Lenovo ThinkBook 14s Yoga review

Two minute review

The Lenovo ThinkBook 14s Yoga 2-in-1 is a business-focused convertible laptop that delivers excellent performance at a fair price, while wrapping it all in an attractive package – even if it's a fingerprint magnet.

This is a solidly midrange 2-in-1, with the entry-level configuration coming in at just under $1000/£700/AU$1,700, and it has some attractive features for the price. Things like a finger-print scanner built into the power button, physical webcam privacy shutter, and a fast-charging garaged stylus definitely put it above other midrange 2-in-1s, and that alone makes it one of the better options at this price point.

The all-aluminum construction makes it lightweight and durable-ish – we wouldn't drop it, that's all we're saying – and we genuinely loved the Abyssal Blue color scheme on our review unit. The keyboard, trackpad, and stylus are some of the best we've seen on a Lenovo laptop and the touchscreen display is great, even for 1080p, with decent bezels. 

It is only 300 nits, though, so it will struggle somewhat in sunlit areas like outdoor seating at a coffee shop or a park. If you want to get some work done outside on a nice spring or summer day, be prepared to work in the shade.

On the performance front, the ThinkBook 14s Yoga features 11th-generation Intel mobile processors, which chew through productivity tasks and general-use multitasking work. It's definitely one of the more powerful 2-in-1s we've tested, though it still falls short of Ultrabooks with similar hardware.

Overall, the Lenovo ThinkBook 14s Yoga is easily one of the best midrange 2-in-1s for productivity tasks, making its good for business users and a great choice for university students. Check out the crème de la crème in our best business laptops buying guide.

Price and availability

The Lenovo ThinkBook 14S Yoga is available now, starting at $967 / £769 / AU$1,649. The entry-level configuration features an Intel Core i5-1135G7, 8GB DDR4 RAM, and a 256GB PCIe SSD for the UK and Australia region, with a 512GB PCIe SSD the lowest the US configurations go as far as storage is concerned.

In the US, the only other currently available configuration features an Intel Core i7-1165G7, 24GB DDR4 RAM, and 1TB PCIe SSD for $1,260.

Beyond that, there are more configuration options available for the UK and Australia, with the highest end configuration in the UK featuring a i7-1165G7, 24GB DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB PCIe SSD for £1,039. 

The ThinkBook's Australian offerings have a bit of a quirk, in that the most expensive configuration available doesn't actually have the best possible specs. The most expensive configuration features an Intel Core i5-1135G7, 16GB DDR4 RAM, and a 512GB PCIe SSD for AU$2,109, but if you upgrade the processor to an Intel Core i7-1165G7, you actually pay AU$1,999 for some reason. Clearly, this is the better processor and you get to save some money, so congrats, Australia!

Design

The design of the Lenovo ThinkBook 14s Yoga is easily one of its best selling points. The all-aluminum construction is fairly light at just over three pounds (3.3 lbs / 1.5kg, to be exact), which makes it slightly heavier than some of its competitors like the Acer Spin 5 but lighter than others like the Asus Vivobook Flip 14. 

There isn't much in the way of vents on the 14s Yoga, but it also doesn't get uncomfortably hot – it's really not powerful enough to run up the temperature too much. 

The keyboard layout is your typical island-style design, but unlike the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano, the Control and Function keys on the bottom-left side are in the appropriate position. There's great key travel for a laptop of this kind and the keys are whisper quiet even if you are furiously typing away on a school paper, report, or a certain review right up to the deadline.

The trackpad is smooth and responsive and has a silvery trim around the edge, which makes it look more premium than it probably is. There's plenty of room on the pad as well, which makes multitouch gestures feel more natural than on smaller pads.

The garaged stylus is also a decent enough size for a pen that stows away into the side, but like many others of its kind, it's not a full-sized pen. As a result, it also feels a bit more on the brittle side compared to a full-sized stylus, so you'll want to be careful with this one. Fortunately, it docks into the side (which also charges it), so you only need to pull it out when necessary and can stow it away quickly when you're done.

Unfortunately, the speakers aren't all that great and they're down-firing as well, so don't expect stellar sound quality out of the 14s Yoga. Considering the target audience, this shouldn't be that high on the list of priorities, but for those who do need their machine to sound loud and clear, you're probably better off using a headset of some kind or hooking up external speakers.

There are a lot of ports on the 14s Yoga, which is great for a laptop this thin. This includes two USB Type-C ports – though you'll need to use one for charging – an HDMI output port, a MicroSD slot, an audio combo jack, and two USB Type-A ports. Add in the Kensington lock slot, and you've got just about every port possible on a 2-in-1, so there's a lot that this laptop can do.

Performance

The performance of the Lenovo ThinkBook 14s Yoga is also a major stand out among competing 2-in-1s like the HP Spectre x360 (2021), though this comes at a cost of its battery life.

The 14s Yoga is a rarity nowadays as most major laptop releases are almost always Intel Evo certified, which is a certification process where Intel works with laptop manufacturers to ensure energy efficiency, security, and performance all reach the high standard set by Intel.

The 14s Yoga falls short of this, most likely in the battery life metric. In our both of our battery life tests, the 14s Yoga fell just short of the nine hours needed for Intel Evo certification, though it exceeded in every other area as far as we could tell.

This is pretty apparent when you compare it to the Spectre x360, which lasts 12 hours 52 minutes in PCMark 10's battery test and 11 hours 22 minutes in our HD movie test compared to the 14s Yoga's eight hours 45 minutes and eight hours 34 minutes, respectively.

On the other hand, both the 14s Yoga and Spectre x360 we reviewed had the same Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor, but the 14s Yoga scored higher on our Geekbench 5 and PCMark 10 Home tests by a healthy margin.

In Geekbench 5, the 14s Yoga scored a 1,549 on the single core test and a 4,783 on the multi core test, compared to the Spectre x360's 1,317 and 4,541, respectively. It's the same story in PCMark 10 Home, where the 14s Yoga scored a 5,242 compared to the Spectre x360's score of 4,721.

Whether that extra performance is worth the price of a substantial hit to battery life depends on what you need from your 2-in-1. If you're need to go half a day without a charge, then the Spectre x360 is clearly the 2-in-1 for you. If you need the best performance possible from a 2-in-1 or will have ample opportunities to plug in your laptop during the day (the 14s Yoga also features Rapid Charge as well), then the 14s Yoga is the better bet.

Software and features

For a laptop at this price, we're happy to report that we didn't see much in the way of bloatware here beyond what comes standard with Windows 10. Considering that this is a 2-in-1 with a garaged stylus, there are a few apps preloaded for notetaking, Lenono Pen Settings, and the ability to take notes on the display even when it's locked, which is helpful for jotting down something in a hurry.

There's a service hotkey (the F9 key) which loads up a webpage with information about the laptop's warranty and other information specific to your device. While this is helpful for those who need it, accidentally hitting the F9 key also means your mistype is going to open up an active web page when you're in the middle of something else.

Other notable features include the fingerprint scanner embedded in the power button which sets up easily with Windows Hello for improved security. We also can't express the importance of the 14s Yoga's physical privacy shutter for its webcam. There are still laptops in 2021 that do not have privacy shutters and that is simply unacceptable at this point.

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