I have a few other quibbles as well: Although the Helix maintains the sub-0.75-inch thickness appropriate for an ultraportable, the machine is heavy for its display size, weighing a full 3.6 pounds with the keyboard and 1.8 pounds without it. This problem could be a deal-breaker for someone who needs to make presentations on the road. Even when I turned it all the way up, I could barely hear the voice of Skype callers, and music on YouTube videos was positively faint. You can also step up to a 180GB SSD, which is what we tested. The integrated microphone picked up my voice well, but the Helix’s audio is very disappointing. In any case, that base configuration comes with Windows 8 Home Premium, but you can upgrade to Pro for an extra 50 bucks. The integrated high-def webcam produced smooth-looking video on Skype calls, and its low-light technology worked well. ROBERT CARDIN Separate the Helix’s display from its keyboard, and you have a fully functional Windows 8 tablet. In our tests the touchscreen responded well to swipes. Separating the keyboard takes only a second or two and doesn’t require a reboot. For pointing, you get to choose among a responsive touchpad with multitouch support, a red eraserhead joystick button, and of course the digitizing touchscreen. The black soft-touch case feels good when you’re handling the tablet, and the keyboard boasts Lenovo’s signature, pleasing contours and snappy action. In usability, the Helix generally lives up to Lenovo’s reputation for well-built portables. Conventional touchscreen Windows 8 laptops are widely available for less than $1000. Our review unit, the least expensive of the available configurations on Lenovo’s website, carried a $1679 price tag ($1427 after an instant rebate) as of August 5, 2013. (WorldBench 8.1 consists of a suite of synthetic and real-world benchmarks, of which PCMark 7 is one element.)Īll this power and versatility doesn’t come cheap. The Helix also earned an outstanding PCMark 7 storage test score of 5308, one of the best results we’ve seen. The presence of the SSD played no small part in the Helix’s respectable Notebook WorldBench 8.1 score of 285, which was nearly three times better than that of our reference system (an Asus VivoBook S550CA, which augments its mechanical hard drive with a 24GB SSD cache). The Helix also boasts a 128GB solid-state drive, which boosts its performance on tasks involving data transfers between storage and memory (boot, return from sleep, and application launches, for example). ROBERT CARDIN Lenovo’s ThinkPad Helix is one of the best laptop/tablet hybrids we’ve seen so far. This 11.6-inch Windows 8 Pro touchscreen tablet can operate as such, dock to a razor-thin keyboard to become a dual-battery notebook PC, and then flip with acrobatic ease to become a desktop presenter. Although an option when ordering our Yoga 13, we opted to proceed without Microsoft Office 2010 being factory-installed.Lenovo’s ThinkPad Helix is nothing if not versatile. Lenovo also tosses in its own Cloud Storage solution (powered by SugarSync) and its well-balanced Lenovo Support utility. Other applications automatically bundled with the system include Evernote, music streaming, and Intel’s AppUp gateway. Some of the usual suspects are pre-installed at the factory, and include McAfee’s Security Advisor, eBay, and Skype. Unfortunately, the installation is not entirely pristine. Overall, Lenovo keeps the third-party bloatware to a minimum on the Yoga 13. USB 3.0, USB 2.0, Headphone/Mic Combo Jack, HDMI v1.4aġ3.1" (Width) x 8.9" (Depth) x 0.67" (Height)ġ Year with Extension Options (up to 3 Years) Lenovo Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n + Bluetooth v4.0 Intel Core i7-3517U (Ivy Bridge), 2C/4T, 1.9 GHz Base Clock Rate, 3 GHz Max.
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