General Usage & Final Thoughts
I’ve been using the ThinkPad X1 Yoga as my main laptop for a few weeks now and I am really enjoying it. First off it is thin and light enough that it does not add much extra bulk to my backpack. That power adapter is also very small. The coating on the laptop makes it quite comfortable to pick up and easy to use if you are say sitting down in a chair and have the X1 Yoga in your lap.
This of course is a “Yoga” product, meaning that you can completely fold the screen around. This allows you to have the ThinkPad X1 Yoga in a normal notebook mode, a flat mode, a tent mode, and a full tablet mode. While you are in the tablet mode the keys on the keyboard retract down into the chassis so they are not accidentally pressed and you have a flush surface when you set the X1 Yoga down. I am a huge fan of the tent mode for viewing media, especially on an airplane. We all know that those tray tables are extremely small!
When it comes to performance the new 3rd Generation ThinkPad X1 Yoga did great in our tests. With the new Core i5-8250U processor you have 4-cores, 8-threads, and 6MB of SmartCache. I was able to do all of my daily tasks on the X1 Yoga no problem. This ranged from web browsing, to photo editing. Also the NVMe SSD makes loading time for application really fast as well as Windows startup time.
Lenovo also includes their ThinkPad Pro Pen, which is fun to use and would be great if you are an artist. Talking about artists the 1080p display on the X1 Yoga is really good and the brightness did not seem too dim. I have no problem editing photos in Lightroom and knowing the colors would be correct. Again you also have the option to go with a WQHD or WQHD HDR screen.
Being that this is a business laptop you have some great security features. First the fingerprint reader has been upgraded to make it harder to forge a fingerprint. There also is the ThinkShutter feature, which is a shutter that goes over the camera when it is not in use. This is a much better option that putting that piece of tape over the camera.
If you are looking for a 2-in-1 or business laptop the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (3rd Generation) is a great choice. It gives you great performance with security and other great features you expect from a ThinkPad. The unit we revieved sells for $1428, but prices of the ThinkPad X1 Yoga start at $1253.25. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga (3rd Generation) a 9 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award.
Pros:
– Great performance with the Intel Core i5-8250U
– ThinkPad security features
– Extremely comfortable keyboard
– ThinkPad Pro Pen included
– Dual Thunderbolt 3 ports
– Super-fast NVMe SSD
Cons:
– No “borderless” display
– No 4K display option available
