Lenovo’s new Yoga 2 Pro has the same flexible hinge, 3200×1800 display | Hacker News Reader

Lenovo’s new Yoga 2 Pro has the same flexible hinge, 3200×1800 display

arstechnica.com

56 pointsBerislavLopac50 comments

A warning for anyone considering this laptop: I bought a similar laptop, the Sony Duo 13, last week.

If you're doing heavy work on a machine as a developer you'll often need to do complex "mousing", such as working in a UI building tool, art program, or working with dialogs in Visual Studio.

For these cases, I find I'm frustrated because I want the speed/simplicity of the touch interface (instead of using the touchpad) but my finger just isn't precise enough.

These situations constantly make me reach for my stylus, which surprised me: Turns out, precision styluses are very useful, even when you're not doing strictly "artsy" things.

However, this Yoga 2 Pro touch display does NOT appear to have precision stylus support. The Sony Duo 13, on the other hand, ships with an excellent wacom-style stylus.

BOTTOM LINE: I think you'll regret buying a touchscreen laptop without advanced stylus support, if you use computers professionally.

EDIT: Others have pointed out the now "Yoga" also released today (not the "Yoga 2 Pro" with the high res screen) has stylus support.

Stylus support is a good point, but you could also just use a good mouse to perform complex 'mousing'.

Having used a pen while doing general purpose computing i would have to agree with the OP that you do in fact miss itwhen having to use a trackpad or a mouse. Mice are not as precise at some things as a good stylus.

Yeah, folks will have to try what works best for them- Just wanted to let people know that there is something potentially useful they might miss out on.

Absolutely

The Tinkpad Yoga has a stylus [1]. It can have the resolution "only" up to 1920×1080 though. The other positive thing is that you have an additional precise pointing device: the trackpoint (I admit it takes more time to get productive with it than to a stylus, mouse or touchpad - but for ten-finger typists it pays really off)

1: http://m.heise.de/newsticker/bilderstrecke/bilderstrecke_195...

The Thinkpad Yoga and "Yoga 2" are two different machines, both released today. Near as I can tell the stylus support exists ONLY for the regular Yoga, not the "Yoga 2" linked by OP. (but since information is still limited I could be wrong.)

... but you could also just use a good mouse to perform complex 'mousing'.

I was disappointed to see that the Yoga 2 pro does not have a trackpoint.

the red thingy on the right side, visible on the third picture looks like a stylus.

Yes, but that appears to be a pic of the "Yoga", not the "Yoga 2", so I'm not sure both new laptops have this ability.

It is a Thinkpad Yoga as it says under the picture: "The ThinkPad Yoga is a bendy laptop that means business". And yes it has a stylus.

The Duo 13 is an excellent machine, but the stylus uses N-trig technology, not WACOM. It's sufficient, but a WACOM stylus has 2 advantages: It's more responsive and accurate than N-Trig, and it doesn't require a battery.

Basically, the Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga will have a better keyboard and a better pen, but the Sony has almost double the battery life. If you aren't an artist or a designer, an N-Trig stylus isn't the end of the world. If I were in the market for either, I'd wait for some reviews to come out for the Lenovo machines before making a decision.

How comes that the non-Thinkpad Yoga has a higher resolution than the Thinkpad Yoga? I thought that Thinkpad is the brand that is targeted to the PROfessionals!?

I agree about the battery with you. However not so much about extra cost. The computer is my main tool, I am using it the whole day - I stare at it the whole day, I type on it the whole day. For me the keyboard, the trackpoint, the ergonomy, the screen quality are more important than the price.

Disclaimer:

* Being a freelancer, unfortunately the money for my equipment is at my expenses

* I am a Thinkpad user (X220T currently).

* I do not use mouse and touchpad. I have to admit that over years my dependency on a good trackpoint grew to a state where I feel uncomfortable on computers without them. When at customers I have to spend days on their machines (because of security prohibiting to use my laptop in the customer's network) I bring in an external Thinkpad keyboard with a trackpoint, even though the most time I spend on the console.

* I would love to see good alternatives to Thinkpads and I would be ready to pay even a higher price.

* I added this disclaimer as an edit to the original post

Well, "PROfessionals" that use the thinkpad lines (think business people) have no need for the extra costs and battery hit associated with a higher PPI screen

I'm sure I'll never get sick of hearing about this line of "reasoning". Please explain again how you justify your purchases. Let me know how your time is important and valuable, and only the best tools will allow you to be productive at the level of a true professional.

You're not the one buying the laptop though, your company is. The bottom line is they don't feel the need to buy a more expensive laptop for you whose only reason for being more expensive is the screen is nicer. Typing a Word doc or making a powerpoint doesn't require a high PPI screen. High PPI is pretty much dead last in the sprint for "things that matter when corporate buys a laptop for you"

Yes it does. Eye fatigue takes much longer to set in one a high dpi display. The productivity benefits of giving a high dpi display are probable more meaningful than those of giving an i7 instead of an i3 (for word users).

They seem to follow the 'tradition' of thinkpads ruining otherwise perfectly speced and highly priced laptops with a terrible screen, just so they can upmarket enthusiasts later with the $3000 model.

They also ruined the keyboard in the process, no more home/end/pgup/pgdown row. I love those keys.

Learn your emacs shortcuts - ctrl-A, ctrl-E, ctrl-U, ctrl-D.

Not every application is emacs.

Eventually there is an emacs port of every application.

Even of emacs?

PgUp/PgDn are still there, but I never liked them on the sides of the up arrow key. Anyone know if you can Fn-arrow for PgUp/PgDn/Home/End like on the Mac? That's good enough.

Sounds interesting. I could see using something like this. I'm guessing that once you've flipped the screen back that far to make it a "tablet" then the exposed keyboard on the backside gets disabled so that your knee doesn't start typing for you?

The Thinkpad Yoga has actually a mechanical solution by raising keyboard plate to the level of the keyboard buttons [1]. The Yoga Pro, while not having a mechanical solution will disable the keyboard electronically, so even if a key is pressed nothing will happen.

[1]: http://m.heise.de/newsticker/bilderstrecke/bilderstrecke_195...

I believe so. Also, there were complaints with the original saying that the keys protruded out, making tablet mode kind of annoying. I read something about having the keys contract now, or not being as annoying in that manner?

6 hours of battery life in a Haswell laptop? That's probably why Apple is keeping the Retina screen out of the MacBook Air.

I really liked the old Yoga but 14" is too big to use like a tablet and 6 hours is not enough battery life.

Perhaps ... but the resolution on the macbook air models is getting more and more conspicuously behind the times.

We were disappointed when there was no macbook air with retina two years ago, when the first retina screens were released. Now it's 2.5 years after that 2012 WWDC and ... same old same old ...

This would make a pretty nice Ubuntu machine (next version of the OS). Imagine in laptop mode, you get desktop Ubuntu and flip for tablet mode for Ubuntu Touch. The orange version even matches Ubuntu's theme. Hum..

Anyone used one of these touch screen laptops for Linux? How useful is the touch display with say the latest Ubuntu distribution?

Driver support for my Sony Duo 13 (a very similar machine to OP) is awful. Ditto for the Ubuntu touchscreen experience.

I've given up running Ubuntu natively and just run it in virtualbox, instead. Unfortunately I think it'll be a couple of years before Ubuntu has caught up with the current transition to touch interfaces.

Was very much looking forward to this. But I'm curious, how did they manage to squeeze in 4x the pixels for essentially the same price in just under a year? I feel like this might be a mistake or there is going to be a big trade-off somewhere else in display quality.

From the article it says it has 2.4ghz-only Wifi. That kills it for me, and for a lot of people too.

Why?

One example... I have a Motorola SBG6580 that I use as both my cable modem and wireless router [0]. Although it claims to support dual band 802.11n, it really only supports one or the other, not both simultaneously. This means that if I have any wireless device in the house that doesn't support 802.11n, and specifically the 5 GHz band, then I'm forced to tell my router to fall back to 2.4 GHz unless I want to buy additional hardware.

[0] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=25-122-014

The 2.4GHz spectrum is far more crowded, and in a dense urban environment it can be the difference between a solid connection and one that constantly drops.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_interference_a...

That concept looks good in photos and videos, but who's ever going to turn their laptop upside down whenever they feel like using the "tablet mode" - so a few times every day? I might do it in the first few days, but I think I'd get tired of doing that, and just touch the screen in "laptop mode", instead, and with that flexible hinge, the screen will wobble a lot (which is why I think touch on most laptops is a bad idea).

Have you used one? I ask because I thought the similar thing but recently purchased the Dell XPS 12" and one of my coworkers bought the Yoga. While I agree, I don't often times flip my screen around unless I'm reading a long article of some type I do touch the screen a lot and the screens don't move like you'd think. In fact I'm so used to using the touchscreen (and I've only had the dell for about a month) that I find myself trying to touch my screen on my macbook now as well.

I have the Yoga 13, and I liked the tablet configuration option a lot. I'd use it more if there were more nice Windows 8 Metro apps, but I imagine that'll come with time.

I believe there is enough resistance in the hinge that you won't push it over with one finger.

Do they still make convertible laptops that have one hinge point in the middle, so it can swivel 180 degrees and then fold down to become a tablet while covering the keyboard keys? I just can't see myself leaving the keyboard exposed, even if it is disabled electronically.

That would be the Thinkpad X230t and Thinkpad Twist. Neither of them are using Haswell, but the X230t will probably be killed, the Twist will probably be updated.

I'd love to have that kind of screen on the x230, touch screen is not something I really need nor want, while a good screen is still something that seems hard to find on a high-end mobile laptop.

I'm hoping to see this screen rez on a 15" or so Thinkpad.

I really hope they change the name..

When will we be seeing normal (30"+) displays with that kind of resolution? Please say "soon".

The 4K monitors have resolution of 3840×2160 and they are already on market. I believe the cheapest contender is 39" seiki[1] which goes for under $1k.

For more dots per inch there is bunch of 31.5" 4K screens coming to market at the $3-4k price range.

http://4k-monitors.com/seiki-39-se39uy04/

Except most 4K displays can't do 60Hz which for most is the bare minimum for computer usage.

I would avoid that Seiki monitor, it can only do 4K at 30Hz max and there are wide reports that it can't even do 1080p at 120 Hz properly (even though its in the spec sheet).

The first 4K 60p input displays are just coming to the market this year. You can see a list: http://www.noteloop.com/kit/4k/

Right now it is just a trickle but expect a flood of both cheap and expensive 4K 60p displays next year.

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