back to article The 2018 ThinkPad X1 Yoga: A bendy-legged workhorse walks into a meeting

The Yoga form factor has been one of Lenovo’s biggest successes, and in 2013 the company slapped a business suit on it and brought the it into the Thinkpad fold. Three years later it added the X1 branding, and a premium OLED display. This year’s X1 Yoga is the third generation of the machine that can be used in three positions …

  1. Christian Berger

    So how is this a workhorse?

    The battery is "non-replacable" which is a big no-go when using this more than a few years.

    It seems to me like this is yet another "optimized for thickness at all costs" fashion statement that has little practical use over, let's say, a trusty old X200, yet costs 20 times as much.

    1. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

      Re: So how is this a workhorse?

      yet another "optimized for thickness at all costs" fashion statement

      When one of those costs is lack of air between hot components, the compromise becomes unacceptable to me.

    2. Shadow Systems

      Re: So how is this a workhorse?

      Non removeable battery, the requirement for a dongle to return functionality taken away to make it Thin&Light, a max of 16Gb of RAM, & no fan. A *work* machine will be expected to power through tasks like a bull through a china shop, not tiptoe around trying not to sweat; a T&L machine doesn't have the fans needed to keep all that heat from roasting the computer/you, so that already makes it decidedly *NOT* a work machine.

      My current desktop has 16Gb of RAM which was decent when it was built over 4 years ago, but now it's starting to feel very slow; a laptop that's CPU throttled to begin with & forced to use only 16Gb of RAM is already hobbled to the point of silliness. Given the bloated nature of everything we ask of our computers ("the installers & executables that weigh in at 2Gb each!") means you need ever more RAM just to keep the computer from feeling like it never gets out of 1st gear. 4Gb used to be good but now it's laughable; 8Gb used to be decent but now it's barely enough; 32Gb is the new 4Gb, especially if you will be doing actual *work* on the bloody thing. Email, web surfing, Netflix, & CandyCrush can get by with sub optimal amounts of RAM, but *work* requires as much as you can feed it so it doesn't keep you waiting for process' to come back to a useable state.

      You want a work computer? Give it full sized ports & plenty of them, a user replaceable battery, plenty of fans that can exhaust the heat from a proper CPU, & the ability to load that sucker up with enough RAM to choke a horse. Anything less is just a fashion statement for folks that would rather complain that their 1MM thin computer is too thick, the 0.00001KG is too heavy, & the inclusion of a full sized TypeC port is "a waste of space". Wankers.

      1. Waseem Alkurdi

        Re: So how is this a workhorse?

        I see you're talking about mobile workstations. These tick all your boxes. Business laptops are for CEOs, not techies anymore.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: So how is this a workhorse?

        @Shadow Systems : we get it, this is not the laptop you’re looking for. Though it would help if you would define what you consider to be *work*. I use a 3 year old HP Zbook and it happily does what I want it to do without too much of a wait. Most of the time (i.e. when not running a lot of vm’s) I can’t even get it to use the 16 GB it has.

        We still have a lot of old ProBooks used by staff, running Win10, with 8 or 4GB. All with ssd’s, ok, but boot to logon takes maybe 20 seconds, starting applications another 30.

        Where *you* work 32GB might be the new 4GB. Where I work it’s not, except maybe for java developers who insist on testing their code on their “own” tomcat servers instead of using the staging and testing environments provided.

        1. Shadow Systems

          At the AC, re: what I use it for.

          My desktop runs W7Pro64, Jaws 18 (my screen reader), Outlook 2010, IE11, Notepad, & VLC in the background for light music to keep me somewhat sane. That's the base load, the programs always running with others thrown in on top. Windows plus Jaws seems to go through RAM like a starving Calvin Kleine model at an All You Can Eat buffet. Give Outlook a fist full of stupidly bloated HTML emails & it chokes on them, even though I have it set to never load the graphics, tracking crap, or do anything but display it all as plain text. Give IE11 even a dozen open tabs of non-video content (aka not Hulu, Netflix, Twitch, or Youtube style sites) & the (Java) scripts can damn-near *cripple* the machine entirely. In some cases merely visiting a site causes the entire system to shit itself & require a hard power cycle to recover. My browser security settings refuse *ALL* scripting & won't run JS at all, but I still get notices from IE11 that "this site has timed out due to a long running script". Really? And how the *$&%(^ is it allowed to be running ANY script in the first place? GAH!

          *Deep breath*

          I realize I'm not a typical user, I realize that my normal program load isn't typical, but I still encounter all too many times where the 16Gb in my machine just isn't enough to keep it from taking a faceplant into the desk. I'll bring up the Task Manager (if it reacts at all to the keyboard) & find out that the CPU is pegged at 100%, the RAM has been gone through like a white hot chainsaw through warm butter, & even killing off process' trying to regain control may not work. I realize that 32Gb will probably only mean even more RAM for such crashes to inhale, but for me at least it's about the only thing I can do to solve the problem.

          My current machine is a 4th gen I3 Intel NUC running at 2GHz, 16Gb RAM, & a 250Gb SSD. It was speedy as hell when I first got it, it still IS speedy some of the time, but everything has become so bloated over the years that it's just not doing the job as well any longer. I've got a new 8th gen I7 4GHz with 32Gb RAM & a 1Tb SSD due to arrive soon as a replacement. Twice as fast, twice the ram, & over twice as much storeage space should *hopefully* be future proofed for at least the next 4+ years.

          =-j

          I was going to answer flippantly that I use a 10th gen I10 running at 100GHz with 1Tb of RAM & an Exabyte of SSD space all to run Infocomm games, but then I thought I didn't want to be beaten with rubber chickens.

          =-)P

          Cheers, go have a pint on me, & have fun.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: At the AC, re: what I use it for.

            Well, I'm not surprised. JAWS is bad, and always has been. I use NVDA in order to not have it remove all my resources. IE is likewise, and doesn't always respect instructions to not run scripts. Also, JAWS and IE have a suicide pact sometimes where they'll take things down.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So how is this a workhorse?

      Thin and light and under-powered. It means that when you're sitting in the coffee shop working on something it takes longer, so onlookers have more time to admire how thin and light your computer is.

      1. Waseem Alkurdi

        Re: So how is this a workhorse?

        Agreed. For such snobbery exists the MacBook Air et al.

        1. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: So how is this a workhorse?

          I know I'll get a lot of disagreement with this, but for many people, 16GB is a perfectly fine amount of memory. I don't know what you do, but I assume it's not one of those things. If you're using a lot of VMs, writing code in a large IDE with a lot of features turned on, or anything that deals with a lot of video and audio stuff, for instance, large amounts of memory can be very important. However, most business things aren't doing anything of the kind. Anyone who is just browsing, doing word processing, and using email and some videoconference thing won't need 16GB. I think that 8GB would be perfectly fine for that use case. Some business uses may need a bit more, such as the machine that's actually running that tremendously bloated financials package. However, a lot of places I've seen have moved that to a server with the machine just providing a frontend to it. That's another case that doesn't need a ton of memory.

          I have a computer with limited memory. I'd love one with 32GB of memory, and if I had it, I'd find a way to use it. However, I handle certain exhaustive workloads and I tend not to run into a situation where my 16GB is insufficient. I have multiple VMs open at most times, each one having been given quite a bit of memory. Of course, some help may come from not running windows as the base OS, but even with that, you can still run quite a bit with 8GB memory, and 16GB, especially for a business machine, will work for almost everyone*. *Everyone refers to the business at large, not the technical areas, where the percentage is lower.

          1. Waseem Alkurdi

            Re: So how is this a workhorse?

            I'm still going on with 4 GB and life's fine. Even though RAM is cheap, I simply see no need.

            (Except for VMs. But why Windows on them? 512 MB + Linux would work. It's not like you're going to use Firefox or Chrome in there!)

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So how is this a workhorse?

      I'm rocking a 8th Gen intel i7 board with 32G of RAM, NVMe + 2.5"SSD in an X201 chassis with upgraded 16:10 WUXGA IPS LCD

      Courtesy of lcdfans - check them out if you love Thinkpads but hate Lenovo for systematically destroying them.

  2. djstardust

    Hmmmm

    Nice in theory, but I have a Yoga 12 Thinkpad under a business warranty which caught fire recently due to a component on the motherboard frying itself.

    Being blunt, Lenovo's customer support (even with a 3 year business warranty) is absolutely atrocious. 45 minutes every time I called for someone to pick up the phone, operators who can't speak English ..... then a comedy of errors, no show "engineers" due to them arguing about what needed repaired and finally a random bloke who turns up after 8 days and doesn't have a clue what to do to fix the machine.

    If you get one that works and you never have to get it serviced then fine, other ways avoid, avoid, avoid.

    1. Waseem Alkurdi

      Re: Hmmmm

      you never have to get it serviced

      A perpetual motion machine?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You mean like Wacom pens who that don't need a battery at all?

    Why they all had to put a battery in the pen - but for patent reasons - I don't understand.

    1. Christian Berger

      Re: You mean like Wacom pens who that don't need a battery at all?

      Apparently powering the pen via the electromagnetic fields you use to sense the position is (was?) patented.

  4. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

    After enduring the f***ing annoying TV ad campaign for these things, no matter how good the review might be, there's no way I'd be buying one.

  5. Julian Bradfield

    And does it support real suspend-to-RAM, rather than the idiotic Windows thing that still chews through your battery?

    1. Waseem Alkurdi

      rather than the idiotic Windows thing

      You probably mean either (a) Hybrid Sleep "essentially suspend-to-RAM-then-to-disk-a-few-hours-later", or (b) Intel Smart Connect "wakes up the machine every half-hour or something to check for notifications like on phones. The latter was ditched in Windows 10 because it was too fucked up.

      that still chews through your battery?

      So does Suspend-to-RAM. What powers the RAM so that the thing doesn't die? The battery, unless it is so big the consumption is negligible.

      1. Julian Bradfield

        I don't think I mean either of those. I think it's called Windows Instant Resume, or something like that. The latest (before this) batch of Yogas ditched (BIOS-advertised) support for S3 sleep in favour of Instant Resume, which is basically S1, I think. My first gen X1 Yoga will happily last me a weekend of light use, being suspended when not in use; that doesn't work according to those unhappy bunnies who got the later ones.

        1. Gordon 10
          Trollface

          I think you mean that functionality that MacOS perfected years ago?

          Pats his new work MacBook lovingly whilst glaring at the smoldering HP in the bin. No I don't really need one. Do I love my boss for authorising one, why yes, yes I do. Best boss EVER!

        2. J. Cook Silver badge

          ... I'll keep my "suspend to disk" (aka hibernate) thankyouverymuch.

  6. Lee D Silver badge

    If I'm paying £1500 for something, I want something a damn-sight bigger than a 14" display.

    My last laptop cost me £800, still wipes the floor with those specs (12-core i7, 12Gb), and has a 17.3" display, proper nVidia graphics, two SATA drive bays, etc. And that was a 2011 model from Samsung! Do Samsung even make laptops any more?

    Honestly, people, I like Lenovo/IBM and the Thinkpad (still have an old-school one somewhere), but prices of these things for what you get are an absolute shower.

    1. Waseem Alkurdi

      Lenovo/IBM

      People seriously conflate the two. At least the New Lenovo won't come anywhere close to what IBM was, whether it's build quality or support (see other commentards above) ...

      still wipes the floor with those specs

      Because you're comparing apples to oranges. Your laptop is a mobile workstation, probably with a -HQ i7 and a workstation-class GPU, or in the least, a gaming one.

      This has a -U CPU and Intel graphics.

      Compare yours to a newer model to see. Haswell vs. Kaby Lake -HQ laptop CPUs have had very, very close benchmark scores (it's on UserBenchmark, but I've left the link on my Linux install)

  7. steveking1000

    So good I paid my own money for one

    Like a previous commentator I have one of those amazing Samsung machines from 2011 - and it is still going strong and in almost daily use.

    When I started my own business a few months ago, I knew I was buying into days of travelling around the London tube system going to presentations.

    I picked up a previous generation X1 Yoga from a second-hand computer retailer (TierOne who were very good to deal with) and have found it to do the job I needed very well. In fact it is the machine I use most often now, although I have three to choose from.

    It is not for everyone but it is great for me, and at well below half the new cost I am glad I got it.

    1. Waseem Alkurdi

      Re: So good I paid my own money for one

      Me too. I have a hinged convertible laptop as well, bought from an off-lease loader, Haswell/8.1 era for a tenth of MSRP pricing ($160 vs $1,600). Second-hand is great, but there's the issue of aging CPU and aging battery,

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The mentioned 2018 UltraDock does not support the X1 Yoga, only the X1 Carbon. It's a shame the Yoga doesn't support for a "proper" dock because the easy of docking/undocking is a big plus in an office environment.

    1. Version 1.0 Silver badge

      Docking is on the way out of the door ... it used to be a must-have feature everywhere in business but these days we're told to use "the cloud" instead. It's all just marketing bull, new "better, faster, lighter, innovative" machines that don't last as long as the old ones (I'm writing this on L440) and are soon to be replaced by something "better, faster, lighter, innovative" - nobody cares about customers and users any more, we're just walking credit cards.

      1. John Slater

        Resale value

        Good tip. I'll be sure to connect my 28 inch desktop monitor to the cloud.

    2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      I thought the point of thunderbolt was that it supported all the peripherals+charging - so you could plug any old thunderbolt hub into any old machine and use it as a dock?

      No experience - I'm not high enough on the C suite / need my machines to get work done - to own one of these

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    SILVER?

    Screw that microsoft

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    admirable

    Lenovo do everything to annoy and put off potential buyer/users, quite a remarkable and consistent approach.

  11. James 51
    Linux

    Looks like I'm still going to have to save my pennies for a Librem.

  12. dank_army

    SIM card?

    Do people actually use these things anymore? Especially with win10 being on the device pulling God knows what in the background. I'd be paranoid as hell on how much my data bill ending up at the end of the month. Last time I tethered my laptop win10 decided to pull a 5gb update - thanks very much.

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