Lenovo's Yoga 910 laptop embodies a pleasant balance of style, versatility and performance with its flexible build, touchscreen and zippy internals. Its mobile-inspired features make it visually striking, highly portable and fun to use.
Style & form factor
The Yoga 910 is what many would call a convertible, otherwise known as a 2-in-1 laptop/tablet. But devices in this category vary wildly, so it would be a disservice to use an umbrella term and leave it at that.
So let's present it differently: Like previous entries in Lenovo's lineup, the Yoga 910 is a light, thin laptop with a 360-degree hinge and a touchscreen. The flexible build means you can prop it up several different ways and view it in any orientation. The keyboard locks once the screen angle is greater than 180-degrees, at which point you can navigate via the touchscreen.
As a laptop, the 910 is exceedingly light and thin, and it still manages to fit one full-size USB and two USB-C ports (one that doubles as a charger and one that's equipped for video out) along with a mixed audio jack.
The metal chassis is a matte light gray, and Lenovo's trademark "Watchband Hinge" is attractive in form and function. I'm not thrilled with the light gray color, and wish it was available in another variant (such as the matte black seen on its cousin, the Yoga Book) but all in all, it's still a good looking machine, especially when posed in one of the fetching angles enabled by its unique hinge.
If any complaints can be made about the build, it's that its overall lightness (1.38 kg) can make it seem less sturdy than it actually is. After fairly rugged handling and repositioning, I have no reason to believe that it's fragile or flimsy, but I could see how a little more heft or rigidity could be equated with more luxury.
Keyboard & touchpad
The keyboard is large and comfortable to type on; the backlit keys have a nice give and quality feel. My only complaint about the keyboard is the placement of the right shift key in relation to the arrow keys. For me, adapting to this keyboard meant accidentally pressing Page Up instead of Shift many times.
However, this configuration does leave room for the fingerprint sensor, which is an excellent addition to a laptop, especially one that is meant to be highly mobile and easily accessible. The sensor itself is a minimalist square below the right arrow key. After setting it up through the Windows Hello service, it worked like a charm.
The touchpad is the only build feature that hints at a lack of quality. It's somewhat stiff and hard to click. Pushing down requires a fair amount of fingertip strength and it emits a loud and substantial click. Like most diving-board mechanism touchpads, it's much easier to click on the bottom than the top. And it doesn't seem like the entire pad is touch sensitive, either. Sensitivity drops off around the periphery.
Touchscreen display
The display looks great. We were totally satisfied with the 1,980 x 1,020 Full HD version, but there's another 4K resolution display option for screen sticklers. At 13.9-inches, it also provides more display area than most similarly sized devices.
The display gets played up as nearly bezel-less, which it is – on three sides. On the long side adjacent to the keyboard, there's over 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) of blank chin space below the display. From my point of view, the slight attraction of the small-bezel edges (they measure about half a centimeter each) is not worth the visual disruption of the large chin. It looks somewhat off balance, especially when the computer is in the table tent or tablet positions.
But you don't just look at this screen – you also touch it. The touchscreen and the watchband hinge are what make this laptop so flexible, because you can use it similarly to how you'd use a tablet. It's also nice to occasionally lift your hands off the keyboard while typing, especially for tasks that can be annoying with a trackpad, such as resizing windows (or if you need a reprieve from the just-OK trackpad).
But I do want to stress that despite its size and operating system, the Yoga 910 is not a stand-in for a professional grade tablet: There's no stylus support. You can swipe, tap and scribble to your heart's content, but you can't draw, take notes, or do precision mousing. When this device is being operated via the touchscreen, it's better suited for web surfing or mobile games that any power application. Considering this device is sufficiently well-powered for those kinds of operations, that's a bit of a shame.
Speakers, camera and battery
The JBL stereo speakers are loud and full, but not very clear. They're positioned just underneath the keyboard, so they sound much different depending which position the screen is in. For watching movies with sound, you're better off setting it up in table top or stand mode rather than using it like a laptop.
The 720p webcam seems a little grainy for its resolution, but its atypical placement is actually a more problematic characteristic. Instead of being mounted above the display closer to eye level, it's below the display (part of the previously mentioned vast chin expanse). Unless you get into a creative position, your web conferencing and video calls are likely to catch you at an unflattering angle.
Battery life on the Yoga 910 is excellent. From a single charge, we got at least 8.5 hours of general use time, which included several hours of streaming video over Wi-Fi, before receiving a low-battery warning.
Software & Performance
With its Intel Core i7 processor and 8 GB of RAM starting point, Yoga 910 operates Windows 10 Home as well as we've seen it run. Other than a few Lenovo-branded folders (accounts, settings and similar) and a typical smattering of Windows trials and games, it's fairly bloatware-free.
Other than a few-second delay in orientation change when turning the tablet from side to side, I did not detect anything lagging. Games, video streaming, multiple browser windows, downloads and multi-tasking did not put any stress on this machine.
Overall experience: Reliable, portable and fun
The Lenovo Yoga 910 is good looking, light, and powerful enough to be reliable through many kinds of business and academic needs. Its tablet-inspired functionalities don't add any heavy-duty benefits, though they do add significant appeal for everyday applications like video watching, following instructions or reading a recipe.
Priced starting at $1,050 through Lenovo (though the "web price" is given as $1,330, so this may be a limited time offer) we certainly feel it's appropriately priced. Just remember the tablet functionalities you're paying for aren't professional grade.
Lenovo got things right with this Yoga, so it's a great choice as long as its features are in line with your needs.
Product page: Lenovo Yoga 910
