in Internet Explorer (the Metro version especially was a joy to use, especially in recent days as I\u2019ve been using it to help me get through Majora\u2019s Mask on the 3DS!) was fine. Just don\u2019t get one of these expecting that it\u2019s going to run as well a desktop Intel processor, let alone a U or M variant. If this is the case, you may be better off waiting for the non-Pro Yoga 3 and seeing if it is more suitable for your needs.<\/p>\n Note: Due to their size, I won\u2019t be embedding screenshots directly in this section, instead linking to them on Imgur.<\/em><\/p>\n Yes. The glorious QHD+ display. Where to start.<\/p>\n It\u2019s beautiful. Colours pop, viewing angles are excellent (hooray for IPS displays!), and everything is so crisp and clear that, honestly, if you put a picture of some kind of delicious food on it, you would swear you could lean forward, lick it and taste it. Alas, technology has not progressed that far to allow that to happen. We can only dream. My biggest complaint is that it\u2019s glossy, I much prefer matte screens but matte touchscreens are pretty hard to come by, and when you do find them they tend to be a disappointing semi-matte finish that isn\u2019t really that great, so this isn\u2019t I can hold against it that much.<\/p>\n The biggest issue has nothing to do with the display itself – it has to do with Windows and poorly written applications.<\/p>\n To make the display usable, Windows will run it at a higher DPI by default. Of course, you can turn the DPI setting down to normal, but then you get this<\/a>, which is really unusable (bear in mind this is on a 13\u201d screen) – so you won\u2019t really want to alter the DPI setting too much.<\/p>\n However, the issue with a non-normal DPI setting is that some applications, including some tools in Windows, don\u2019t know how to handle this or handle it incorrectly. Typically, there were five main ways that I saw that applications will handle high DPI settings:<\/p>\n Most modern applications will go for option 1, 3 or 5. Applications designed around the Vista era seemed to work but act weirdly. Older applications designed for XP and older will go for option 5 but there are some modern applications which will act like that too.<\/p>\n The issue is, however, that there is no excuse in an era where high DPI displays are becoming increasingly common for modern applications to behave strangely with them. Zune, I can understand as it isn\u2019t a supported application anymore, but Outlook 2013 acting weird? Device Manager not scaling at all? That\u2019s just unacceptable considering Microsoft make the OS that these applications run in.<\/p>\n This, really, is the biggest letdown of this display – lazy developers.<\/p>\n You will want to do a couple of things, as well, to make it a little easier to use: go into the Mouse control panel and bump the mouse cursor up a size or two so it\u2019s easier to see, and also enable pointer shadows to make it easier to find.<\/p>\n This particular model has a Broadcom AC Wifi card in it – some models will have this while others will have an Intel model. There\u2019s no wired Ethernet available, so if you need wired Ethernet connections you will need to buy a USB adapter.<\/p>\n Connected to our home TP-Link Archer D5, the Yoga transferred 1.01GB of video files from my desktop with a D-Link DWA-182 AC1200 USB 3.0 Wifi Adapter in 1 minute, 11 seconds – an average of 14.6 megabytes per second – not a bad speed. The Yoga also has Bluetooth 4.0.<\/p>\n Audio is provided via a common or garden Realtek chipset, with Waves Maxx Audio enhancement software. Out of the box, the audio worked fine – no quirks that I could find. The speakers were decent enough considering the space that they had to fit into, obviously you are not going to be getting high end hi-fi quality, but you\u2019ll be fine for casual listening.<\/p>\n The Waves Maxx Audio software, though, is problematic to access – unlike the Dolby solution it doesn\u2019t put an icon in the system tray (that\u2019s good I guess), so you have to dig through the Start Screen to find it. In the end, I ended up pinning it to the taskbar.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a combo headphone port on the right side, so if you want to use a separate microphone to your headphones, you\u2019ll need an adapter.<\/p>\n A Windows 8.1 Core installation was present on the Yoga, with a surprising amount of software\u2026<\/p>\n This is a surprising amount of bloat on this system, and to be honest something I\u2019m becoming increasingly disappointed by this from Lenovo. I can count exactly three applications on there that I actually used and liked (the Office stub, harmony, ShareIt, One Key Optimizer), the rest either I found irritating (Lenovo Paper Display, for example, makes everything have a yellow tinge like aged paper does when certain apps are open and the appropriate setting is enabled in Harmony) or just plain useless (why would I want to flap my hands around at my computer as Lenovo Gesture Control would like me to do, when I have a more accurate touch screen?).<\/p>\n To be perfectly honest, Lenovo needs to do what Dell has done, and take a step back, look at what they\u2019re including with their systems and decide\u00a0 what their users are actually using. Smart money is most users aren\u2019t using a lot of the junk their systems come with.<\/p>\n Of late, Dell systems have had drivers, the Office stub, a McAfee trial, a Dropbox shortcut that grants an extra helping of space and two or three Dell apps on a new install to provide updates, hardware diagnostics and recovery media. This is a good amount of software to install – enough so that the user can then decide themselves what they want to do with their PC.<\/p>\n Imagine my surprise after installing Eset Endpoint Security when I got this message:<\/p>\n Lenovo. Not<\/em> cool.<\/p>\n I do not want Conduit installed on my computer by myself or a foolish friend who doesn\u2019t pay attention when installing things. I also don\u2019t like seeing it on client\u2019s computer, as I so often do, when they bring it because it\u2019s running slow and could we please fix it.<\/p>\n Needless to say, I do not want you to be installing it for my \u201cconvenience\u201d either.<\/p>\n For the record, I let Eset do as it wished and let it clean it up.<\/p>\n The Yoga 3 Pro never had the Superfish software installed as a preload.<\/p>\n However if you are unfortunate enough to have a system with Superfish on it or think you have it, you can get more information, a list of affected models (some of which are currently being sold in Australia) and a removal tool here<\/a>.<\/p>\n My personal feelings on the matter is that this is another incidence of bloat being added for the sake of it. I cannot think of any user who would willingly install it in the first place, even if it didn’t have the security problems that it does have in its current form<\/p>\n This time, I used Battery Eater to test battery life on this unit.<\/p>\n To start with, I ran Battery Eater in Classic mode, where it renders an image of a battery, calculates Pi repeatedly and writes data to the disk drive. In this test, the machine lasted 3 hours, 51 minutes before shutting down due to low battery. This was a bit higher than I thought, as I expected it to give up the ghost around the 2.75-3 hour mark.<\/p>\n Running the test in Reader Mode scrolls through a document, pausing after each scroll to simulate reading, until the end is reached, then starts again. In this test, it lasted 6 hours, 15 minutes before shutting down due to low battery.<\/p>\n Lenovo suggest<\/a> that the system should last 7 hours, 12 minutes hours idling and\u00a05 hours, 18 minutes\u00a0playing back full HD video. Based on these tests, I\u2019d say that these values would be a slight over estimation (as is typical for the IT industry) but close enough<\/p>\n The Yoga 3 Pro is, really, quite frankly a remarkable feat of engineering. If in 2006 I had a ThinkPad R60 and someone told me that, in nine years\u2019 time, I would be able to get a computer that was a quarter of the thickness, more than half the weight, with a higher resolution screen, ran faster; cooler and for longer on battery, was bright orange, had a large amount of flash storage and sold for $200 less, I would probably have laughed at them and told them they were insane.<\/p>\n Today, they would be laughing at me.<\/p>\n Needless to say, I was really happy with the Yoga 3 Pro, and I was sad to send it away to its new home (which I\u2019ll touch on directly). It was a beautiful machine, with a glorious screen and reasonable input devices considering its size. If I were to go out and spend $2000 on a new laptop today, this would definitely make my shortlist.<\/p>\n The real issue here is the processor. Although it can be used in Ultrabooks, as it has been done here, to me it was the real drawback in what is otherwise an excellent machine. I\u2019m incredibly pleased that, at this price point, the base model machine has a good sized SSD, 8GB RAM and a decent resolution screen, and I wish more manufacturers would take note and adopt this strategy. Too long I have looked at laptops at this price point and immediately written them off as being possible purchase or recommendation options because they either have a spinning hard drive in lieu of an SSD, only 4GB RAM or a 1366×768 screen (which really has no place in anything above $800 if you ask me). The CPU seemed to be the main drawback – there was no reason for Chrome to display checkerboards as it re-rendered as I scrolled with the RAM and disk access speeds it had, so by process of elimination it\u2019s the processor at fault.<\/p>\n If you can live with the processor speed, then this is a great system – when I wasn\u2019t using Chrome I loved this system.\u00a0Videos looked great on the display,\u00a0it was gorgeous and easy\u00a0to carry around.<\/p>\n Of course, there are alternatives, but at present, there aren\u2019t many comparable systems that are available in Australia in this price range.<\/p>\n First, is the recently released Dell XPS 13<\/a>, which retails at time of writing for $2099 as well with an i7 5500U processor (which will be a huge improvement over the 5Y70 in the Yoga), a 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, a 3200×1800 touchscreen and a one year in home warranty after remote diagnosis. While you do lose the bendability, you do gain a faster processor, Windows 8.1 Pro instead of Windows 8.1 Core (handy if you want to use it at work and need to join it to a domain), and you get a light software preload, consisting of Windows, drivers, full versions of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, Skype, a Dell support application, the Office trial\\installer stub and Dropbox (attention: every other computer manufacturer. This is how you do it! Provide minimal software. Make it useful. If you are going to provide software, please provide best in class software, don\u2019t cheap out and include generic ripoffs or trials, especially when you are asking your customers for a big chunk of money). Its starting weight is 1.18kg which doesn\u2019t include the touchscreen, so it would be marginally heavier than the Yoga at this spec level.<\/p>\n Second is the Surface 3 Pro<\/a>. At its regular pricing, you can pick up the i7 256GB model with 8GB RAM for $1978.99 with a Type Cover so you can use it as a laptop. You also get a nice active digitizer, which may be attractive to some people (me included, I\u2019m a sucker for pen computing). However, the Surface is still using Haswell chips, this one using\u00a0an i7\u00a04650U, but again, this would be an improvement on the 5Y70.\u00a0However, the Type Covers aren\u2019t the greatest keyboards in the world, nor do they have the greatest touchpads, so these are something that you definitely try out in person before you drop down nearly $2000 for. You also literally have three ports on it – power, one USB 3.0 and a mini DisplayPort – so you may run into some issues there. There have also been some issues with regards to the Surface 3 Pro not having the greatest battery life, so this may also be a detracting feature.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t mind having a machine that\u2019s about a kilogram heavier than the Yoga (there\u2019s conflicting reports as to its weight, some Lenovo sites suggest 2.13kg and some suggest 2.24kg) and has a screen that\u2019s two inches bigger, the ThinkPad T550<\/a> may also be an option, however compared to the Yoga it\u2019s $15 more for one customized with an i5 5200U, 8GB RAM, a 256GB SSD and a 3K (2880×1620) IPS Touchscreen. Again, this is a bigger, heavier notebook, but it is a ThinkPad, so there\u2019s a good chance that it will live a very long and happy life provided its maintained well.<\/p>\nFirst Impressions<\/h3>\n
Ports<\/h3>\n
Keyboard<\/h3>\n
Clickpad<\/h3>\n
Touchscreen<\/h3>\n
Yoga-ness<\/h3>\n
Performance<\/h3>\n
Display<\/h3>\n
\n
Connectivity<\/h3>\n
Audio<\/h3>\n
Software<\/h3>\n
\n
Lenovo Browser Guard<\/h3>\n
![\"Eset](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/eqcBTQH.png?resize=406%2C463\")
<\/a>Superfish<\/h3>\n
Battery Life<\/h3>\n
Final Thoughts<\/h3>\n
What\u2019s happening with the Yoga 3 Pro?<\/h3>\n