Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 – Screen

As its name suggests, the Lenovo Yoga 13 has a 13.3-inch screen. Naturally it’s an IPS panel, and while it might not be Full HD, a 1,600 x 900 resolution is still significantly higher than the 1,366 x 768 standard, and plenty to make everything look very sharp indeed.

Viewing angles are as good as we expect from IPS, with only the slightest bit of contrast shift from horizontal extremes. The display’s colours are reasonably vibrant with a decent 300nits maximum brightness, while backlighting is superbly even with nary a trace of bleed. In fact, our only real complaint about the IdeaPad Yoga 13’s screen – aside from the inevitable reflections caused by the protective Gorilla Glass at its front – is that a little dark detail gets lost at the gloomiest end of the greyscale, meaning you may miss a few subtleties in dark moments of movies or games.

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 – Speakers

The audio produced by this 13-inch Lenovo Yoga is just about average. The up-facing stereo speakers are hidden under the keyboard, and as such will be slightly muted if you’re resting the Yoga on a flat, soft surface in ‘tablet mode’ – but this will probably be a rare scenario.

At their just about adequate maximum volume level, they produce sound that’s lacking in detail and definition, and they’re on the tinny side too. To be honest, we’ve heard better from quite a few hybrid ultraportables, but they do the job for anything outside of music and movies.

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 – Specs

As mentioned, the headline stealer in the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 is its Core i7 muscle. The specific processor in question is the dual core Intel Core i7-3517U, which hums along at 1.9GHz by default but can turbo clock up to 3GHz. Interestingly, this is the lowest processor configuration we could find in the UK, though Core i3 configs should be available through Lenovo direct.

(u)PCMark 07 Performance Benchmark(/u)
General: 4534
Entertainment: 3051

Oddly for a machine sporting such a nice chip by default, 4GB is the maximum amount of RAM on retail models – the Lenovo Yoga 13 doesn’t seem to be available from the company’s UK site right now, where specs tend to be configurable and the Yoga should take up to 8GB. Likewise, the solid state drive offers an average 128GB capacity if buying from third-party shops, though Lenovo lists a possible 256GB SSD.

(u)Gaming Benchmarks (average fps, 720p, Medium Detail)(/u)
TrackMania Nations Forever
50.8

S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat
25.6

Mind you, all this makes for a pretty speedy setup, and proper 3D gaming is the only area where the 13-inch Yoga will struggle. For example, while it ran good old TrackMania at a silky-smooth 50.8 frames per second (fps) average in our standard test, the more demanding Stalker only returned 25.6fps, which is barely playable. Then again, there are very few convertible tablet/laptops that will better this by a significant margin.

Under load, the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 stayed relatively quiet, producing an audible but unobtrusive hum. It also stayed fairly cool, only becoming warm to the touch.