Lenovo Yoga 900 – Screen

The Yoga 900 comes with the same 13.3-inch, 3,200 x 1,800 touchscreen as
the 3 Pro. For comparison, the latest MacBook has a 2,304 x1,440
resolution, the Surface Pro 4 2,736 x 1,824, and the Dell XPS 13
ranges from 1,920 x 1,080 to 3,200 x 1,800.

As with the Yoga 3 Pro,
the display is crisp and colours seem natural and vibrant.
Viewing angles are decent, too, and the touchscreen is responsive.

However,
I did have some issues with the screen’s level of brightness. When I
first fired up our review model, automatic brightness adjustment was
turned on. I always find it distracting to have the screen brightness
constantly changing whenever I move, so I immediately turned the setting
off.

However, the laptop continued to adjust the brightness at random times. This became distracting: whenever I opened a new window or when scenes changed
in videos, the screen brightness would alter. And it didn’t just
adjust gradually. Rather, it would shudder from one level to another to
such an extent that initially I thought the screen was flickering.

I
also noticed some backlight bleed when using the Yoga 900 in low light. It
wasn’t egregious, but there was a definite glow around the outside of
the screen. In addition, although the colours were fairly sharp, the blacks
weren’t particularly deep, appearing especially greyish in low light.

This
was made worse by the aforementioned gigantic bezel with which Lenovo
has chosen to surround the screen, which only serves to
highlight both the backlight bleed and the less than impressive black
reproduction.

Despite the Yoga 900’s sharp resolution and decent
colours, the above issues combined only detract from the overall
experience and further undermine the premium feel you’d expect
from a product at this price.

It’s worth mentioning that
the model I was using was the top-tier version of the 900, with an i7
processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD – so it was more than capable of
top-level performance.

Lenovo Yoga 900 – Ports

The 900 comes with two USB Type A 3.0, one USB Type C 3.0 with video-out, a power port that can also be used as a USB 2.0 port, a 4-in-1 card reader (SD, MMC, SDXC, SDHC) and an audio combo jack.

Lenovo’s proprietary charging port looks almost exactly like a USB port, and as such can actually be used as a third USB 2.0. You can also use the power brick as a charger for other devices by swapping the Lenovo cable for a USB one. For those who’d rather only travel with one charger for both laptop and phone/tablet, this is a handy addition.

You won’t be able to use the USB Type-C port to charge the Yoga 900 however, since it’s only used to output video to a monitor or to connect other devices to your laptop. It’s also worth noting that the 900 lacks an HDMI port.