Lenovo does find ways to change the way we use our beloved laptop. From introducing a 360-degree flipping notebook, they now want you to have a laptop without a physical keyboard.
The Lenovo Yoga Book is a fusion of the company’s Yoga design, its pretty watchband hinge, and a slab of digitizer. This device is something you don’t see every day, well, for now. You get a conventional touch display with a large touch glass surface dubbed as the Create Pad.
The Create Pad functions similarly to a Wacom tablet wherein you draw with the included stylus. This also doubles as your virtual keyboard called the Halo Keyboard. It instantly shifts from being a typing space to a sketch with a tap of a button.
Specs-wise, the Yoga Book has a 10.2-inch touch display with a full HD resolution. Inside is an Intel Atom x5 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. It weighs 680 grams and is just 9.6mm thick. Lenovo claims a 15-hour battery life.
The included stylus is from Wacom with 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity and a 100-degree angle detection. You can replace the tip of the pen with standard ink tips, just like that of a conventional pen, and write on a paper above the surface to digitally transform it.
The Lenovo Yoga Book will come with either Android or Windows software. Pricing is at $499 and $549, respectively. A 4G model will come soon but with a much higher tag.
Lenovo Philippines gave us an invite to attend the local launch of its Lenovo ThinkPad X1 family consisting of the Carbon, Yoga, and Tablet models. More details about the products and the event after the break.
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon features a 14-inch 2k (2560 x 1440) display with optional Full HD IPS, full-sized, spill-resistant, backlit keyboard, 4G LTE-A modem, integrated speakers with Dolby audio, HD webcam and Touch Sensor Fingerprint Reader. The body weighs 1.18 kg and measures 0.65 inch thin.
Powering the device is a 6th generation Intel 7-6600U with vPro CPU like the ThinkPad Yoga, Samsung PCIe NVMe SSD storage, Windows 10, and a battery that can last up to 11 hours.
The ThinkPad X1 Yoga features a 14-inch 2K (2560 x 1440) touch screen display with optional OLED variant. It features a spill-resistant full-sized, backlit keyboard with the keys that retract automatically when not being used as a laptop. It weighs 2.8lbs and comes with a dockable rechargeable stylus pen.
Powering it is a 6th generation Intel 7-6600U with vPro CPU, Samsung PCIe NVMe SSD storage, optional LTE-A, and a battery that can last up to 11 hours.
Additionally, the ThinkPad X1 Tablet will remind you of Microsoft’s Surface line. It has a 12-inch 2K (2160 x 1440) IPS display, built-in kickstand, USB Type-C, and powered by an Intel Core M processor. It weighs 1.75 lbs and measures 0.3-inches thin.
Its best feature is it allows users to purchase modules such as the Productivity Module to increase battery life up to 15 hours, Presenter Module which has a built-in pico projector and HDMI port, and 3D Imaging Module with rear-facing Intel RealSense camera. You can also attach a ThinkPad keyboard with TrackPoint and use a stylus.
The launch event will happen next week, June 21, 2016. Stay tuned for the local price and availability.
Lenovo Philippines gave us an invite to attend the local launch of its Lenovo ThinkPad X1 family consisting of the Carbon, Yoga, and Tablet models. More details about the products and the event after the break.
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon features a 14-inch 2k (2560 x 1440) display with optional Full HD IPS, full-sized, spill-resistant, backlit keyboard, 4G LTE-A modem, integrated speakers with Dolby audio, HD webcam and Touch Sensor Fingerprint Reader. The body weighs 1.18 kg and measures 0.65 inch thin.
Powering the device is a 6th generation Intel 7-6600U with vPro CPU like the ThinkPad Yoga, Samsung PCIe NVMe SSD storage, Windows 10, and a battery that can last up to 11 hours.
The ThinkPad X1 Yoga features a 14-inch 2K (2560 x 1440) touch screen display with optional OLED variant. It features a spill-resistant full-sized, backlit keyboard with the keys that retract automatically when not being used as a laptop. It weighs 2.8lbs and comes with a dockable rechargeable stylus pen.
Powering it is a 6th generation Intel 7-6600U with vPro CPU, Samsung PCIe NVMe SSD storage, optional LTE-A, and a battery that can last up to 11 hours.
Additionally, the ThinkPad X1 Tablet will remind you of Microsoft’s Surface line. It has a 12-inch 2K (2160 x 1440) IPS display, built-in kickstand, USB Type-C, and powered by an Intel Core M processor. It weighs 1.75 lbs and measures 0.3-inches thin.
Its best feature is it allows users to purchase modules such as the Productivity Module to increase battery life up to 15 hours, Presenter Module which has a built-in pico projector and HDMI port, and 3D Imaging Module with rear-facing Intel RealSense camera. You can also attach a ThinkPad keyboard with TrackPoint and use a stylus.
The launch event will happen next week, June 21, 2016. Stay tuned for the local price and availability.
By Ellen T. Tordesillas, VERA Files Photos and Video by Mario Ignacio IV and Mario I. Espinosa
The amazing thing about yoga is that you are empowering yourself without being conscious that that is what you are doing.
Yoga instructor Jasper Colina, who just opened OM Yoga Studio in Parañaque (he also teaches yoga at Fitness First), shares the experience of a female student who had fear of crossing the street. After several yoga sessions, she experienced changes within herself. She became confident with every pose she was able to accomplish and later on mustered enough courage to cross the street by herself.
Colina said most people initially go into yoga for physical fitness. In the process, however, they undergo not only physical change but also inner transformation which usually leads to a change in lifestyle—one that is gentler and more meaningful.
One of Colina’s students, Virginia Carag, attests to that.
A retired bank executive, Carag said she once ballooned to 280 pounds and was miserable. She was then taking care of her sick husband and “kain ako ng kain (I kept eating).”
One day, after her husband’s death, she was cleaning her room and saw her old photos when she was Miss PNB (Philippine National Bank). She felt depressed and cried.
She resolved to lose weight and on her own did some physical exercises like walking. But she said, “I felt there was something lacking.”
Carag became a member of Fitness First where she joined all group exercises, including yoga. The teacher then was Peewee Sanchez (now based in the Middle East), whom Carag credits for inspiring to go further in her fitness regimen.
She got hooked on yoga which she said helped her regain her focus and balance.
Balance was also Steph Bregondo’s problem. “Palagi ako noon natatapilok (I used to trip a lot),” she recalled.
In the few months she has been doing yoga—she attends Colina’s classes in Fitness First MOA and OM—Bregondo said her balance has markedly improved.
Soledad Rivera travels one-and-a-half hours from Navotas just to attend Colina’s classes at Fitness First and OM Yoga Center. “I like Jasper’s classes because there’s a lot of variety. It’s never boring,” she said.
Rivera, who in her 60s does a wheel pose or backbend flawlessly, took up yoga upon the advice of her doctor who was treating her scoliosis.
She liked it. So much that she now has her own yoga studio at home. “When I feel depressed, I do yoga,” she enthused.
Yoga Instructor Jasper Colina doing Warrior One.
Colina said yoga is uplifting because it starts from within. “It’s more than just poses. It involves emotional, mental and spiritual discipline,” he said.
Yoga traces its origin to India thousands of years ago and literally means “to yoke or join together.” It’s a discipline that brings the body and mind together in harmony.
In a gym setting, yoga puts emphasis on posture or physical exercise (asanas) and breathing (pranayama), two of the eight limbs of yoga, Colina said. The other six are yama (universal morality), niyama (personal observances), pratyahara (control of the senses), dharana (concentration and cultivating inner perceptual awareness) and dhyana (devotion, meditation on the divine).
Colina said most of the poses in yoga are lengthening and strengthening. Thus, as you practice yoga, your posture improves. You look taller, slimmer and younger.
Breathing is a core element of yoga. Proper breathing pumps more oxygen to the blood and to the brain. “If you inhale, exhale, you do a lot of cleaning,” Colina said.
A yoga class is life in a capsule. Like in life, everything is connected. Every pose is a preparation for the next pose. Until the peak or goal is accomplished.
Colina gives an example of the Warrior One pose, which celebrates the spiritual warrior/yoga practitioner’s battle against self-ignorance—the source of suffering.
“Warrior One is a very strong pose. It is not an easy pose. After 10 counts, you accomplish it. How do you apply it in your daily life? It teaches you how to face your problem. Then you will triumph. You will gain confidence,” he said.
That’s empowerment.
Yoga also teaches discipline and is a constant reminder of the folly of taking shortcuts. “You cannot go to 10 without going through one, two, three and so on and so forth,” Colina said. Just like in life, taking shortcuts in yoga could lead to injuries, problems or not achieving your goal.
That’s why it is important for a student to start from the beginning of the class and stay to the end. Said Colina: “We follow a pattern. It starts with centering or meditation, followed with sun salutation, then standing poses, sitting poses and finally Savasana or corpse pose (lying on the back, with the arms and legs spread at about 45 degrees and the eyes closed).”
Coming out of Savasana, yoga practitioners resume daily activities feeling rejuvenated.
Yoga is becoming a popular antidote to the frenetic modern lifestyle. But it remains an elitist activity.
Colina said opening OM Yoga on commuter-accessible location in Parañaque (Sotelo Business Center, 695 Quirino Avenue) is his way of bringing yoga to people who don’t go to high-end gyms and yoga studios. OM charges a reasonable fee of P200 per session.
Aside from vinyasa (flow) and ashtanga yoga, OM offers iron yoga.
“Iron yoga is our signature class. We add weights for resistance and for more toning,” Colina said.
OM Yoga also offers belly dancing and zumba.
Colina said he is working out with some yoga teacher friends a yoga program for kids, 3 to 7 years old. The poses would be patterned after nature like a bird’s pose, a turtle pose or happy baby pose. “It’s basically play,” he said.
That would be fun. (VERA Files is put out by veteran journalists taking a deeper look at current issues. Vera is Latin for “true.”)
(For inquiries, call OM Yoga Studio 866-973; 0917-6245-271;0917-8176-478)
The Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 11S was announced earlier this year, and it’s not your ordinary day notebook. The Yoga packs an Intel Core i5 CPU with 8GB RAM, Windows 8 and an 11-inch touchscreen that pushes all the way back at 360 degrees, but is it anything special? Is it worth a look at? Read on our full review to find out.
“That’s one eye-catching laptop” people would tell me.
Design and Construction
I’m going to put this frankly; be it a health practice, a stress reliever or a laptop, the Yoga is beautiful. Our unit is covered in semi-rubbery orange & black all around, and while a lot of people might consider this too flashy, I didn’t. In fact, the Yoga would succeed very well if it stood in a room full of laptops with plain & boring designs.
Just like laptops like the Macbook, this device stands on its own identity.
With the laptop closed, everything is clean and simple. There’s a Lenovo logo on the top left part, and on the bottom are the rubber stoppers along with some labels – that includes the Windows 8 sticker found awkwardly in the middle.
Pop the laptop open and you’ll find the keyboard, the trackpad and some labels again, all surrounded by a material that looks like brushed aluminum but actually feels like texturized rubber. We don’t know what Lenovo has done here, but we really like it. Dirt & fingerprints are nowhere to be found, and besides, it feels good to rest your palm on it.
Now let’s push things a little further – literally. When the back of your display is folded to touch the bottom part of your laptop – the Yoga turns into a heavyweight tablet.
Not only is the Yoga sexy, but it’s also flexible.
In this form factor, the button placements finally make sense. The power button that was once on the front side of the laptop is now on top. In addition to that, the once inverted volume rocker found on the left part of the laptop now works the way it should (up pushes the volume higher, down lowers the volume).
[From the tablet form factor's perspective,] a USB 3.0 port, the 3.5mm audio jack, the volume rocker and the mini HDMI port is found on the left side, while on the right side you can find the port for charging, a USB 2.0 port and a rotation lock button. The speakers are found on both left & right sides of the laptop.
On the top left part is the power button, while on the bottom you’ll find the vents and the metallic hinge system that works amazingly well; it is not flimsy in any case and it feels solid.
And of course, up front you’ll find the touchscreen that lies on top of the Windows 8 Start button… which is another story.
Display
As you’d expect, the Yoga 11S packs an 11.6-inch display. It runs on a resolution of 1366 x 768 which produces a pixel density of 135ppi. The result? Not so astonishing, but not so bad either.
Texts and other details could be sharper, and this specific screen resolution is getting boring on laptops. On the bright side, colors look great and vibrant, and outdoor visibility is quite good.
The touchscreen was great too, as it was responsive all around the system and we didn’t have any problems with it.
Keyboard & Trackpad
If you’re not that into touchscreens, especially on Windows 8, then here is the keyboard and the trackpad.
The keys are chiclet, and they’re easy to press for the most part. When you’re in tablet mode, you’ll be having your fingers resting on the keyboard too, but there’s no need to worry as they’re very soft and friendly to the touch.
If there’s one major complaint that we have about it, it’s the lack of backlit keys. Typing in the dark won’t be a good experience for anyone, so keep that in mind.
The trackpad is smooth and accurate on this machine, although there might be times where it is quite jumpy. Gestures, for the most part, work well – however it is not capable of some specific ones such as pinch to zoom.
Apps & Multimedia
Lenovo bundled Windows 8 with a lot of apps here – Kindle, AccuWeather, Merriam-Webster and etc. (seen below). I’m not one of the people who would actually use these apps, but I’m pretty sure a lot of people would appreciate the package.
Apart from these, Lenovo has some more add-ons like SugarSync & Filmon Television. All of these needs a connection to the internet, but when we did try it out, it worked perfectly; FilmOn TV streaming is easily one of our favorites, while Motion Control, however, is something that we didn’t find ourselves using as much.
Watching movies & playing music with the Yoga is an absolute joy. There weren’t slow downs and bad viewing angles to be found with video, and music volume and quality was also sufficiently loud and clean with no hissing or whatsoever.
Performance & Battery Life
Running on a 3rd generation Intel Core i5 CPU & 8GB RAM, we didn’t find any lags or slow downs with the Yoga. There were some bugs here and there, but none of which caused a big problem (browsing with Chrome and etc. needs improvement).
The Yoga 11S lasts for a sharp 5 hours on our battery test. We looped a video on 50% brightness and 50% audio, and it managed to drain an exact 20% every hour. It’s not the 6-hours that Lenovo promised, but it’s still close enough and that isn’t bad at all.
Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 11S specs:
11.6-inch 1366 x 768 IPS display
1.5GHz Intel Core i5-3339Y CPU
Intel HD Graphics 4000
8GB RAM
128/256/512GB SSD
720p HD webcam
WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0
micro HDMI port
1x USB 3.0 port
1x USB 2.0 port
1x SD card slot
29.8 x 20.4 x 1.7 cm (dimensions)
1,387g (weight) Php44,995
*Core i3 / i7, Silver colored & 4GB RAM versions are also available at different prices
Conclusion
Having to depart with the Lenovo Yoga 11S, I felt somewhat attached. The Core i5 CPU, the 8GB RAM, the display or the design might be major plot elements that have led to this conclusion, but the real story here is the form factor.
I have handled touchscreen laptops before, and even the Microsoft Surface RT, but the Yoga just speaks out. As an ordinary laptop, the idea of having a device that could push all the way back just to hide the keyboard and the trackpad is amusing.
However, on the flip side, we’re pretty convinced as well that the Yoga is having an identity crisis – the button placements are convoluted, and the Yoga isn’t the most beautiful thing either on tablet mode.
Windows 8 still can’t live on itself without a dedicated keyboard and a trackpad, and we think Lenovo did the right thing in going through this path.
All-in-all, the Ideapad Yoga 11S has the makings of an outstanding laptop-tablet hybrid, and it’s one of the best buys out there if you can live without a 1080p HD display or a backlit keyboard.
