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  • ikjadoon - Saturday, September 2, 2017 - link

    Really, Lenovo? You had to shrink the battery? After most people complimented the 910 had actually pretty good battery life or at least average?

    The issue is that Lenovo is inefficient; they hardly optimize the battery life, so they need much larger batteries to compensate for their laziness. With 78Whr, the 910 was lasting as long as laptops with 56WHr batteries (touchscreen 1080p, 15W U-series, 13", single DIMM RAM, and an SSD--so should be damned close).

    https://images.techhive.com/images/article/2016/12...

    https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Yoga-910-13IK...

    The same is borne out in Anandtech's review on the X1 Yoga; Lenovo seems to purposefully destroy their efficiency more than anyone else. This goes back even to the Yoga 2/3 Pro's mentioned above:

    http://i.imgur.com/tb11cVf.png

    :( Lenovo doesn't understand how to optimize for power, so they drain like no tomorrow. The efficiency of the X1 Yoga? Closer to the Razer Stealth UHD and QHD than any other Ultrabooks. Pathetic.

    http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10697/8394...

    Figure this out, Lenovo; I don't think a quad-core chip (i.e., seems more likely to use more of its 15W budget than the dual-core 15W chips) is going to be helping any.
  • WorldWithoutMadness - Saturday, September 2, 2017 - link

    It's Lenovo, which tends to self destruct by itself. Yoga 720 QC was horrid even though it has a good spec. You can see their dubious decision making all over the places, from smartphones (moto) to laptops.
  • lilmoe - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    "I don't think a quad-core chip (i.e., seems more likely to use more of its 15W budget than the dual-core 15W chips) is going to be helping any"

    False. But I do agree that a smaller battery isn't great in general.
  • Shadowmage - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    You understand why power consumption is so high, right? It's not because Lenovo is lazy, it's because they stuck a much larger, higher DPI display that you're comparing to much lower specced machines. The Yoga 2/3 Pros have 3200x1800 displays, and this Yoga 910/920 has a 13.9" (instead of 13") 4K (instead of 1080p) display.
  • ZeDestructor - Monday, September 4, 2017 - link

    As Shadowmage said, the power consumption is lot higher because of the 4K screen. Here's a comparison from notebookcheck comparing the 3200x1800 XPS13 to the 1920x1080 XPS13 in an everything else being equal situation: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-13-9360-FHD... . The QHD+ version has ~20% worse battery life purely because of the screen.
  • ddriver - Saturday, September 2, 2017 - link

    Using the yoga 720 for a few months, it is a very versatile device, and even thou far from cheap, it is actually a good value - quad core, a dedicated gtx 1050, 16 gigs of ram, pretty good stylus and decent battery life makes it quite usable.

    I'd actually give it the edge over this one, even thou it is like 600 grams heavier, that weight is put into a bigger display and tremendously better graphics. I don't think moving to an 8th generation CPU will make tangible difference in terms of performance or battery life.

    What I really love about it is that it is trivial to open, I've already replaced the TIM of mine, significantly improving thermals and as a result getting better performance because of less throttling. Half of the ram is unfortunately soldered on, but there is also an expansion slot, and you can even boost memory to 24 gb rather than the claimed maximum of 16, if you don't mind settling for asynchronous operation.

    Best of all, it is trivial to replace the battery, so when it craps out, which it will, you don't have to throw away a perfectly good device, or pay half of its price for a service replacement, you just buy a new battery for like 100$ and replace it in 5 minutes and you are good for a couple of more years.
  • ddriver - Saturday, September 2, 2017 - link

    Replacing the TIM not only enabled longer sustained peak performance, but it also improved battery life a bit, which is easily explainable:

    1 - cooler running CPUs have lower leakage, so less of the electricity consumed is turned into heat
    2 - cooler running device also keeps the battery cooler, cooler batteries lose charge more slowly and operate more efficiently
    3 - cooler running devices need less active cooling, the fans spin at lower RPM, reducing power consumption and also last, but not least, significantly reducing noise as well

    Additionally, a cooler operating device will generally last longer before an non-repairable malfunction occurs.

    So, Lenovo, if you are reading this, a few cents spent on good TIM actually make your device about 10% better. It is well worth it. Don't be mediocre just because that's the industry standard.

    Also, there seems to be enough room for two memory slots, removing soldered ram altogether. This will surely play a big role in the repairability and upgredability of the device. You can already swap the battery and the SSD and one of the ram modules, going that extra step will make the device perfect in my book, which is very hard to get in... at least in a good context.
  • sonny73n - Saturday, September 2, 2017 - link

    Replacing TIM definitely reduce fan's workloads as I've achieved on my 3 years old laptop.

    I'm wondering why battery technology is the least improved compares to every other component of a mobile device.
  • IntelUser2000 - Saturday, September 2, 2017 - link

    sonny73n: Battery technology improves at the rate of any other non-chip technology. Chip technology improved at the rate of Moore's Law.

    Moore's Law is slowing down seriously in the past few years too. I expect it'll advance at the rate of non-chip technology in a decade or so.
  • dwbogardus - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    I have two amazing examples of how well lithium batteries have worked for me. My one and only cell phone (ever) is a Motorola V-120 that I bought in 2001. It is just a very plain phone, monochrome, of course, and is so old it doesn't even have a sim card. I am still using the Original battery, now 16 years old. I use it pretty much daily, and it spends every night on the charger, but it is still good for at least an hour of talk time, and several days "on" without a charge. Most people I know replace their batteries (if not their whole phones) about every three years. I have no idea how I have gotten such life from this ancient lithium battery, but I am grateful and amazed. My second example is my 2003 Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop, which has a Pentium 4m processor, which has never been an efficient processor for a laptop. When new, I could get maybe 2 hours and 20 minutes out of the batteries. Now, 14 years later, I still get just over an hour on the Original battery. Everyone else I know has never gotten more that three years out of a laptop battery, and replacement batteries have sometimes lasted less than a year. I don't know if batteries have gotten better or worse, but I've been amazed at what my old lithium batteries have done, and continue to do.
  • danwat1234 - Sunday, October 15, 2017 - link

    dwbogardus,sorry, that's not possible. Those lithium battery packs should be dead after 10 years. Unless stored in a fridge the entire time. Automotive electric car batteries are an entirely different story. But 15 year old consumer cells were not that good...
  • ddriver - Saturday, September 2, 2017 - link

    There is a peak to every technology. Nothing scales indefinitely.

    Take the wheel for example - there has been zero improvement to its shape for thousands of years.
  • sonny73n - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    I'm sorry, sir. I'm not talking about the battery's shape. And the wheel today is much more efficient in every aspect than the wheel invented thousands of years ago.

    The first Lithium Ion battery was first commercially produced in 1991 based on the invention of Lithium battery tech in the 70's. And this type of battery we're still using in most of our mobile devices today - the year 2017. Of course, there's been a little improvement of this technology but still. I often wondered if there is a new battery tech but our government has kept it for themselves as military secret. Then I remembered thru the history of human that every time we invented something, especially in energy sector, the first thing we did was to use it to manipulate the lives of others, often killing them in masses. Take nuclear energy for an example.

    After all that said, I still believe that mobile device manufacturers can work with what we have. I wish they drop the obsession for thinness and expand the battery's capacity because every time I use my phone, my most worries is the battery life, more than dropping the phone and break it. Lenovo can pack a punch in this Yoga but it makes little sense if it won't run for long. Plug it in you say? Well, if I love to hug the wall frequently, I would buy a desktop instead.

    If they could just get on with Metal Oxides already.
  • ddriver - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    The functional part of the wheel is the shape. You are making silly parallels, because I wasn't talking about the battery shape neither. Today we have better materials, but wheels are still round, as they were and always will be. It just doesn't get any better than a circle. That's the peak, the optimum.

    There are numerous examples of technology or process that hasn't improved a bit in a long time.

    The media has at least 2-3 articles every year about amazingly promising battery technologies, and has had those for many, many years, yet we still keep using the same batteries. The lead-acid rechargeable battery is now like 150 years old, yet it is still in active use.

    And it is not that there aren't viable alternatives, but the industry in its essence is really not all that keen on innovating, they are keen on making money and blowing barely incremental improvements as a big deal. They will keep pushing li-ion even at the face of the hazard it has become in the recent years, like always, they will milk that cow until its dead, and if the milk comes out stale, they will just add artificial sweetener and pass it for cream. They won't build the new fabs required for new battery technology until lithium becomes commercially inviable.

    I am not a big fan of thin, but most people are idiots who go for the fad, with little concern for efficiency or usability. It has to look sleek, so buying it can get them perceived self worth. I would LOVE a 1 inch convertible with more processing power, rugged build and a humongous battery. I don't care about the extra weight, I am not anorexic. But nobody makes those, not good ones in any case, as useful as it may be, it is just not trendy. Thicker devices today don't come with better specs and more battery, on the contrary, they come underpowered, because they are "cheap", because they are not thin. They don't fill the extra volume with battery or components, they fill it with shitty design and poor build quality. The yoga 500 is almost an inch thick, but comes with a measly dual core and miserable 5 hours of battery life. Even thou it has a full kilo, 2 inches of size and half an inch of thickness on the yoga 910 it comes with almost half the battery capacity. Because fads matter the most!
  • WorldWithoutMadness - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    because packing dense energy to a small container means a lot of 'fool proof' safety to be taken care of. Otherwise, it's gonna be more kaboom than note's fiasco.
  • Hurr Durr - Saturday, September 2, 2017 - link

    This hinge thing istruly hideous.
  • damianrobertjones - Saturday, September 2, 2017 - link

    In your opinion.
  • Hurr Durr - Saturday, September 2, 2017 - link

    My opinion is all that matters.
  • TesseractOrion - Saturday, September 2, 2017 - link

    Nothing you have ever said or thought has mattered.
  • HStewart - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    This is cool looking note book and having 4 cores in a 15w 2in1 core is really cool but my major concern is quality of Lenovo. Now if dell could put this cpu in body like the XPS 13 2in1 it would be awesome

    I have a Levono y50 and it has quad core and Nvidia GPU, but is heavy, I also have the Dell XPS 13 2in1 and portability is awesome. I just can't wait to see wharf tel does with 8th generation mobile cups in more powerful mobile cpu lines. What makes the y50 be load is probably the GPU but unless you are into games or professional graphics, you don,t need such GPU power.

    I dealt with computer industry since the original IBM PC and industry is changed - the days of me making my machines are over - mobile has taking over - these 8th generation cpu I believe are just the tip of ice burg what is coming
  • Gigaplex - Monday, September 4, 2017 - link

    Dell quality is no better than Lenovo.
  • ddriver - Monday, September 4, 2017 - link

    A tad better and a significantly higher price.
  • HStewart - Monday, September 4, 2017 - link

    This maybe just my personal experience but I never waste my money on Lenovo - I guess you get what you pay.
  • Bateluer - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    The Intel 8G series still uses the HD620 IGP? I love my Yoga 900, but I'd want to see more of an improvement over its HD520.
  • Miro90 - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    I have yoga 900 but with iris graphic 540 the i7 6560 with iris 540 and 64MB edram is awesome if you know how to tap the power i increase the power limit to 20-25 watts so i can play bf1 smoothly on it.
  • flyingpants1 - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    My friend had a Yoga 2 Pro or whatever it was. It was the flimsiest thing I have ever seen, and the screen was yellow.
  • flyingpants1 - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    Dell XPS 12 was probably the best convertible so far, you could close it up and it was sealed like an iPad, no keyboard on the back, no fragile base, no detaching. Just make one the same thickness as this Yoga thing, use magnesium or CF or something to keep the weight down.

    http://www.umpcportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/...
  • Miro90 - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    My yoga 900 is magnesium the drawback that its powder coated not real metal finish but its light and can withstand punctures unlike aluminium but its not as cold touch as aluminium. any way anything less than 15 watt cpu is a waste especially if its unlocked.
  • Miro90 - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    but i am sure since yoga 910 they are aluminium uni-body.
  • milkod2001 - Monday, September 4, 2017 - link

    Have Yoga 13'' earlier model with i7 U6200. It has active cooler which spins like crazy , it is very loud and that is just with Chrome opened, 2-3 tabs. Never ever will fall into this super thin designs.
    None of the reviews seem to mention things like this. I guess we live in the fake pre-paid reviews time all over the internet.So sad...
  • CaedenV - Monday, September 4, 2017 - link

    *sniff* this only makes me remember how much I miss my Nokia 920
  • fmyhr - Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - link

    Lenovo, still flogging the 16:9 screens. :-( And who knows what stylus tech. Meh.
    I'm FAR more excited about the upcoming Acer Switch 7 Black Edition:
    https://www.windowscentral.com/acer-7-switch-black...
    Hi-res 3:2 13.5" IPS screen, Wacom EMR stylus, fanless. Drool...
  • Dug - Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - link

    I'd be far more excited if it wasn't $1700 and had a kickstand. Can't stand those unless you are on a perfectly flat surface, so it's a no go in your lap.
  • Dug - Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - link

    I meant I wish it didn't have a kickstand.
  • Dug - Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - link

    Finally fixed the right shift key. Probably the number one complaint on the 910.
  • danwat1234 - Sunday, October 15, 2017 - link

    @Sam Rutherford, did you check to see if this laptop has the insane Throttling issues that the Yoga 910 has? Load up all cores with Prime95 and it’ll throttle HARD for seconds at a time, and then go back to full speed, and then throttle HARD, rinse repeat, with the dual fans acutlaly ramping up and down with the throttling as well. It is ridiculous and isn’t just me.

    Perhaps this Yoga 920 does it to?

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