Lenovo pioneered the bend-back laptop design with its original Yoga, and now the leading PC vendor is taking that design to the next level. Starting at $1,199, the Yoga 900 features a number of improvements over last year's Yoga 3 Pro, including speedy Intel 6th Generation Core Series processor, longer battery life and a tighter hinge design.
We had a chance to spend a little time with the Yoga 900 and were impressed with its lightweight design, colorful display and solid build quality. Like its predecessor, 2014's Yoga 3 Pro, the Yoga 900 weighs just 2.6 pounds and is under .6 inches thick, making it extremely light and easy to carry in your hand or the smallest of bags.
Made from ABS plastic with a faux-leather deck, the new Yoga is available in three colors: silver, champagne gold and clementine orange. As with previous models, the orange color is only available online, not at brick-and-mortar retail stores.
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Also, like last year's model, the 900 has a 13.3-inch display with a very-sharp, 3200 x 1800 resolution. Though we didn't get to spend a lot of time gawking at it, colors on the display appeared vibrant and attractive.
The Yoga 900 uses a "watchband" style hinge that looks like the one on the Yoga 3 Pro, but offers more resistance. During our hands-on, we had the chance to poke the screens on both the 3 Pro and the 900 and found that the older model's hinge would bend back a little if we touched the screen too hard while new one remained in place.
Lenovo has also changed the keyboard for the new Yoga, adding a dedicated function row, which was missing on the 3 Pro. So, instead of hitting an the Fn key plus a number to lower the volume or raise the brightness, you'll be able to hit an F key on the top row. The deck still has a comfortable, soft-touch finish which looks like leather, but the 900's palm rest has a smooth rather than a dimpled texture.
On the inside, the Yoga 900 differs from its predecessor by offering a full-fledged Intel 6th Gen Core i5 or Core i7 processor rather than a low-power Core M chip. The Yoga 3 Pro's Core M CPU provided unimpressive performance on our tests while its low-power usage didn't do enough to help the notebook achieve long battery life, as it lasted a mere 6 hours and 5 minutes on a charge.
Lenovo is using a larger battery on the Yoga 900 and advertises 8 hours of endurance on the new model. We'll have to see how it performs in our lab tests. The laptop's other key specs include 8 to 16GB of RAM and a 256GB or 512GB SSD.
The Yoga 900 will be available within the next week or two, both at Best Buy and Lenovo.com. Best Buy offers a superior base configuration as its $1,199 model has a Core i7-6500U processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD while the starting model on Lenovo has the same storage and RAM but only a Core i5 CPU.
