Lenovo Yoga 920 review

During our time using the Yoga 920 – primarily as a laptop, but also occasionally as a tablet – we were very impressed with its performance. Our review unit boasts a Core i7 processor, 8GB RAM and a 1080p display.

Windows 10 ran smoothly with no issues, and thankfully Lenovo has kept bloatware (as in unwanted pre-installed applications) to a minimum. Day-to-day tasks are usually processed quickly, although our configuration of the Yoga 920 did take quite a while to extract a large compressed .zip file, which also caused its fans to kick in. 

Most of the time, the Lenovo Yoga 920’s fans stayed silent, but for more processor-heavy tasks they did turn on, making this laptop louder than the fanless design of the Surface Book 2 13.5-inch.

We have tested the Yoga 920 for heavy web browsing with multiple open tabs, and it performs well. The keyboard is large enough to type comfortably on, and despite the keys being fairly shallow, they have satisfying travel.

The touchscreen is fast and responsive, whether you’re using your fingers or the stylus, and even though we tested the 1080p rather than the UHD version, the screen still looks incredible, with sharp and vibrant visuals. In fact, we’d say that a 4K screen on a 13-inch screen like this is overkill, especially given the size of the screen.

Image quality is also fantastic on the display, with bright, vivid pictures and deep blacks, giving you an enjoyable viewing experience when watching movies. The sound quality, powered by Dolby Audio Premium, is very impressive. Despite its small size, the Yoga 920 does a great job of pumping out sounds at a decent volume – and the audio quality doesn’t suffer from sounding weak or tinny. 

That can be an annoyance on smaller devices, but the Yoga 920 really has impressed us. Combined with such a beautiful screen, the sound quality makes the Yoga 920 an excellent device for watching media.

As you can see from our benchmark scores, the integrated graphics of the Lenovo Yoga 920 don’t have enough power to drive the newer, graphics-hungry games. However, it can still handle older games – and pretty much any title on our list of the best games for laptops. For any graphically-strenuous tasks, however, you may not want to look elsewhere.

Battery life

Lenovo claims a battery life of 12 hours for the Yoga 920, and while it doesn’t quite reach that mark during our testing, it doesn’t fall far short either. In our movie test (during which we play a looped 1080p movie with the screen at maximum brightness), the Yoga 920 hit 9 hours and 23 minutes before it required a charge. That’s very impressive, and it means you can easily use this laptop to watch movies on long journeys. By tweaking the brightness settings, the device could even last a bit longer.

Of course, playing movies (and from a hard drive, not streamed) isn’t an especially demanding task, so there’s not as much impact on battery life. So we also ran the PCMark 8 Battery Life benchmark, which simulates medium to high usage such as browsing the internet, creating word documents and making video calls.

This time, the Lenovo Yoga 920’s battery life dropped to just over four hours. That’s nearly two hours less than the Surface Book 2 13.5-inch – though the Surface Book 2 is both more expensive, and actually contains two batteries (one in the body, the other in the tablet section).

While processor-heavy work may drain the battery pretty quickly, the good news is that charging the Yoga 920 via USB-C is also lightning fast – we reached 92% in about an hour and a half during our testing. Another nice touch is that the other USB ports are always on, so with the Yoga 920 plugged in, you can shut down the laptop, but still use its spare USB ports to charge your other devices.

Final verdict

The Lenovo Yoga 920 is another triumphant 2-in-1 design in a year that’s seen the form factor go from strength to strength. It features an appealing premium design, it’s thin and light, and it performs day to day tasks efficiently.

The integrated graphics do mean that it falls short in graphically intensive tasks like video editing and gaming, but it’s a price you’ll have to pay for a device this thin.

And, we’re still not entirely sold on the keyboard being in the back when the screen is flipped into tablet mode – 2-in-1 machines with detachable keyboards still feel a lot better, though they come with their own compromises. Plus, the plastic holder for the stylus feels a bit cheap.

However, this all helps to keep the price (relatively) low. This isn’t a budget laptop, by any means, but it offers great value for the price, and it comes in a lot cheaper than some of its high-end rivals.

Overall, we really enjoyed our time with the Yoga 920. If you’re looking for a thin, light and capable laptop that you can occasionally use as a tablet, it's definitely worth considering.

Images Credit: TechRadar