Last year's Windows 8 launch was accompanied by a slew of new Ultrabooks, tablets, and hybrid convertibles. Out of that bunch, one of the most interesting has been Lenovo's series of Yoga PCs. Like a yoga instructor, the Yoga PC bends, stretches, and flips into several different poses. If you've been eyeing that form factor but haven't yet pulled the trigger, then you might want to know that Lenovo just announced its first proper follow-up, the Yoga 2 Pro.
Nothing has changed in the new Yoga's form is the overall factor. We're still looking at the same four modes: tablet, laptop, tent, and stand (check out our Yoga 11S review for more on that). What has changed are the Yoga's guts. We're looking at upgraded components all around, making this year's version a much more powerful and attractive machine.
Specs
Want details, you say? Well, the biggest change in the Yoga 2 Pro is its display. It's still a 13.3-inch screen, but its resolution gets a huge upgrade to 3,200 x 1,800. That comes out to 276 pixels per inch (PPI), the highest density for a commercially-available screen of this size. By comparison, the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro has a density of 227 PPI, and the Chromebook Pixel packs in 239 PPI. Lenovo says that its display is four times brighter than the original model.
The new Yoga's display isn't the only area that saw an upgrade though. You can also buy a version with a new 4th-generation Intel Core Haswell processor, which should give its battery life a big boost (Lenovo claims up to six hours of full HD playback at 150 nits).
But there are subtle improvements to the form, too. The Yoga 2 Pro is lighter and thinner than its predecessor, measuring at 1.39 kg (3.06 lbs) and 15.5 mm (0.61") thick. It's rare to see a manufacturer upgrade a device's display and battery life, and still make the device thinner and lighter. All hail Intel's powerful and power-saving Haswell chips.
The hybrid also packs up to 8 GB of RAM, and it ships in solid-state drive options of 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB. All models will run some version of Windows 8, with options of "up to" Windows 8.1 Pro.
Release info
The Yoga 2 Pro will be available starting in October with a price of €1,299 in Europe (that's about US$1,700). Yep, that crazy holiday season is already creeping up on us, and we imagine this will be just one of many new hybrid PCs we'll be seeing in the next few months.