Lenovo Yoga 500 14 Zoll Test

Laptop Mag Verdict

The Yoga iii 14 is a solid ii-in-one with a flexible design, long battery life and quality speakers, but the brandish doesn't shine.

Pros

+
Flexible multimode design
+
Rich JBL stereo speakers
+
Strong battery life

Cons

-
Dim screen
-
Runs warm on bottom

When it comes to ii-in-1s, Lenovo is the leader -- it's sold more than convertible notebooks than whatever other company. The Yoga 3 Pro is Lenovo's current flagship hybrid, but at $1,299, it requires a hefty premium. Thankfully, the standard Yoga 3 14 is a more wallet-friendly alternative: Starting at just $799 ($949 as tested), it offers similar performance but improve battery life. Even though its body is a little bigger and heavier, yous still get a fourteen-inch brandish and Lenovo's tried and true 2-in-1 design -- it'due south a organisation that's non merely a better value, but possibly a better overall machine.

Design

Without the flashy watch-band hinge and superthin waist of its more expensive sibling, the Yoga 3 14 has a more pedestrian appearance, featuring a simple, utilitarian pattern with a strong, chunky hinge. Our black review unit has a matte-plastic lid with a silver Lenovo logo in the upper right. The chapeau opens to reveal a blackness, brushed-aluminum deck, and ii thick, metal hinges. The lesser transitions back to plastic, with rubber feet at each corner and large vents toward the back. If you don't like black, you tin can become the same configuration in light silvery or white (but white will cost you an actress $50).

I like that Lenovo included a discrete push for screen rotation sandwiched between the volume rocker and the power button. Just exist careful non to accidentally press the Novo button next to the rotation lock; it'due south merely there to initiate a factory reset and recovery functions.

The matte lid is prone to picking up fingerprints, and the entire parcel is a little plain. Merely considering the most expensive Yoga 3 14 costs $200 less than the cheapest Yoga iii Pro, you end up with a compromise that's non hard to make.

When transforming the Yoga 3 fourteen into one of its four modes (laptop, tent, stand and tablet), the hinge provides just the right corporeality of resistance, allowing you to open and close the lid without feeling like you're wrestling with it. Overall, the Yoga iii 14 is a little like Clark Kent, posing as a traditional mild-mannered laptop past solar day but able to alter into another form with the drib of a hat (or spectacles) when the need arises.

At thirteen.ane x 9 10 0.72 inches and 3.5 pounds, the Yoga 3 14 is thicker and heavier than the HP Spectre x360, which measures 12.8 x eight.half dozen x 0.half-dozen inches and weighs 3.26 pounds. Notwithstanding, the HP has a smaller, 13.3-inch screen.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Yoga 3 14 features a well-spaced backlit keyboard, but with its brusk key travel (1.i millimeters) and lite actuation weight (50 grams), typing can sometimes feel a trivial numb. While this didn't stop me from surpassing my typical typing boilerplate of 75 words per minute on 10fastfingers.com later on merely ii attempts, I wish the keys felt a bit more lively.

The touchpad, which features a silky-smooth surface and measures a spacious four.i x 2.75 inches, fared better. Although the one-piece touchpad lacks discrete mouse buttons, the Yoga three fourteen never dislocated left and correct clicks. Gestures like two-finger scrolling and pinch to zoom were swift and responsive.

Display

The Yoga three xiv's 14-inch 1920 x 1080-pixel screen can move and flip into diverse positions, but it looks a little dim and ho-hum. When I watched the trailer for Kingsman: The Secret Service, the screen looked good, just information technology didn't really do much to show off Colin Firth'south dismantling of some rude English troublemakers or the bullet-riddled halls of Samuel L. Jackson's undercover evil lair. Likewise, during the underwater scene, I noticed a yellow tint that made the water look greener than intended.

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When measured with a lite meter, the Yoga three fourteen produced merely 224 nits of brightness, which is less than the thin-and-light-laptop average of 242 nits, the nontouch Dell XPS thirteen (298), the Yoga 3 Pro (318) and the HP Spectre x360 (339).

The Yoga 3 14's range of colors was besides subpar, equally it recreated only 59.9 pct of the sRGB spectrum. That'southward less than the category average of 76.6 percent, the XPS thirteen (91.7), the Yoga 3 Pro (99.3) and the Spectre x360 (103.2).

The one redeeming aspect of the Yoga 3 14's screen was color accuracy; it notched a potent Delta-E rating of 1.2 (closer to nil is better). That beats the Yoga iii Pro (four.three) and the nontouch Dell XPS 13 (8.2), simply it'south comparable to the Spectre x360 (1.25).

Audio

With JBL stereo speakers, the Yoga 3 14 impressed me with rich sound from a diverseness of positions, merely sound tin can be distorted in laptop mode because the speakers are on the bottom. The sound quality improves when the device is in tablet and tent modes. When I listened to Madeon's "Pay No Mind," I loved the crisp, catchy guitar riffs and Angelakos' delicate, blatant vocals.

The Yoga iii 14 likewise comes with clever Waves MAXXAudio software, which has customizable and preset equalizers that automatically suit to whichever way the notebook is in. This let me boost the bass a flake more to arrange my liking. When measured from 23 inches away, the Yoga 3 14 produced 93 decibels of sound, which is far better than the thin-and-low-cal-notebook boilerplate of 86 dB.

Rut

The Yoga three 14's keyboard and deck stay pretty cool, but even in normal use, the bottom can become a petty besides hot for condolement. After streaming an HD video from Hulu for 15 minutes, the bottom of the organization (near the fans) reached 99 degrees Fahrenheit, which is above our 95-degree tolerance threshold.

Ports and Webcam

For photos and videos, the Yoga 3 xiv features a 720p camera in a higher place the screen. Unfortunately, pictures often came out too dark. In a selfie taken in our well-lit office, my pilus was inaccurately represented as a solid nighttime mass, and the camera completely missed the white polka dots on my shirt.

The Yoga 3 14 has a full of iii USB ports, but because the solitary USB 2.0 port likewise doubles as the ability jack, y'all'll accept admission to only two USB 3.0 ports when charging the notebook. Other ports include a headset jack and a SD carte du jour reader on the left side, and a micro HDMI port on the right.

Performance

With its ii.two-GHz Intel Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, the Yoga 3 14 offers about the same functioning equally the more than premium Yoga 3 Pro but a little less than some of its similarly priced competitors. During typical employ, I had no problem streaming 1080p videos from Vimeo or YouTube, even with another 10 tabs open in Chrome at the same fourth dimension.

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Using Geekbench three, which tests overall arrangement functioning, the Yoga three 14 scored four,588. That's slightly ahead of the Yoga 3 Pro'southward 4,571 only behind the nontouch Dell XPS 13'south 5,530 and the HP Spectre x360'due south 5,614.

To evaluate real-world operation, we matched 20,000 names and addresses in OpenOffice. The Yoga 3 14 took 5 minutes and 4 seconds to consummate the chore, which was faster than the Yoga 3 Pro (five:46), and almost exactly the aforementioned equally the Spectre x360 (five:04) and the XPS 13 (5:02).

We too used the 256GB SSD to indistinguishable 4.97GB of multimedia files. The Yoga 3 14 finished with a fourth dimension of 39 seconds, resulting in a transfer rate of 130.five MBps. That's faster than the XPS 13 (87.vii MBps) and a fiddling behind the Spectre x360 (141.4 MBps) but about xxx per centum slower than the Yoga 3 Pro (175 MBps).

Graphics

With its integrated Intel HD Graphics 5500, the Yoga 3 14 is good for light gaming. It easily handled less-demanding games similar Hearthstone and Hotline Miami 2. Just when I tried to play Dota 2 at 1920 x 1080p and medium settings, the Lenovo struggled to stay above a 30 frames-per-second playable minimum.

When we ran the 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark, the Yoga 3 14 scored 597. That's higher than the Yoga 3 Pro (384) merely less than the Dell XPS thirteen (704) and the HP Spectre x360 (710).

Battery Life

On the Laptop Mag Battery Exam (continuous Spider web surfing over Wi-Fi at 100 nits), the Yoga 3 14 lasted 8 hours and nine minutes on a charge.

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That's longer than the Yoga 3 Pro (6:29) and the thin-and-light-laptop average (6:08) just less than the nontouch Dell XPS thirteen (11:42). One of the few ii-in-1s to vanquish the Yoga 3 14 was the HP Spectre x360, which lasted an impressive nine:28.

Configurations

The Yoga iii 14 comes in five configurations, starting at $799 for a Cadre i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. It tops out at $ane,100 for a Core i7 model with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Our review unit is i of three midrange models that characteristic a Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. The merely divergence is the color of the case, which comes in black and low-cal silver for $949, and in white for $999.

Software and Warranty

The Yoga 3 14 ships with Windows 8.1, which makes good employ of the affect screen with its finger-friendly Start menu while offer a traditional desktop view for laptop mode. Lenovo as well includes some preinstalled software, some of which is useful.

I loved how easily SHAREit, forth with its costless Android and iOS apps, let me transfer files back and along from the laptop to a phone. On the other hand, Lenovo Motion Control -- which is supposed to let you command movies, photos and documents through manus gestures -- was infuriating to utilise, as it ignored commands mostly.

Like most Lenovo laptops, the Yoga iii xiv comes with a standard one-year warranty, although you can cull to extend it to up to iii years with optional in-dwelling house service and accidental damage protection for $159.

Bottom Line

Featuring a solid prepare of components (i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD), a sturdy hinge and a fairly stiff eight hours of battery life, the Yoga 3 14 is a fine 2-in-1. Nevertheless, the HP Spectre x360 does about everything but a flake better (screen brightness, operation and battery life) for only $50 more, and information technology's prettier, too. The Yoga 3 fourteen is a good two-in-1 for the coin, but it'south not our top choice.

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Lenovo Yoga 3 14 Specs

Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.0
Make	Lenovo
CPU	2.2 GHz Intel Core i5-5500U
Card Slots	SD/MMC retentiveness reader
Visitor Website	world wide web.lenovo.com
Display Size	14
Graphics Menu	Intel HD Graphics 5500
Difficult Drive Size	256GB
Hard Bulldoze Speed	7,200rpm
Hard Drive Blazon	SSD Drive
Native Resolution	1920x1080
Operating System	Windows viii.1
Ports (excluding USB)	DC-in, HDMI, Headphone/Mic, USB 2.0, USB three.0
RAM	8GB
Size	13.eighteen" x nine.03" x 0.72"
Touchpad Size	four.ane ten 2.75-inches
USB Ports	iv
Video Memory	Shared
Warranty/Support	I year
Weight	3.53 pounds
Wi-Fi	802.11ac