Review: Lenovo Yoga 900

Three years on, has Lenovo finally refined the Yoga laptop line to the point where it's worthy of serious consideration? An essential update to last year's half-baked Yoga 3 Pro, the Yoga 900 drops the "Pro" bit altogether. Per the company, the "900" means this version is Lenovo's "top of the line" update of this origami-like laptop.

From the outside, nothing much has changed with the Yoga 900 versus previous editions. It still features the exotic "watchband" hinge that allows the screen to rotate a full 360 degrees so it can be positioned in a variety of orientations, including a slate mode that lets it function like a Windows tablet. The 13.3-inch screen still packs a phenomenal 3200 x 1800-pixel resolution, and at just 2.8 pounds and 16mm of thickness, it's one of the most portable 13-inch laptops on the market.

Ports have been slightly tweaked. In addition to two full-size USB 3.0 ports, the charging port that doubles as a USB 2.0 port, and an SD card slot, an additional USB Type-C port (with video output) makes an appearance, replacing the old mini HDMI port on the Yoga 3 Pro. But other than some minor cosmetic changes—silver trim around the touchpad and a tweaked keyboard that adds an extra row of half-size function keys (instead of forcing them to share space with the numeral row)—it's tough to tell the difference between this new Yoga and last year's model.

The hybrid laptop is the first computer in the Yoga line designed with Windows 10 in mind, and the internal specs have been commensurately upgraded, with a sixth generation Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. That's the top-end configuration, available for a reasonable price of $1,300. A lower-end config (8GB RAM and 256GB SSD) hits $1,100, but the upgraded version seems like a better buy. Performance is solid. Not off the charts, but very good across the board, and very much in line with the Microsoft Surface Pro 4.

But the biggest upgrade—and perhaps the best reason of all to recommend the device—has been made to the battery. Radically upgraded, the Yoga 900 now stretches to over 8 hours of sustained video playback. That's unheard-of from either Windows laptops or tablets and is a real testament to Lenovo's engineering—or at least its chutzpah.

Mind you, things aren't perfect here. The Yoga still has problems managing font and icon sizes during resolution shifts, making some text very large, some impossibly tiny. Also, it's still preloaded to the gills with garbage software. The keyboard has gotten a minor upgrade over the super-mushy disaster of the Yoga 3 Pro, but there's still room for improvement to make touch typing faster and more natural.

Those are minor complaints, however. With an attractive price tag and impressive performance across the board, it's hard not to recommend this laptop to anyone. Also, it is available in orange.