Lenovo Yoga 710 15 inch

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Our verdict

The Lenovo Yoga 710 offers a great keyboard, vibrant display, and strong performance for less than $1,000.

To the

Clicky, responsive keyboard

Great screen

Solid performance

Against

Fewer ports than the competition offers

tin speaker

Until recently, you couldn't find a truly quality 2-in-1 for under $1,000. However, the $750 Lenovo Yoga 710 15-inch shows how fast that is changing. For far less than a grand beats this curved-back notebook over its price point and competes with our favorite 2-in-1s like the HP Specter x360. The Yoga 710's beautiful display, responsive keyboard, and strong performance make it a fantastic 2-in -1 large screen and great value for money.

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The Yoga 710 offers a minimalist aesthetic with an all-black aluminum chassis. The lid features a glossy silver Yoga logo and Lenovo's seal in grey, but is otherwise kept simple. The hinges, which are the same on the 11- and 14-inch models The 710's silver finishes are a dark gunmetal gray. Opening the lid reveals the 15.6-inch, 1080p display with a small bezel, island-style keyboard, and trackpad.

>At 4.2 pounds and 14.1 x 9.6 x 0.7 inches, the Yoga 710 is on the smaller and lighter end of the 15-inch convertible spectrum

HP Specter x360 15t

weighs the same as the Yoga but is larger (14.8 x 9.8 x 0.6 inches) and the

Samsung notebook 7 spin

is about the same size (14 x 10.1 x 0.8 inches) but much heavier at 5 pounds.The

Dell Inspiron 15 7000

has the largest footprint at 14.9 x 9.9 x 0.7 inches and weighs 4.6 pounds.

The Yoga's 360-degree hinges allow the notebook to be used in four modes: Laptop, Tablet (by folding the screen back), Tent (an inverted "V"), and Stand (the screen stands with the keyboard face down) .

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ports

I hope you don't have too many peripherals, because the Yoga 710 has fewer ports than its competitors. On the left is the power jack, SD card slot, and headphone jack. On the right is a micro HDMI port and two USB 3.0 ports. The Inspiron 15 offers three USB ports; the Specter x360 and Notebook 7 each offer four, including all with USB Type-C. All three also have full-size HDMI outputs instead of micro-HDMI.

New in the latest (7th Gen Core) version of the Yoga 710 is a fingerprint reader located on the palm rest.

The Yoga's 15.6-inch 1080p display delivers crisp, bright images. When I watched the Wonder Woman trailer, the green trees and blue sea on Themyscira Island looked lush and alive. As Wonder Woman through a window jumped to surprise their enemies, I could see every shard of glass. The screen renders an excellent 100.6 percent of the sRGB color space, well above the mainstream category average of 91 percent. Only the Specter x360 ( 119 percent) was more vibrant, while the Inspiron 15 (62 percent) and Notebook 7 Spin (72 percent) had duller tones.

The Yoga 710's display had a Delta-E color accuracy of 0.8 (0 being best). That's better than the category average of 2.3 and also better than the Inspiron 15 (0.9), the Notebook 7 Spin (1.8) and the Specter x360 (4.1).

On top of that, the screen has an average brightness of 322 nits, which is brighter than the category average (267 nits), the Notebook 7 Spin (260 nits), the Specter x360 (246 nits), and the Inspiron 15 (244 nits). nits).

keyboard and touchpad

I love the Yoga 710's clicky and responsive keys. They have a vertical travel of 1.4 millimeters, which is just short of our preferred minimum of 1.5 mm, but it requires a hefty 59 grams of force to actuate.

Thanks to the strong tactile feedback from the keys, I typed my usual 110 words per minute on the 10fastfingers.com typing test with my average error rate of 2 percent. The keyboard was placed a little further back in the deck than I would have liked, but I felt the typing feel still extremely comfortable.

The 4.1 x 2.7-inch touchpad was responsive to navigation and Windows 10 gestures, including three-finger switching between apps and swiping down to reveal the desktop.

Audio

The Yoga 710's speakers are loud enough to fill a room, but they're a little tinny. When I listened to Yellowcard's "For You, And Your Denial," the vocals sounded a bit hollow, but the guitars, drums, and fiddle did were all very clear. When I folded it into tablet mode, the speakers reverberated.

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The Dolby Audio app has several equalizer presets, but I recommend leaving them at the default setting.

perfomance

Equipped with a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5-7200U CPU, 8 GB RAM, a 256 GB SSD and an Nvidia GeForce 940MX GPU with 2 GB VRAM, our Yoga 710 Multitasker test configuration will serve well. I had 30 tabs open in Chrome, one of which was streaming 1080p video, and saw no lag at all.

On Geekbench 3's overall performance test, the Yoga 710 scored 6,681, which is below the mainstream category average of 8,315. The Notebook 7 Spin (Core i7-6500U; 7,132) scored higher, while the Inspiron 15 ( Core i5-6200U, 6499) and the Specter x360 (Core i5-6200U, 6376) were slightly lower.

The Yoga 710 took 31 seconds to transfer 4.97 GB of mixed media files, which translates to 164.2 megabytes per second. That's faster than the 156.3 Mb/s average, as are the SSDs in the Specter x360 (149 .7 MBit/s) and the Inspiron 15 (122.6 MBit/s) and the 5400 rpm HDD in the Notebook 7 Spin.

The Yoga 710 took 4 minutes and 2 seconds to complete the OpenOffice spreadsheet macro, pairing 20,000 names and addresses. The average mainstream notebook takes 4:28, the Inspiron 15 takes 4:47, the Specter x360 does the job in 4:31 and the Notebook 7 Spin takes 4:03.

While the Yoga 710 has an Nvidia GeForce 940MX GPU with 2GB of RAM, this card falls short for intense games like Doom, Metro: Last Light, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Apps like Photoshop are more likely to see a performance boost.

In the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited graphics benchmark, the Yoga 710 scored 84,670. That's a small increase from the mainstream average of 84,048, but falls short of the Notebook 7 Spin with the same GPU. The Inspiron 15 and Specter x360, both with integrated Intel HD Graphics 520, achieved lower scores of 64,067 and 64,632, respectively.

battery life

The Yoga 710 lasted 9 hours and 19 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test, which involves continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi. That's better than the mainstream average of 6:36 and the HP Specter (8:27). The battery life of the Inspiron 15 7000 is even shorter (6:55), the Notebook 7 lasts a meager 5:53.

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cam

The Yoga 710's 720p webcam took grainy, overexposed photos. A photo I took in our labs went completely overboard with the light reflecting off my forehead and cheeks, leaving me looking even paler than usual (and I don't need any help). The photo was detailed enough to show the stitching on my collar, but all the noise was distracting.

Lenovo Yoga 710 15 inch

heat

No matter what position you hold it, the Yoga 710 stays nice and cool. After streaming 15 minutes of HD video from Hulu, the bottom of the notebook reached 87 degrees Fahrenheit, the keyboard reached 84 degrees, and the touchpad measured 79.5 degrees. All of these measurements are below our 95-degree comfort threshold.

software and warranty

The Yoga 710 doesn't come with a lot of preinstalled software. The bloatware is just the usual suspects: Candy Crush Soda Saga, Farmville 2: Country Escape, Flipboard, and Twitter. Lenovo's Settings app gives you fine-grained control over display and power settings, while the companion app flexes the laptop checked for hardware problems.

Lenovo offers a one-year warranty on the Yoga 710. You can see how Lenovo fared in our Best and Worst Brands rankings and Tech Support Showdown.

configurations

The Yoga 710 we reviewed is a $750 configuration with a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-7200U CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 2nd Gen Nvidia GeForce 940MX GPU GB of VRAM.

For $1,300 you get a model with a Core i7-7500U CPU, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Nvidia GeForce GTX 940MX with 2GB VRAM and a 3840 x 2160 display.

bottom line

With its beautiful screen, responsive keyboard, and solid performance, the Lenovo Yoga 710 is the best 15-inch hybrid you can get for $1,000 or less. If you want a better display and superior speakers, go for the

HP Specter x360 15t

However, the trade-offs in choosing this device are a flat keyboard, higher price point (the HP starts at $1,149), and shorter battery life.

However, if you want one of the best keyboards on a 2-in-1 and can trade a bit of battery life, the Yoga 710 will save you big bucks, offering superior value and ease of use.

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