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Lenovo Yoga 720
Price: R18 800 to R24 000 (depending on the specs)
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Sometimes all you want to do is touch your laptop screen to pause a video instead of the arduous three-second mission of navigating or using the keyboard. With the Lenovo Yoga 720 that task is only a touch (screen) away as the 2-in-1 laptop-cum-tablet will draw second looks from all those around you.
My first instinct when I saw the 720 was to detach the screen from the keyboard. Sadly that doesn’t happen, but what it does do is a complete flip on its axis, converting from a mountain pose to a handstand pose – yoga for the laptop.
What really impressed me, however, was not its flexibility, allowing you to place the keyboard and screen back-to-back to seamlessly convert the laptop into downward-facing dog and use it as a standing tablet, but Lenovo’s strength under the hood. Armed with an Intel Core i7 2.80GHz processor, 8GB RAM, an Nvidia GTX1050 graphics card as well as up to 1TB of memory, the marvel that is the 720 allows one to open as many tabs as you want and keep streaming video and audio content simultaneously. Oh, and don’t forget the performance-heavy games that are a breeze on this machine.
The display supports 4K viewing, which provided me with insane clarity as I trolled through YouTube’s 4K nature videos – I’ve never seen a bee look more spectacular. The screen is also not constrained, as the 7mm-thin bezels allow full viewing pleasure. Adding to the experience was the JBL stereo speakers optimised with Dolby audio, allowing me to forget that my external speaker even existed.
After 10 minutes I abandoned using the track pad altogether, but noticed that the responsiveness needed a bit of fine-tuning after I kept dragging the wrong things.
The battery life did not disappoint either, it lasted just over seven hours with a normal workday use. While leaving it powered on for the whole evening it lasted just over 10 hours.
Trying to power it up though was a bit of mission as the power button is located on the side, but if you’re using the fingerprint scanner (located near the track pad) then it shouldn’t be a problem.
Despite having two USB type-C ports, including a Thunderbolt port and an audio jack, the 720 didn’t come with an SD card reader. Disappointing, but in the age of the cloud who needs fragile memory cards?
The Lenovo Yoga 720 is a laptop (tabtop maybe?) that covers everything from work and gaming to streaming without breaking a sweat, and with a weight of a little over 1.3kg it is as flexible as its name suggests.
