Lenovo Yoga Book

There’s no denying the hybrid market is going through a period of stagnation. Though we’ve seen numerous new hybrid laptop-come-tablets hit the market, none of them have really done anything to bring the technology forward.

Acer’s Switch Alpha 12 and Samsung’s glitzy Galaxy TabPro S may have some unique features. But in my experience most only aim to replicate, not redefine the user experience offered by Microsoft’s stellar Surface Pro 4. Which is why it’s refreshing to see Lenovo try something new with its latest Yoga Book hybrid.

Unlike other convertibles, which focus on touch screen usability, the Yoga Book comes with a pressure sensitive keyboard. At first this may sound a little odd, but after some hands-on time with it, I can see the keyboard being a godsend for artists used to traditional graphics tablets and people who still like to take notes the old fashioned way, with pen and paper.

1. IT HAS A TOUCH-SENSITIVE KEYBOARD

Unlike the Surface-style devices, the Yoga Book’s keyboard isn’t a secondary dock. It’s attached to the main tablet section using one of Lenovo’s custom watch band hinges – which according to Lenovo has over 130 individual parts.

The Yoga Book’s keyboard runs using Wacom’s Passive EMR Technology and is purely digital; it doesn’t have any physical keys. Initially this left me a little concerned it would offer a similarly horrible typing experience to Microsoft’s original Touch Cover – which remains one of the worst keyboards I’ve ever used.

But my opening impressions weren’t terrible. Typing a few quick memos the keyboard was surprisingly reactive and accurate. The keyboard provides haptic feedback that lets you know when a command has been registered. The keyboard was also fairly forgiving when it came to mis-presses thanks to the inclusion of “intelligent tracking” that lets the tablet guess what you meant to write if you slightly miss a key when typing fast.

Touchpal Prediction, which is basically version of the predictive text you get on most smartphones and tablets, also helped, but was far from foolproof. During my session it accidentally took my attempt to write “monkeys rule” as “monkeys poo” – factually true but not what I was going for.

The keyboard also has a touchpad below the spacebar, which was a little more hit and miss. During my hands-on it was a wee bit too sensitive and would regularly send the cursor flying around the screen and failed to recognise multi touch commands.

2. PLUS A NIFTY REAL PEN STYLUS

The keyboard sounds cool but for me, the headline feature is how it works with the Yoga Book custom “Real Pen” active stylus. The stylus is based on Wacom tech and is on paper a seriously impressive bit of kit in its own right. According to Lenovo the pen supports 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity. The Surface Pen has 1,024 degrees of pressure sensitivity by comparison.

The pen lets you turn the into a drawing/writing surface with the press of a button. Once switched on, the pen can be used to take notes or doodle in any app or program with touch sensitivity built in. During my hands-on I was seriously impressed how well it worked. The pen smoothly let me sketch and take notes hassle free and the palm detection tech was top notch.

Drawing on the keyboard section of the device will sound alien to younger buyers who don’t remember the world before iPads. But to me it made drawing on the Yoga Book a more pleasant experience, akin to doodling on proper Wacom Intuos graphics tablets. My only concern is that I couldn’t figure out how to configure keyboard shortcuts when using the stylus – which will be a problem for people that use proper desktop editing applications like Photoshop, Krita or Gimp.

3. YOU CAN TAKE NOTES ON IT WITH A PEN AND PAPER

I was more impressed with the Yoga Book’s note taking powers. The Yoga Book also has a useful custom feature that lets you automatically create digital copies of notes taken on physical paper. The tech works a similar way to Wacom’s Bamboo Spark. Removing a cap on the stylus turns it into a proper ink pen. From there if you take notes on a pad of paper resting on the keyboard section, the Yoga Book will automatically create and save a digital version.

The Yoga Book comes bundled with a paper pad that’s designed to fit neatly onto the keyboard section. On the Android version the app worked very well. The screen accurately detected and tracked what I was writing and the notes I took, despite my child like scrawl handwriting, were all legible at the end.

4. WINDOWS OR ANDROID – PICK YOUR POISON

Where the digital copy of your notes is saved depends on which configuration of the Yoga Book you choose. Lenovo’s offering it in Windows 10 and Android 6.0.1 options. In Windows notes will by default be saved to OneNote. On Android they’ll be saved to a custom “Note Save” app.

Lenovo had made a few changes to the Android version of the tablet I tested. But most of them seemed to be positive, like the addition of standard keyboard shortcuts, multi window support and task bar. Outside of this the UI looked all but identical to stock Android and I didn’t notice any serious bloatware. This is likely why a Lenovo spokesman confidently confirmed to me the Yoga Tab will be upgraded to the soon to be released Nougat version “as soon as possible after release”.

Lenovo claims it has taken a similarly light touch with the Windows version. Though the company has confirmed it will come preloaded with some Lenovo applications.

5. IT LOOKS NICE, BUT IS A MIXED BAG HARDWARE-WISE...

Both the Windows and Android versions will have identical hardware and designs, which is a mixed blessing.

On the outside the Yoga Book looks stunning. The aluminium-magnesium alloy used to make the chassis looks great and feels solid enough to survive the average wear and tear expected of a tablet/laptop. The modest 690g weight and thin 9.6mm (closed) thickness also make it feel suitably travel friendly.

The Yoga Book’s 10.1inch FHD display also left a positive first impression. The IPS tech meant blacks weren’t the deepest I’ve seen, but whites looked clean and colours didn’t appear overcooked to my naked eye.

I’m a little less convinced about the Yoga Book’s internals. The device runs using an old school Intel Atom 64-bit CPU and features a modest 4GB of RAM. If the CPU plays nice with Google’s software, which Atom chips don’t always, the specs should be ok for Android. But I wouldn’t want to run Windows 10 on these specs.

The specs also mean the device may struggle with larger digital painting or RAW photo editing projects – though I didn’t get to test this during my hands on and wouldn’t recommend doing this on a 10-inch device in the first place.

The use of Micro USB rather than USB C tech also feels a little archaic. A year ago the use of micro USB would be forgivable, but these days I expect anything but truly budget devices to use the new type C tech, which speeds up charge times and data transfer speeds.