Lenovo ThinkPad X380 Yoga - Review 2022

It's not hard for businesses to detect a sturdy laptop to offering their employees whose weekly trips to consulting sites, or on and off airplanes, field of study their gear to lots of abuse. It's much harder to find a sturdy two-in-1 convertible design whose screen tin can be flipped 360 degrees to use in tablet mode while still protecting the exposed keyboard from damage. Lenovo'south solution is low-tech but ingenious: keys that automatically retract into the laptop equally you rotate the screen. You lot'll find them on several ThinkPad convertible designs, but they're put to especially adept use on the ThinkPad X380 Yoga (starts at $1,223; $1,514 as tested), which manages to fit not merely the retractable keys, simply as well many other things nosotros appreciate on the flagship ThinkPad X1 Yoga, into a much smaller package.

Sturdy, But Not the Thinnest or Lightest

Equally impressive as Lenovo'southward miniaturization endeavour might be, the ThinkPad X380 Yoga isn't quite every bit minor or as lite as the Editors' Pick HP EliteBook x360 1030 G2, which remains our top option for business ii-in-1s. Both the ThinkPad X380 Yoga and EliteBook x360 1030 G2 have 13.3-inch screens, simply the HP model measures 0.59 by 12.5 by eight.half-dozen inches (HWD) and weighs 2.84 pounds, versus the Lenovo's 0.7 by 12.iii by eight.75 inches and 3.02 pounds. The extra ounces and inches certainly don't make the ThinkPad X380 Yoga overweight, but they're not quite justified by its advantages over the EliteBook x360 1030 G2, at least not enough for people who must commute past air and dodge in and out of conference rooms on a weekly ground.

That'southward not to say the ThinkPad X380 Yoga doesn't accept plenty to offer. Other than the legendary ThinkPad black styling (if you're a ThinkPad purist you'll exist shaken to learn you can order an X380 in argent, too), the standout feature past far is the keyboard. This is the aforementioned sublime typing feel that you can expect from whatsoever ThinkPad, fifty-fifty much thicker ones that don't convert into a tablet, such equally the ThinkPad T480. The backlit, sculpted keys experience luxurious and well-spaced. There's an inverted-T number pad, a rarity on laptops these days and something that'south noticeably defective on HP's business organization-laptop lineup (though non Dell'south Latitude range).

All-time of all, the keys travel a surprising altitude before they bottom out, and I noted zero keyboard flex. I typed several m words on the ThinkPad X380 Yoga's keyboard, and my fingers were only slightly less comfortable than if I had typed them on the mechanical switches of the Corsair K95 RGB Platinum.

The fact that the keyboard is as comfortable as it is, even with the addition of the mechanical retraction mechanism, is remarkable. The machinery, which is also bachelor on the ThinkPad X1 Yoga, springs into action every bit you rotate the screen by 180 degrees. You can't feel it happening, but by the time the screen is rotated fully flush with the back of the laptop, the keys are just as affluent with the keyboard deck. Even the scarlet ThinkPad pointing stick nubbin retracts to minimize impairment that might occur when you set the ThinkPad X380 Yoga down on a jagged surface in tablet mode.

In fact, yous might be tempted to be less careful with your ThinkPad X380 Yoga in general once you learn that Lenovo put information technology through more than 200 reliability tests, including several armed services-standard ones. Indeed, the chassis feels supremely sturdy, and I noted very little screen flex. Even if this doesn't make you less careful, though, the retracted keys notwithstanding feel reassuringly secure when you're belongings the X380 as a tablet. I've always felt uneasy about accidentally pressing the deactivated keys on other convertible laptops with my hands, as if I'1000 mashing all of the keys on a piano and half-expecting the laptop to make the aforementioned anomalous noise the pianoforte would.

Never Lose a Stylus Again

The integrated stylus is some other splendid characteristic that the ThinkPad X380 Yoga borrows from its big-brother X1 Yoga. The traveling consultants and salespeople who volition mostly end up using the X380 might not get a lot of use out of information technology, simply neither will they exist able to deny its novelty factor. Dissimilar the plastic stylus holder that awkwardly hangs out of a spare USB port on the Lenovo Yoga 920, the X380's stylus holder is built into the bottom of the laptop, where it both houses the stylus and charges its built-in battery. You tin can count on numerous advantages to this setup (no losing the stylus, no fumbling to change batteries), and the only real downside is that the stylus isn't as large equally a normal pen.

Using the pen to draw on the 13.3-inch full Hd (1,920 past ane,080) bear on screen results in very piddling screen bounce of the type that plagues lesser 2-in-ane convertibles, in part cheers to the ThinkPad X380 Yoga'south sturdy hinges. The brandish is also pleasing to look at when you're not drawing or tapping on it. Information technology's less reflective and less prone to fingerprint smudges than many other glossy screens I've used, especially the one on the 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro. However, colors are as well a fleck duller and tend to wash out quicker at farthermost viewing angles than on the MacBook Pro. This is despite Lenovo's employ of in-plane switching (IPS) tech in the display, which usually results in bright colors and wide viewing angles.

There'south but a single display option, so you can't increase the resolution to 4K. Nor does Lenovo offer a counter to HP'southward unique integrated privacy filter, Sure View, which with the touch on of a button makes information technology much harder for snoopers to peer over your shoulder when you lot're using the EliteBook x360 on an airplane or other crowded space.

Above the screen is a 720p webcam that takes excellent video and nevertheless images in brightly lit offices, though, like almost all laptop cameras, results in grainy images in low-light environments. You get no dedicated Skype controls like yous'll find on the EliteBook, although at that place is a button to mute the microphone if you need to step away from your video conversation for a minute. There's also no option to configure a ThinkPad X380 Yoga with a congenital-in camera comprehend like the ThinkShutter one offered on the X1 series, simply you can opt for an infrared camera that supports face-recognition Windows logins for an additional charge.

Perhaps every bit a yin to the keyboard'south excellent yang, the ThinkPad X380 Yoga's touchpad is also tiny to exist of much practical apply for marathon cursor-moving sessions. That's a shame, because it's otherwise very sturdy, and clickable to kicking. I suppose Lenovo engineers are banking on the fact that you'll move the cursor with the pointing stick much of the time, and if you were brought up on ThinkPads, they're probably correct.

Security to Please Information technology Departments

The ThinkPad X380 Yoga's many security features include a fingerprint reader, a Kensington-style physical lock slot, support for the FIDO authentication protocol, and even a slot to accept a hardware security card that some large It departments issue their employees. Such a slot is missing from the EliteBook x360 1030 G2. Unfortunately, the fingerprint reader only recognized my print about 60 percent of the fourth dimension, despite multiple attempts to retrain it. The accurateness is disappointing, because the near 100 percent recognition rates I experienced with the Huawei MateBook X Pro and the MacBook Pro.

Missing from our ThinkPad X380 Yoga review unit is back up for Intel vPro, which enables secure booting and other hardware and firmware security features. Many ThinkPads accept vPro-equipped CPUs, then does the EliteBook x360 1030 G2. Lenovo offers a Core i7 with vPro in the X380 as a configurable option.

Input and output port choice on the ThinkPad X380 Yoga is adequate but occasionally quirky, alas non in a good way. The most frustrating port is the proprietary Ethernet connector. It's a dedicated Ethernet port, but Lenovo squished it to fit the laptop's slim profile, which means you'll need to purchase a proprietary adapter if you want to employ it (or negotiate with Lenovo to include adapters for free on a large order). You tin, of course, use a USB-C-to-Ethernet adapter, simply then you're stuck with a useless port. I would much prefer an extra USB-C port to the proprietary Ethernet port, if there's not enough space to include a full-size 1. This is the approach that HP takes, and it's even kind enough to include a USB-C-to-Ethernet dongle in the box with the EliteBook x360 1030 G2.

Some other port quirk is the lack of a defended docking slot, one of a ThinkPad's nigh recognizable features. You tin't use the old-school ThinkPad docking station with this laptop. Instead, you'll have to connect the unmarried USB-C port with Thunderbolt three to an external dock. Two USB iii.0 slots, a full-size HDMI output, a micro SD card reader, an sound jack, and a dedicated ability port circular out the I/O selection. The ThinkPad X380 Yoga as well features 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth iv.1.

A one-year warranty comes standard with the ThinkPad X380 Yoga, although longer periods and coverage for adventitious damage are bachelor for an extra charge. The EliteBook x360 1030 G2 configuration tested here includes a iii-year warranty.

Numerous Configs, Good Performance

Component configuration options abound on this model. The review unit of measurement I have in paw comes with an Intel Core i5-8250U CPU, 8GB of memory, and a 512GB solid-land drive (SSD) that uses the cut-edge and very speedy PCI Express NVMe interface. This configuration is a bit lopsided toward a costlier SSD at the expense of lesser memory and storage. If I were running an Information technology department, I'd opt for a configuration with a vPro-equipped Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. (There's too a 128GB SATA SSD pick.)

As a result of its Core i5 and relatively small retentiveness capacity, this review unit did non mail service blow-'em-away performance numbers on our criterion charts compared with other, similar convertible laptops. In fact, on both our general productivity and multimedia editing regimens, the ThinkPad X380 Yoga was exactly in the middle of the pack. The Core i7-powered Asus ZenBook Flip fourteen and Dell Latitude 7390 2-in-1 were faster, while the EliteBook x360 1030 G2 and its smaller cousin, the 1020 G2, were both slower, by and large as a result of their previous-generation Intel CPUs.

Of detail notation is the iii minutes and 38 seconds it took for the ThinkPad X380 Yoga to apply our serial of sample image filters in Adobe Photoshop CS6. It was the slowest hither, albeit in a narrow range of scores, which is a perfect demonstration that this Lenovo is meliorate suited to checking electronic mail and presenting slideshows than to artistic tasks such as manipulating photographs. Indeed, information technology scored 3,271 on the PCMark 8 full general productivity examination, which measures activities like spider web browsing, spreadsheet editing, and video conferencing. This is an excellent score in line with the EliteBook x360 1030 G2, although slightly worse than both the ZenBook and the Latitude 7390 2-in-1.

With an Intel UHD Graphics 620 integrated GPU, the ThinkPad X380 Yoga can't handle intense gaming. It posted frame rates well beneath the 30 frames per 2nd (fps) we generally consider to be the minimum for pleasing gameplay, even at lower resolutions on the Heaven and Valley game simulations. All of its competitors posted similar results salvage for the GeForce MX150-equipped ZenBook, which is suitable for casual gaming at very low quality settings and screen resolutions.

Travelers lucky enough to snag a quiet hotel room away from the highway or train tracks will likely notice occasional fan dissonance from the X380 Yoga if they are performing a task that taxes the CPU, such as video streaming or manipulating spreadsheets. I noticed the cooling system spool upwards during each of the benchmark tests, just luckily information technology was silent during typing and other activities. At no time during testing did the chassis become uncomfortably hot; in fact, virtually of the fourth dimension, it was inappreciably warm.

See How We Test Laptops

The ThinkPad X380 Yoga lasted an fantabulous xi hours and 12 minutes on our battery rundown test, which involves playing a local video file at fifty percent screen brightness until the battery is exhausted. Notwithstanding, the HP EliteBook x360 1030 G2 has it shell at more than 14 hours. Dissimilar with some other ThinkPads, the X380's 51-watt-hour battery is the only pick. You can't remove and supersede batteries, nor can you upgrade the capacity.

Tough 2-in-1 Decisions...

Cheers to its retractable keys and tried-and-tested chassis, the Lenovo ThinkPad X380 Yoga is i of the sturdiest 2-in-1 convertible laptops on the market. While this and many of its other unique features are besides bachelor on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga, non every business traveler wants to beat out out X1-level prices or tote around a larger laptop. If size is your ultimate consideration, though, the HP EliteBook x360 1030 G2 is also an excellent ii-in-1 ultraportable, with a slightly different feature set that includes longer battery life and a unique integrated privacy screen, in an fifty-fifty smaller and lighter chassis.

Every bit a outcome, the ThinkPad X380 Yoga's excellence is admirable, merely information technology doesn't set it apart. Consider yourself lucky if your IT department issues y'all i, or if you can afford to purchase ane yourself. Just you'd do well to weigh the benefits of the legendary ThinkPad features against competitors like the EliteBook x360 1030 G2, too.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/laptops/28581/lenovo-thinkpad-x380-yoga

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