Thinkpad X1 Yoga 5th Gen

Thinkpad X1 Yoga At A Glance

Lenovo supplied Windows Central with a review unit of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga, now in its fifth generation. This exact model has a 10th Gen Intel Core i7-10610U vPro processor , 16GB of soldered RAM, a 512GB M.2 solid-state drive that can be upgraded, and a 14-inch touch display with 4K resolution. This exact model costs about $2,107 after a hefty discount at Lenovo.

More affordable models are available at Lenovo, starting at about $1,440 for a Core i5-10210U CPU, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and 14-inch FHD low-power touch display. If you’d like to add 4G LTE connectivity, the convenience adds an extra $200 onto the price of the laptop.

Following is a closer look at the exact specs found in the review unit I’ve been using for the last week.

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen 5 Design

Those who love the ThinkPad X1 Yoga line will be happy to see the slick CNC Iron Gray aluminum design once again on the Gen 5. It still gives off that premium vibe, as if I’m a CEO walking into a business meeting.

The interior is more gray surrounding a black keyboard with red accents on the pointing stick buttons. It’s exactly what you’d think a ThinkPad would look like, except gray. While the side bezels are pleasantly narrow, the top bezel could use a trim. Above the keyboard is a small speaker vent in line with the hinge.

Obviously, as a Yoga, it sports a 2-in-1 design, so you can flip and rotate this baby 360 degrees. The one noticeable design change was moving the X1 logo from the bottom right corner to the top left corner under the ThinkPad logo on the lid.

At 3 pounds and 12.7 x 8.6 x 0.6 inches, the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 5 is incredibly light and slim, making it a perfect companion for business users who are always on the go.

Display On Thinkpad X1 Yoga

We tested two models of X1 Yoga, one with a 14 inch FHD IPS display and one with a 14 inch 4K IPS display. Both were bright and had great viewing angles, though suffered on color.I tested out our FHD X1 Yoga by watching the trailer for The King of Staten Island on it. In both high and low ambient light, the picture was clearly visible from pretty much any angle, and the screen was well lit without any of the colors washing out. Still, the laptop tended to struggle in dark scenes, with shallow blacks making character outlines difficult to make out. Bright scenes also werent vivid, but were easy to follow.The 4K X1 Yoga had similar brightness and viewing angles to its FHD counterpart, but its image was much more colorful and rich. I tested its screen by watching the open source 4K short film Tears of Steel, which did not suffer from the shallow blacks that were present on the FHD model and had plenty of vivid colors regardless of how dark or bright the movie got. Like its FHD cousin, it also performed well in both high and low light environments.

Our testing showed that the FHD X1 Yoga had the smallest color spectrum of any of the computers in its class, capturing just 72.3% of the DCI-P3 color spectrum. Thats below both the Spectres 77.4% coverage and the XPSs 79.7% coverage. The 4K X1 Yoga fared better, recreating 94.5% of the DCI-P3 spectrum, though the Yoga C940 still pulled ahead with 98.7% coverage.

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Re: X1 Yoga 5th Gen Battery Life

Welcome to the Community

If the computer’s only a couple of days old, there’s a good chance the battery monitor is just guessing. Windows guesstimates the time left based on a snapshot of what the computer is doing at any given time. Since it’s new, it’s likely not done setting itself up lots of things still running in the background. Windows sees heavy CPU use and calculates 3 hours. I get this a lot when I start a computer that’s been off for a week or so. Overdue virus scans start running, OneDrive starts synchronizing, etc. Windows tells me I have 3 hours remaining. Half an hour later, once everything’s settled down and I’m just websurfing and using Word, the estimate runs up to a more-expected 4-5 hours. Even more on my newer machines.

Launch Vantage, navigate to power and click on “see battery details.” Compare the design capacity with the current capacity. If it’s pretty close, then give the computer a couple more days, then launch Vantage, again, and run a battery calibration. That’ll give you a better estimate as to the kind of battery life you can expect. There are a number of things you can do to lengthen that dimmer screen, more-conservative battery settings, etc.

If the difference between design capacity and current capacity is pretty large, then post those results, here.

Productivity Performance Of Thinkpad X1 Yoga

We tested two different configurations of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga , with our FHD unit coming equipped with a more mid-range Intel Core i5-10310U and our 4K unit carrying the more premium i7-10610U.Regardless of which configuration you choose, the X1 Yoga is powerful though not quite as speedy as some rival systems we tested, which pack Intel Core i7-1065G7 processors. Competitors also all use 16GB of RAM, aside from the Spectre. While you can buy the X1 Yoga with just 8GB of RAM, we recommend going for the 16GB that was present in our testing units, as its easy for modern PCs to exceed 8GB of memory with heavy multitasking or even just browsing across a lot of tabs at once.For us, 16GB proved to be plenty when browsing, as we were able to simultaneously open 30 Chrome tabs on both of our test units, including three FHD YouTube videos and one 1080p @ 60 fps Twitch stream, without any loss in speed. The fans did start whirring once the videos started playing, though.

Results were generally the same across the board for our Handbrake video editing test, where we see how long it takes each computer to transcode a video from 4K to FHD . The Core i5-powered X1 Yoga completed the task in 20:28 while the Core i7-powered X1 Yoga was slightly quicker with a time of 19:22. The Spectre and Yoga C940 each had similar results, with respective times of 21:23 and 20:18. The big outlier here was the XPS, which was faster than all of its rivals, finishing the benchmark in 17:19.

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Thinkpad X1 Yoga Keyboard And Touchpad

It’s hard to say something new about the ThinkPad keyboard at this point. It’s still my favorite to type on thanks to deep travel, soft bottoming out, and perfect spacing. If you’re coming in from a different laptop, you’ll probably find the Fn and Ctrl key change on the bottom left is a bit annoying, but it shouldn’t take too long to get used to. The black keys are offset nicely by white lettering, and there’s a backlight for working after hours.

In the middle of the keyboard is the iconic red pointing nub, which, combined with the physical mouse buttons below the spacebar, make up the TrackPoint system. The buttons seem a bit more discrete here, but they’re just as comfortable as ever. And below it, all is a Precision touchpad with a glass pointing surface. It all comes together in a way that it shouldn’t hamper your productivity whatsoever, which is really the main goal of a laptop like this.

Beautiful 4K

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Graphics

We’re eagerly anticipating the launch of Intel’s Tiger Lake CPUs with their accompanying Xe graphics, which should mark a big step forward for integrated GPUs. Until then, we’re stuck with Intel UHD graphics.

It’s good enough for most programs and casual gaming, but if you’re going to play graphically intensive games or edit photos in Photoshop then consider buying a laptop with a discrete GPU.

Our rally car barely missed the minimum speed limit of 30 frames per second when we ran the Dirt 3 benchmark on the ThinkPad X1 Yoga . The Spectre x360 13 with Iris Plus Graphics fared better but the Elite Dragonfly , Latitude 9410 2-in-1 and ThinkPad X1 Carbon also struggled against the premium laptop average .

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Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Battery Life

The ThinkPad X1 Yoga’s battery life ranges from great to respectable depending on which display option you choose: 1080p or 4K.

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The FHD model proved to have the lungs of a marathon runner when it endured for a stellar 11 hours and 30 minutes on our battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits. That tops the ThinkPad X1 Carbon but loses out to the Elite Dragonfly , Latitude 9410 2-in-1 and the Spectre x360 13 .

The 4K version powered down after 7 hours and 28 minutes, which is a decent result for any laptop with a UHD panel. However, it doesn’t last as long as the average premium laptop .

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen 5 Display

The ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 5 boasts a 14-inch display that can be configured with multiple panels.

There are two 1920 x 1080 displays. One is a basic 400 nit panel and the other is a privacy screen rated at 500 nits of brightness. You can bump up to a 2560 x 1440 panel, which will be sharper but net you a lower 300 nits of brightness . Finally, you can go all out and get the 3840 x 2160 Dolby Vision display, which goes up to 500 nits and offers HDR400 compatibility.

I got to see the X1 Yoga’s display up close, and was blown away by how bright and colorful it was. The white balance looked perfect, while the reds and blues on the screen popped. I can’t wait to get this baby through our lab to see what kind of numbers it hits.

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There’s No Such Thing As A Bad Thinkpad

There’s a lot to like about the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 5, and its keyboard and screen are simply as good as it gets among business convertibles. Its battery life is disappointing, but otherwise it competes admirably against enterprise alternatives from HP and Dell.

Still, if you can live without Intel vPro manageability and MIL-STD sturdiness, we can’t help thinking the Yoga 9i and Spectre x360 14 offer small offices and consumers a better deal.

Configurations Of Thinkpad X1 Yoga

We tested two different custom-built X1 Yogas for this review. The first came with an Intel Core i5-10310U processor, Intel UHD Integrated Graphics, 16GB of DDR3 2133 MHz memory, a 256GB PCIe M.2 SSD and a 14 inch FHD IPS touchscreen Display. The second shared the same memory and graphics, but swapped out the CPU for an Intel Core i7-10610U, upgraded the SSD to 512GB of storage and changed the display to a 14 inch 4K IPS touchscreen.

If you don’t buy an X1 Yoga on sale, the ThinkPad tax on both of these is unfortunately here in full force, with our FHD model coming in at $2,724 and our 4k model hitting $3,511. With competitors like the Spectre and the Dell XPS offering similar and sometimes better performance for almost half the price of even our FHD model’s MSRP, Lenovos asking a lot here, especially with the small storage space. Even the Yoga C940, another Lenovo convertible with performance that rivals the ThinkPads, undercuts it by about half.

There are cheaper models available, but even the starting MSRP is already a steep $2,219, and will only net you an Intel Core i5-10210U processor, 8GB of DDR3 2133 MHz RAM, a 256GB PCIe SSD, and a 14 inch FHD IPS touchscreen.

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Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Software And Warranty

Lenovo neatly packages its pre-installed software into a single app called Lenovo Vantage. Here, you can see your warranty status, update your drivers, run diagnostics or request support. It is a one-stop-shop should anything go wrong with your X1 Yoga.

So, there is a second app called Pen Settings, which does exactly what you’d expect: allow you to remap the two buttons on the stylus or enable Hover Click. You can also add the battery status of the pen to the Taskbar.

Our ThinkPad X1 Yoga models run Windows 10 Pro so they are mostly free of obnoxious bloatware. I say mostly because you’ll encounter Microsoft Solitaire Collection, Groove Music and a few other Microsoft apps. There is also a Glance by Miramax app that interfaces with the webcam and locks your screen when it determines you’re away.

The ThinkPad X1 Yoga Carbon ships with a one-year warranty. See how Lenovo fared in our Best and Worst Brands and Tech Support Showdown special reports.

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen 5 Keyboard And Touchpad

While we haven’t tested the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 5’s keyboard just yet, we suspect it’ll be has good as the one on the ThinkPad X1 Yoga , which we adored.

We said that the previous generation keyboard’s curved keys conformed to your fingers, offered a surprising amount of key travel, and had just the right amount of resistance that rewarded you with a hardy click when you pressed down on them.

Lenovo stated that this keyboard will offer backlighting once again and have 1.5 millimeters of key travel, which is in-line with what we generally prefer .

When I got my hands on the keyboard, it’s exactly what I expected from a ThinkPad keyboard: pleasantly clicky keys with the perfect amount of key travel. It had just enough bounce and a smooth actuation force.

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Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen 5 Ports

Despite being slim, the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 5 has a decent number of ports. It offers two Thunderbolt 3 ports, two USB 3.1 ports, an HDMI port, a headphone jack and a security lock slot. it also has a little garage just for the included stylus.

If you need more ports, take a look at our best USB Type-C hubs and best laptop docking stations pages to properly expand.

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Review: New Cpu Options New Features For The Premium Convertible

Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Yoga got a major overhaul in its fourth generation refresh, including an aluminum chassis, Iron Gray color, IR camera and shutter, quad speakers, and overall smaller build. Now in its fifth generation, Lenovo has made just a few small changes to the convertible X1 Yoga, namely updated processors and Wi-Fi 6 wireless connectivity. I’ve been using the laptop for about a week to see what it’s all about, and ultimately whether or not it’s worth your money.

Those of you looking for a convertible business laptop might want to check out Black Friday, which is fast approaching. Amazon does stock the X1 Yoga, but be sure you’re not paying more than you would at Lenovo, even if it’s on sale. Lenovo often has deep discounts on its products no matter the time of year, so you don’t want to overspend on something from Amazon that looks like it’s a great deal. For reference, we’ve seen X1 Yoga models as low as $1,350 at Lenovo. Some Gen 4 models are also available at Amazon, and it remains a great laptop if you’re not looking for all the same modern features. If it’s deeply discounted, it might just be the better choice over the Gen 5 version.

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Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen 5 Specs

The 14-inch ThinkPad X1 Yoga is Lenovo’s flagship 2-in-1 hybrid laptop for business, the convertible cousin of the multiple-award-winning ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Like its corporate rivals the Dell Latitude 9410 2-in-1 and the HP EliteBook x360 1040 G7, it features impeccable engineering and design, plus all the manageability an IT department could desire. Also like them, it’s painfully expensive compared with consumer convertiblesnext to the X1 Yoga, the HP Spectre x360 14 that just won our Editors’ Choice honors among premium 2-in-1s offers a richer OLED display with a more eye-pleasing 3:2 aspect ratio, a faster processor, and twice the storage for almost $900 less.

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Webcam

In what can only be considered a cruel irony, the webcam a seemingly stagnant technology has become one of the most important features on a laptop due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. It’s especially important on a business laptop because who doesn’t want to look good for the boss?

Well, the ThinkPad X1 Yoga doesn’t buck the trend its 720p webcam produces grainy photos. I took the laptop outside on a nice day to give it a chance. Sadly, a selfie I snapped was too dark you could see any color in my green eyes and shrouded by visual noise. My red shirt was the proper scarlet hue and I could see a fair amount of detail in my face. So while the webcam isn’t great, it’ll work in a pinch. We still strongly recommend buying one of the best external webcams, like the Logitech HD Pro C920.

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