Lenovo pioneered the 360-degree hinge design with the company’s first Yoga laptop. Since then the company has been refining its design, and its newest premier laptop — the Lenovo Yoga 900 – may just be their best yet. With a clean and sleek design, a powerful 6th Generation Intel Core processor and a revamped hinge design, Lenovo takes the best aspects of the Yoga line and improves upon them.
The premium 13.3-inch convertible certainly looks the part with smooth rounded edges and a premium metallic finish that’s available in Platinum Silver, Champagne Gold and Clementine Orange. The protective display lid showcases “Lenovo” lettering along the bottom right-hand corner and silver “Yoga” lettering along the top left-hand corner. The Yoga’s deck is comprised of a soft textured material that provides a comfortable wrist rest when typing. The bottom of the chassis is made of the same protective metal alloy casing as the screen lid.
The Lenovo Yoga 900 is incredibly thin; measuring 0.58-inches thick and weighing 2.8 pounds, making it the lightest convertible with Intel Core i Processors on the market. While the lightweight design certainly adds to the laptop’s appeal, the real crown jewel of the 900’s design is it’s revamped 360 degree watchband hinge design. The hinge is tinted to match each color option and is made up of more than 800 individual pieces. The noticeable change, is that the 900 offers a smoother rotation, making it even easier to switch between tablet, and clamshell mode and everything in between. The best part is while it offers a smoother transition, the hinge still provides enough restraint to ensure that the display doesn’t move, when using the screen’s touch controls.
Speaking of the screen, the Yoga 900 houses a 13.3-inch QHD+ (3200 x 1800).The glossy panel offers excellent readability and vibrant color contrast. Unfortunately NBR didn’t get a chance to look at any media on the device, but the blues and reds looked particularly crisp on the panel. The only downside with the display was that there was a noticeable glare when the sunlight directly hit the display, causing noticeable color loss and background reflections to appear on the screen.
The Yoga 900 features an Island style keyboard. The black rounded keys are smooth to the touch and slightly are slightly curved inward, making it easy to grip with your fingertips. The keys offer excellent travel given the laptops incredibly thin profile and consistent reliable feedback. Perhaps the best feature of the 900’s keyboard is the added sixth row. The Previous iteration of Yoga’s did away with the function keys, but the 900 brings them back and still manages to offer solid spacing between keys. Located below the keyboard is a modest sized touchpad. The pad is devoid of mouse buttons and is outlined by a thin metallic strip. The soft rubber pad provides excellent travel and consistent readability.
The Yoga 900 not only looks the part, but has the performance to back it up. The laptop features Intel’s 6th Generation Skylake processors (with Intel Core i5 and i7 options), with up to 16GB of LPDDR3 memory and up to 512GB SSD storage. The 900 runs on Windows 10 operating system, and overs two times the battery density of previous models for upwards of 9 hours of battery life according to Lenovo.
The Lenovo Yoga 900 seems like a solid package offering a thinner form factor, with a clean aesthetic, improved design elements and stronger performance. The Yoga 900 is currently available from Best Buy retailers and online at Lenovo’s website starting for $1,200