Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 11e Chromebook Review By MobileTechReview

This is Lisa from mobile tech review and now for something well completely different, yeah, it's a Chromebook but yeah. It's also a thing pad. That's pretty unusual combination so forth. Well, you know, Chromebooks have been kind of notebook by fisher-price a little cheapo cheesy, except the Chromebook pixel, which was inordinately gorgeous and wildly expensive too. Well. This one here marries the ThinkPad design and they to get together to imagine that we're going to look at it now.

Well, here's something you don't see every day, a Chromebook, that's built like a tank and doesn't look like well something that's meant for either the K through grade 6 program or over the budget section in Best Buy, because this is a thing pad. Also, it's not just a Chromebook. This is Lenovo's ThinkPad Yoga, 11 e Chromebook models, so ThinkPad Yoga we've seen the ThinkPad Yoga before on all the ThinkPad Yoga, which is a twelve and a half inch windows convertible. This time it is here in chrome, buckle and now is Judges, so it does this. It does the tent mode, it does the presentation mode, it does the full tablet mode, and it has a touchscreen.

You know: Chrome OS isn't wild, and it's support for touch, but it's not too bad at this point, so it all works out pretty darn. Well, I. Don't miss call this given the wonderful keyboard on this, the rugged design that ThinkPad look. That's you know, businessmen kind of love, I'd call this the Chromebook for adults, except for notice. The EDU series over here sticker Lenovo seizes is being saying that schools will buy into because schools so far have been some of the biggest buyers of Chromebooks, sure, mom and pop, and uncle and aunt going, and they try one out of Best Buy, maybe buy it because 250 or 300 dollars not too much of a risk sort of like the old, netbook, craze, and I'm, not sure how well it's sticking with the average consumer but in schools, and makes a lot of sense.

Kids can't mess up the operating system, it's all working perfectly on the network lockdown. You can't install your own apps, just Chrome extensions on it. So it's been very good for schools so far, but the thing is especially if you're thinking about well your average fourth grader, so they're, not always so gentle with their technologies are really, really careful, but not all of them. So the idea here is the spill resistant keyboard, the rugged building design that we know and love from the ThinkPad pasts, a null space for dust and ruggedness shock vibration, which it should because there's no moving parts in here. This has a 16 gig flash drive in here, but anyway, sturdy 0.87 inches thick. So it's not the skinniest guy on the block, certainly I bet, but no Chromebooks so far other than the Chromebook pixel, which will set you back.

Twelve or fifteen hundred dollars has been much of a looker, and obviously we have it in tablet mode right now, keyboard exposed, but key input is ignored when it is in yoga mode, like most all yoga products. This is not like the ThinkPad Yoga Windows machine that actually has the lock and lift keyboard that locks down. So this one will move likewise the track panel move, but it too is ignored. Same robust kind of Lenovo hinges that use on all of their yoga's. This thing is pretty darn sturdy, so, yes, you can use it as a tablet like so accelerometer, so you can use it in portrait mode.

You can use it in landscape mode. You can use the touchscreen on it now, even though Chrome has not been the best for supporting touch overall, it's its not too bad right now. So, let's launch the web browser. We can see right here. This is our desktop and here's the web browser, so I can do things like scroll.

Just fine, really no need for pinch zooming here, 1366 by 768 resolution. In an eleven point, six inch display size, which is a fine resolution for a screen. That's relatively small definitely sells for four hundred and fifty-five dollars. This is not a thousand dollar plus convertible machine here. Ah, so what about the keyboard? If you type over here it knows that pops up the on-screen keyboard, that we have it in tablet mode.

So you know sorry, you can't use the keyboard the hardware keyboard, obviously so that works out pretty well to web page load times are good pinch. Zooming on this is also fine, and one thing that is particularly nice is the display almost uniformly other than the Chromebook pixel, and there was one HP Chromebook that until they revised it had pretty nice display Anna they've been pretty mediocre, TN panels. This is a nice IPS panel. Viewing angles on this are quite good sure we have glare, they called us. The anti-glare display, guess what it's still pretty Galleries shiny, but it has really nice.

Colors is sharp. It's easy on the eyes, and one thing I didn't like about previous Chromebooks I could imagine using them for the web and even for writing up review and Google Docs, something like that, but it was murderous on the eyes this. This is actually quite good and here's an example of web pages. A review of the Nvidia shield tablet lots of text right here and nice and sharp and easy on the eyes. You don't see that haloing are that kind of scintillating effective sees on some cheaper Chromebooks consume.

Just so you get it figure, it stays nice and sharp and readable. So for those of you who are just looking for a Chromebook that had decent display on it, and it wasn't as expensive as the Chromebook pixel well, this would be the alternative right now. So it's looking pretty good when you are using it in tablet mode which you might or might not choose to do, but it's pretty handy for content consumption. You have controls and on the side, all parts ports are relatively a readily available power button right there. Your volume controls, of course, there's also volume controls on the keyboard, but makes it handy windows in tablet mode.

We have USB high-speed 3.0 port here, full size, HDMI, 1.4 or lock slot and on the other side, SD card slot, USB 2.0 port power out on that. So if you want to charge your smartphone or something again, there's your combo headphone microphone jack, and it uses rectangular, Lenovo style charging connector and as a compact power, brick on it. So everything is accessible. This blank right here looks like it would be for a wired Ethernet, though that is not actually available on the machine. You can also use this in presentation mode like some standard yoga stuff going on there and if we're using in presentation mode, you might want to do something like play or watch a video.

So, let's check out our video review of the HTC One m8 for Windows to see how the speaker sounds and see how it plays that's a supermodel tag review, and today we're playing it at seven Twinkies full screen, a 720p display so decent speakers on there and gets the job done nice looking display for watching video as well. Now for those of you who want to hear a little music, you got google play music available right here. Obviously you can do things like streaming: Spotify, Pandora, all that sort of thing -. You can put your music on an SD card as well, given that there's 16 gigs of internal flash storage, you're, probably using storage cards for all of your media when possible and there's a 720p webcam up here. So you can Google Chat video chat to your heart's content with folks, if you want so since this is Chrome, OS I hope.

Most of you know by now that this is really a cloud-based operating system. You have Chrome OS built-in in the machine itself and pretty much everything I do requires an internet connection that you can do were offline work in Google, Documents, Word, Excel and PowerPoint compatible products right, there's some image editing, but really it depends on having a network connection. Most everything is accomplished: ?, really everything inside the Chrome web browser. So if you're working on Google Docs were going to do it in the web browser if you're working on image, editing you're going to do it inside this web browser, you can go to settings it launches over here, and then it'll bring up some dialogues on the machine itself. So this is not a machine where you go and get your Photoshop CD and you install Photoshop on this is not like Mac, OS, 10 or Windows.

In that respect, at all, it is a cloud operating system with well. The nice thing is that you're not responsible for taking care of this machine ministering the software keeps itself up to date. You don't have to install any programs other than the Chrome extensions that you want. They can add some functionality, but on the other hand, you just can't go and buy any application. You want to throw it on here, so it has modest utility again, that's what makes it perfect for schools where they don't need a lot of custom applications on here.

Just get some MS Office work done get the web done place, videos that sort of thing you can load videos on an SD card, and you can play them just fine. With this, you can view photos that it's on an SD card, so for content consumption. It works out quite well, and you have the pervasive strip down here for navigation. Of course, we have the Chrome web browser. We have a Gmail shortcut.

We got Google Plus hangouts. Furthermore, we have the YouTube that we're using other applications here which are really Chrome extensions again, so there's our Google Docs Google Photos access to files web-based services like Netflix. You can do that on here too, which is always nice and Evernote has web extension. Clipper. Second screen right there, Google Play service is also available too.

So if you have an Android phone, if you bought into the Google Play ecosystem. For your view, movies or TV shows that sort of thing, and we even have a couple of games like bejeweled and access to things like Lister. So Flitter really will just take you to the will flicks your web page right there, and it's sort of customized view that works out for the browser, and she could use up more of the screen in my opinion, but that's the way Chrome OS works. You have access to your account right there, upload stuff to Google power Wi-Fi. Now nice thing about this is comes with Intel Wi-Fi AC 70 to 60, so you have dual-band AC Wi-Fi on here, given how dependent this is on a network connection, that's a good thing to have a good network card.

You do get that here and Bluetooth.4.0 is built-in combo with that card. Four gigs of ram in here, so pretty healthy lot. Chromebooks only have two. This guy is actually a bit of a powerhouse as Chromebooks go, and that does affect battery life a bit we'll get to that. First.

It has a quad-core Cameron. Now this is the latest generation Cameron that is part of the bay trail em CPU series. It's the upscale cousins, the Intel Atom that operates a higher voltage, Vanessa Cameron in 29 31.8 3 gigahertz Cameron in 29 30 as a quad-core with burst: 2 2.1, 6, gigahertz, Intel, HD, graphics. So among Chromebooks for those of you who do more image, manipulation. Anything like that more multitasking.

This one again would be a good choice for 455 bucks to say $300 for your average chrome bar you're. Getting a lot more performance here. Questions. Do you need more performance? One thing that everybody can enjoy is the perfect think pad keyboard. That's on here we put it back in traditional laptop mode, typical, think pad keyboard, Hake relief smile shaped keys, a real pleasure to type on, even though it's our eleven point, six inches point Lenovo does a great job.

It's a typist dream. It's really nice. Likewise, the trackpad large smooth, easy to operate generally Chromebooks have had pretty good trackpads, but the keyboards you know depends on which one you're looking at they're, not bad, then that's superb. This is superb keyboard on here. So for those of you who aren't into content creation you're going to like that, Along machine weighs 3.1 pounds which is around par for the course from 11.6 inch machine, be it Windows, Chrome, OS or anything else, especially for convertible they're. Going to weigh a little more because you have the beefy hinge design and the fact that this is a beefy thing, pads sort of machine.

It's just going to be a little heavier now battery life. It has a four cell battery. That's nominally sealed inside not too hard to take the bottom off as several screws here on the bottom to hold this bottom panel on four cell lithium-ion battery Lenovo says up to eight hours on a charge that is pretty optimistic. I find I get more like six hours on a charge with brightness set to around 60%. The IPS display may be fairly sharp among Chromebooks, it's very sharp, certainly and pretty colorful, but it's moderately bright.

It's not Super-duper bright, so I tend to not really want to go below 60% myself. Those of you who have legalized you might be able to go down to 40% or so try to extend battery life a bit more so while some Chromebooks running on will but are essentially really under powered, CPUs or mobile, OS CPUs will get much better battery life than this guy right here. So if you really need stamina, this might not be your first choice so who's the ThinkPad Yoga, Chromebook, 11, e4. Obviously, Lenovo has the education market in mind and that's certainly just fine right there, but for those of you who are not in the education market its. If you have some more money to spend, you don't really need the 250 to $300 price is your maximum there.

You want something a little more rugged with a much better display, and you're really interested in Chrome OS. Well, it would be for you obviously for those who, those of you who are just trying out Chrome OS for the first time you might not want to invest quite as much into a Chromebook just to see if you like it or not, but if you're already aware of what it's about you're fine with the cloud computing way that things work on this, and you say, I, don't want a crappy display and I know once, and it looks ultra cheeseball so when I whip this out on the commuter trainer. But it looks to me like why using that little plastic, you think well that would be for you right here: sturdy good ports, fast Wi-Fi on here, four gigs of RAM, faster than average CPU. It's also for those who are looking for the most horsepower you can get in Chromebook granted. There's not much that really taxes a Chromebook, a lot, but some people do like to multitask.

Have a lot of tabs open they've got Picks photo editing going on the same time. You've got some Google Docs, so you've got your web browsing sessions and be playing some music, because you can, of course do that you can play google play music using the Chrome extension and Chrome web browser, and this too for those you're going to be doing all of those things. Well, it's easy to recommend this. So that's the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga, 11 e Chromebook, it's available now again $455 a little more expensive than the average Chromebook, but also much more solidly built and to me, most importantly, a very nice IPS display on the super mobile tech review. Don't forget to visit our website for the full written review and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Source : MobileTechReview