That picture of the two kids sharing the jumbo-tablet is affordable as hell, but there's no way I'd let two munchkins carry a 27" tablet with a heavy glass-paned screen.
It's a GM108. Same as a Geforce 840M. It's 3/5 of a GM107 (750 Ti). And it's headless, so it has to be used in an Optimus/Hybrid setup, where the display is physically connected to the CPU's integrated graphics, and the discrete GPU renders into the integrated GPU's framebuffer.
The prices for the Yoga 900 look quite reasonable, especially the versions with more memory. It costs $600 to go from 256GB/8GB to 512GB/16GB on the Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book, but only $200 to do the same on the Yoga 900.
But nowhere near $400 more expensive. MS is charging halo product component upgrade rates and concentrating all the R&D expenses and profits in the top end items instead of spreading them evenly across the entire product stack.
those PCIE drives are what is pushing up the overall cost.. Microsoft's margins are gonna stay the same.. its not like microsoft increase margins 100% all of the sudden.. It's the drives that need to come down in price,, and they will, it'll take a year or two tho.
If it's only the PCIE drives that push the cost, then why does it cost $200 to get 8GB on RAM on the Microsoft systems, but only $100 to get the same on the Lenovo systems ?
The old Yoga 2 Pro used mSATA, but the new ones use M.2. True, it does still use the SATA interface instead of PCIe. I didn't think there was a huge price difference there, though.
As I said on another forum "What a shame! An exaggerated resolution for a 13.3 inch device that would have been perfect with full hd (much better battery life, much easier with scaling etc.) and a "low resolution" 27 inch screen with only full hd, where 2k would have been great and would have needed no scaling." What's more just Windows 10 home for a high end device is disappointing....
Yup. The PC industry continues to astound with demented to retarded display choices and priorities - from resolution, to aspect ratios, to huge bezels, to lousy colors and viewing angles. Then they keep wondering why their sales are flagging...
I was talking about bad color gamuts, poor contrasts, and horrible miscalibration. I was talking about display attributes, not the color of the case. Sheesh...
The 27in model with its 1080p screen is "2k". Stop bashing resolutions without knowing what you're talking about. 4k(UHD) is actually 3840x2160 , the 4k is the horizontal pixel count, and 2k is 1920x1080, notice how 1920 is almost 2k?
I don't understand it either. There's certainly value to be found in reducing device weight and size, but the functionality lost in this unending pursuit of thinner devices results in compromises that need not be made and are not beneficial to the end consumer that purchases them. Even with a vast reduction in thickness, a laptop still requires roughly the same sized protective bag to completely protect it since the length and width have remained the same despite a loss of thickness. I'm glad to see lighter more portable devices, but I think we've surpassed reasonable limits in an attempt to differentiate products that are otherwise running fairly mundane/similar internal components from one of a few limited hardware companies (Intel/AMD/NV/etc).
Look at HP's EliteBook series to witness what terrible design changes are made to excellent machines just to make them thinner. I had a 8460w for years, an excellent machine in every regard. It was replaced by our IT staff with a 840 G2. Oh where to start.. a terrible keyboard (but backlit! that's important!), a frickin hinged ethernet jack that's a PITA to use, piss poor battery life (with a 15W CPU, mind you!! No dedicated GPU) and the add-on battery prevents use of a docking station because thin is great. The configuration I have is a $2,100 laptop, and I hate the guts of that thing. But it's very thin and light.
True dat. The Dell dock's are one of my fav features, even as their (professional) laptops get thinner they still keep that lovely dock connector on the bottom. Super handy!
All those products designers, engineers and mainly marketers should be beaten with stick :) for bringing this stupid trends of world thinnest, lightest and whatever crappest designs where you pay premium and get terrible battery life of it, not to mention performance. Sigh...
Wrong product to complain about - for once. The Yoga 900 is slightly thicker and heavier than the Yoga 3 Pro and uses that to bump the battery size up from 44Wh (Yoga 3) or 55Wh (Yoga 2) to 66Wh.
and a ethernet port.. The Ethernet port isn't even that thick.. Just make it thick enough for good ol rj45.. they even make slim connectors for small form factor
I love that they dumped Core M, that is one the primary reasons I bought a Lenovo Thinkpag Yoga instead of the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro recently. I couldn't swallow having Core M in my system. The other factor was the form factor itself. I was finding 13.3 just too large for the other three modes other than laptop mode. The 12.5" was the Goldilocks size for me in terms of using in the device as a tablet.
I do like the pricing on offer here. Hopefully that runs off on the new Lenovo Thinkpad 260!
Exactly. 15W has proven to be the lowest optimum power bracket for Intel's Core CPUs. 5W is just too low; the CPU is always at max power limit for its designated/advertised workload target. Because of that, it always throttles and never delivered on the good battery claims.
Core M should be a replacement for Atom, not i3/i5/i7. It needs to have lower boost speeds, better power management, and lesser overall performance claims. Atom needs to be entirely ditched for hybrids and full sized tablets. Maybe for mini-tablets, phones and cheap mini-PCs.
Yet another really impressive combination of laptop/2-in-1 design and tech completely ruined (for me) by a 16:9 aspect ratio. Guess SB or SP4 will continue to be my only options with a sensible display.
True, and I can't believe they didn't go with USB-C for charging! Any word on the docking situation here? Are they going with the onelink feature?
I am not a fan of Lenovo's charger that goes doubles with the yellow USB port. Seriously wish everybody would get USB-C utilized to it's max potential!
I agree. I still use a T60 with 15 inch SXGA+ 4:3 IPS. I could deal with 15.4 16:10 WUXGA, but none were made with anything better than Core 2 Duo, so there is no point. I am vaguely hopeful now that someone will follow Google and Microsoft and just make a 3:2 laptop (except make it 1.5 inches thick), maybe with 1602 x 1068 in 15 inches for about 129 ppi - in other words a sane resolution for today's Windows applications, which won't suck power.
Do you think a FullHD display could reduce the price? Or are panel prices not so sensitive to resolution and just depending on physical size these days?
Also I hope they can get their hands on a GT3e or even GT4e CPU soon and make a variant with that.
The picture of the kids with the display is beautifully done, very evocative, and so promising. To quibble about "what if they drop it" misses just about everything. I am really impressed.
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ImSpartacus - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
That picture of the two kids sharing the jumbo-tablet is affordable as hell, but there's no way I'd let two munchkins carry a 27" tablet with a heavy glass-paned screen.Speedfriend - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
Yep, I could imagine my munchkin launching that at my foot!Who comes up with some of these design decisions?
michellebrowne - Saturday, November 14, 2015 - link
If you're looking for a laptop that can give you best features but affordable, I strongly recommend Acer C720 Chromebook. Found here: http://www.consumerrunner.com/top-10-best-laptops/BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
It'll be fine after you put it into a 45lb. OtterBox case. ;)bigboxes - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
I was thinking the same thing! Heh.skavi - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
adorable?skavi - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
Also what's a 940A?mobutu - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
Probably the same 1GB chip that's inside of SurfaceBook too ...torchedguitar - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
It's a GM108. Same as a Geforce 840M. It's 3/5 of a GM107 (750 Ti). And it's headless, so it has to be used in an Optimus/Hybrid setup, where the display is physically connected to the CPU's integrated graphics, and the discrete GPU renders into the integrated GPU's framebuffer.Samus - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
Well, this product has certainly re-birthed my plans for a modern cocktail-table arcade.bigboxes - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
GALAGA!khon - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
The prices for the Yoga 900 look quite reasonable, especially the versions with more memory. It costs $600 to go from 256GB/8GB to 512GB/16GB on the Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book, but only $200 to do the same on the Yoga 900.digiguy - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
except Surface is PCIe SSD, which is much more expensive than msataDanNeely - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
But nowhere near $400 more expensive. MS is charging halo product component upgrade rates and concentrating all the R&D expenses and profits in the top end items instead of spreading them evenly across the entire product stack.Morawka - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
those PCIE drives are what is pushing up the overall cost.. Microsoft's margins are gonna stay the same.. its not like microsoft increase margins 100% all of the sudden.. It's the drives that need to come down in price,, and they will, it'll take a year or two tho.khon - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
If it's only the PCIE drives that push the cost, then why does it cost $200 to get 8GB on RAM on the Microsoft systems, but only $100 to get the same on the Lenovo systems ?theMillen - Sunday, October 25, 2015 - link
except even the best pcie m2 950 pro 512 is only 350!!!icrf - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
The old Yoga 2 Pro used mSATA, but the new ones use M.2. True, it does still use the SATA interface instead of PCIe. I didn't think there was a huge price difference there, though.digiguy - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
As I said on another forum "What a shame! An exaggerated resolution for a 13.3 inch device that would have been perfect with full hd (much better battery life, much easier with scaling etc.) and a "low resolution" 27 inch screen with only full hd, where 2k would have been great and would have needed no scaling." What's more just Windows 10 home for a high end device is disappointing....boeush - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
Yup. The PC industry continues to astound with demented to retarded display choices and priorities - from resolution, to aspect ratios, to huge bezels, to lousy colors and viewing angles. Then they keep wondering why their sales are flagging...10basetom - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
I happen to like Lenovo's orange color -- to each their own. By the way, Lenovo's doing just fine in the PC industry.boeush - Thursday, October 22, 2015 - link
I was talking about bad color gamuts, poor contrasts, and horrible miscalibration. I was talking about display attributes, not the color of the case. Sheesh...Bigrio - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
The 27in model with its 1080p screen is "2k". Stop bashing resolutions without knowing what you're talking about. 4k(UHD) is actually 3840x2160 , the 4k is the horizontal pixel count, and 2k is 1920x1080, notice how 1920 is almost 2k?Morawka - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
should have put a 1440p screen in it at least.. when you see 27" monitors, they are 90% 1440pDigitalFreak - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
SSD models used in the Yoga 900Here are the SSD models used in the different configurations:
Samsung MZNLN256HCHP M.2 256GB
Liteon CV1-8B256 256GB M.2
Hynix HFS256G39MND-3310A M.2 256GB
Samsung MZNLN512HCJH M.2 512GB
Liteon CV1-8B512 512GB M.2
Hynix HFS512G39MND-3310A M.2 512GB
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
Source - https://download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles_pub/y...kjmathew - Friday, October 30, 2015 - link
Brilliant! Thanks!SoulShadow - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
What is with this crazy obsession with as thin as possible? I'd rather the laptop be 0.2 or 0.5" thicker if it meant a bigger battery.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
I don't understand it either. There's certainly value to be found in reducing device weight and size, but the functionality lost in this unending pursuit of thinner devices results in compromises that need not be made and are not beneficial to the end consumer that purchases them. Even with a vast reduction in thickness, a laptop still requires roughly the same sized protective bag to completely protect it since the length and width have remained the same despite a loss of thickness. I'm glad to see lighter more portable devices, but I think we've surpassed reasonable limits in an attempt to differentiate products that are otherwise running fairly mundane/similar internal components from one of a few limited hardware companies (Intel/AMD/NV/etc).hansmuff - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
Look at HP's EliteBook series to witness what terrible design changes are made to excellent machines just to make them thinner.I had a 8460w for years, an excellent machine in every regard. It was replaced by our IT staff with a 840 G2. Oh where to start.. a terrible keyboard (but backlit! that's important!), a frickin hinged ethernet jack that's a PITA to use, piss poor battery life (with a 15W CPU, mind you!! No dedicated GPU) and the add-on battery prevents use of a docking station because thin is great.
The configuration I have is a $2,100 laptop, and I hate the guts of that thing. But it's very thin and light.
ZeDestructor - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
Sound like someone shoul go have a look at Dell's Latitude and Precision lineups, where full-sized, fixed ethernet ports are stnadard issue.Oh, and a dock that doesn't need replacing every three years!
coolhardware - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
True dat. The Dell dock's are one of my fav features, even as their (professional) laptops get thinner they still keep that lovely dock connector on the bottom. Super handy!ZeDestructor - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
Even my dad likes it!milkod2001 - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
All those products designers, engineers and mainly marketers should be beaten with stick :) for bringing this stupid trends of world thinnest, lightest and whatever crappest designs where you paypremium and get terrible battery life of it, not to mention performance. Sigh...
PixyMisa - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
Wrong product to complain about - for once. The Yoga 900 is slightly thicker and heavier than the Yoga 3 Pro and uses that to bump the battery size up from 44Wh (Yoga 3) or 55Wh (Yoga 2) to 66Wh.Morawka - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
and a ethernet port.. The Ethernet port isn't even that thick.. Just make it thick enough for good ol rj45.. they even make slim connectors for small form factorcreed3020 - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
I love that they dumped Core M, that is one the primary reasons I bought a Lenovo Thinkpag Yoga instead of the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro recently. I couldn't swallow having Core M in my system. The other factor was the form factor itself. I was finding 13.3 just too large for the other three modes other than laptop mode. The 12.5" was the Goldilocks size for me in terms of using in the device as a tablet.I do like the pricing on offer here. Hopefully that runs off on the new Lenovo Thinkpad 260!
lilmoe - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
"I love that they dumped Core M"Exactly. 15W has proven to be the lowest optimum power bracket for Intel's Core CPUs. 5W is just too low; the CPU is always at max power limit for its designated/advertised workload target. Because of that, it always throttles and never delivered on the good battery claims.
Core M should be a replacement for Atom, not i3/i5/i7. It needs to have lower boost speeds, better power management, and lesser overall performance claims. Atom needs to be entirely ditched for hybrids and full sized tablets. Maybe for mini-tablets, phones and cheap mini-PCs.
jsntech - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
Yet another really impressive combination of laptop/2-in-1 design and tech completely ruined (for me) by a 16:9 aspect ratio. Guess SB or SP4 will continue to be my only options with a sensible display.coolhardware - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
True, and I can't believe they didn't go with USB-C for charging! Any word on the docking situation here? Are they going with the onelink feature?I am not a fan of Lenovo's charger that goes doubles with the yellow USB port. Seriously wish everybody would get USB-C utilized to it's max potential!
PS check where that Yoga Home 900 slots in on the PPI index:
http://pixensity.com/search/?search=yoga
;-)
rhx123 - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
Dell seems to be leading the charge on USB-C. Thunderbolt, and all of their new XPS models can charge over USB-C.Klug4Pres - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
I agree. I still use a T60 with 15 inch SXGA+ 4:3 IPS. I could deal with 15.4 16:10 WUXGA, but none were made with anything better than Core 2 Duo, so there is no point. I am vaguely hopeful now that someone will follow Google and Microsoft and just make a 3:2 laptop (except make it 1.5 inches thick), maybe with 1602 x 1068 in 15 inches for about 129 ppi - in other words a sane resolution for today's Windows applications, which won't suck power.Klug4Pres - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
*Apple did get to Ivy with a matte 1680 x 1050 TN panel before going non-maintainable and Retina.TheHumbleGuy - Thursday, October 22, 2015 - link
It would be nice to know, how it works with a stylus/pen. Does it work like a Surface Pro 4 and which pen is compatible?Visual - Friday, October 23, 2015 - link
Do you think a FullHD display could reduce the price? Or are panel prices not so sensitive to resolution and just depending on physical size these days?Also I hope they can get their hands on a GT3e or even GT4e CPU soon and make a variant with that.
Arbie - Sunday, October 25, 2015 - link
The picture of the kids with the display is beautifully done, very evocative, and so promising. To quibble about "what if they drop it" misses just about everything. I am really impressed.kjmathew - Friday, October 30, 2015 - link
Compelling laptop. I wonder if the display is really the same as in the Yoga Pro 3. Has Lenovo ever claimed that the Yoga Pro 3 has an IPS display? Ref: http://news.lenovo.com/images/20034/YOGA%203%20Pro...Is the SSD also upgraded to perhaps the Samsung PM871 (in which case the 512GB SSD version will have approx. double the write throughput)?
kjmathew - Friday, October 30, 2015 - link
Thanks to @DigitalFreak https://download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles_pub/y...