Yoga Duet 7 Review: Tablet or Laptop?
How cool is this? The Yoga Duet 7 aims to be the ultimate productivity device with all the bells and whistles. With its stunning design, top-of-the-line processing power, multi-function input devices, crystal clear displays, and Amazon Alexa built-in, it manages to cover most but not all of these aspects.
Is the Yoga Duet 7 a tablet or a laptop? The answer is both. The keyboard cover is detachable, which means you can both have a laptop-style device or a tablet running Windows 10.
If I've managed by some miracle to capture your attention, you may want to stick around as I cover the details, the pros, and the cons of it.
Yoga Duet 7 Specs |
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The design of the Yoga Duet 7
The back of this device's kickstand connects to a tight hinge that keeps the tablet in position regardless of how you hold it. You can open it fully at a max angle of around 70 degrees. The keyboard is thin and flexible but still provides a solid typing experience. The fabric covering the base does a great job of holding onto the tablet while also providing a nice feel under the fingers. The keyboard snaps securely with a powerful magnet, which keeps the tablet and keyboard in place.
The 13-inch 3K panel offers a resolution of 2160×1350 pixels (196 PPI) and a 16:10 format. The screen brightness delivers 450 nits in the center of the screen, an impressive amount that reflects well on its battery life and overall usability. The Yoga Duet 7's screen is plagued by glare, making its use outdoors hard. Even so, the device's brightness level should be enough for most outdoor situations.
What's Inside?
Lenovo has equipped the Lenovo Duet 7 with a cooled Intel Core i5-10210U (4x 1.60 GHz). Unfortunately, all the option when it comes to RAM fizzles at 8GB. While this isn't ideal for users who do intensive image processing or 3D modelling often, it's perfect for those looking for an affordable workstation.
The Intel Core i5-10210U is a processor designed for low energy consumption and long battery life. This model has a base clock frequency of 1.6 GHz but can boost up to 4.2 GHz (max 3.9 GHz when all cores are running). The chip features Hyper-Threading, which enables it to work with eight threads simultaneously. In short, the processor is pretty fast and can scale up when it needs.
The Duet 7 is on par with its competition in all areas. The system performance is average according to PCMark 10, but it does more with less than last year's model.
Benchmark Results |
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256GB of SSD Disk Space
The Yoga Duet 7 internal UMIS SSD (model: RPJTJ256MEE1OWX) is an excellent performer suited for storing large files, but it isn't the best at reading and writing small blocks of data. You can also up for the larger 512GB SSD if you believe that 256GB is too little.
What about Gaming?
Gaming is not the Yoga Duet 7's strong suit, as the Intel HD Graphics 620 struggles to maintain an average of 15fps on most titles at 1080p. Users should consider more powerful processors if they wish to play the latest titles in the future. As it is with most, a better processor and a better graphic unit are what you need for this.
The small speakers hide at the top area of the tablet. They produce a metallic tin sound that is too strong in the mids and eradicates all lows.
Who is the Yoga Duet 7 for?
The Yoga Duet 7 is for the office worker, the casual home user and the ones that enjoy the portability of a fully versatile unit.
Some final thoughts
The tablet remains quiet with its cooling fan, which is a nice touch. Its processor is up to the task, and there is no noticeable throttling during continuous load. It offers the office worker, or home user the needed capacity to complete the task given to it without much fuss. The graphics card isn't ideal for gaming, so it will not work well in this case.
The issue I note is with the type cover keyboard, where you can't have this on your lap. As a simple tablet, it works well and the same if you use the type cover on a hard surface.
Its price point is on the affordable side of the scale, given what you get for its versatile nature. You can put your hands on this little one at Best Buy for $969.99. I've reviewed a number of Lenovo laptops which you can check out here.
