Primarily a PC: IdeaPad Yoga
Sometimes
you really need a full laptop keyboard, but you'd like to couple it with a
Windows 8 touch experience. And, occasionally, you may need to use your system
as a pure tablet but you don't anticipate that being the machine's primary use.
If any of this resonates with your personal needs, consider Lenovo's
IdeaPad Yoga. It's an excellent 13.3-inch Ultrabook that includes a multitouch,
capacitive touchscreen for all the cool new gestures built into Windows 8.
The
Yoga has what it takes to be a solid ultraportable laptop. The keyboard is
excellent for touch typists. The battery life approaches 6 hours. The sound
quality of the speakers is surprisingly good. And it weighs less than 3.5
pounds.
However,
it's the display that really sets the Yoga apart. It's a full 1600 by 900
pixels, offering a good balance in pixel density between 1366 by 768 and 1080p
(or 1920 by 1080, by any other name). The panel rotates 180 degrees, allowing
the Yoga to be used as a full tablet (albeit with its keyboard exposed) or in
the "tent mode," where you can use it to give presentations or easily
share content.
The business traveler's
hybrid: ThinkPad Twist
Road
warriors need work machines that are lightweight, rugged and reliable. Lenovo
has long promised these qualities in the ThinkPad, a laptop line that was first
conceived by IBM in 1992, and has been targeted at business users ever
since. And now we have the ThinkPad Twist, which brings Windows 8
touch gestures and a clever hybrid design to a laptop legacy that's always been
a bit buttoned-up and stodgy.
As with
most ThinkPads, the Twist is a tad heavier than a consumer-grade laptop. And at
3.5 pounds, the Twist even with its 12.5-inch, 1366 by 768 display is a bit
heavier than Lenovo's IdeaPad Yoga, which has a larger, higher-resolution
screen. But what's nifty about the Twist's display is its hinge design, which
lets this hybrid engage a tablet mode while still keeping the machine's
keyboard protected. This makes the Twist more robust in tablet mode than the
Yoga, whose keyboard remains exposed.
The
base-model Twist ships with a 500GB hard drive and a 24GB caching SSD. Working
together, the two drives deliver speedy startup times and copius storage. Lenovo
does offer one model with a traditional SSD intended for storage, but it's a
fairly scant 128GB. This SSD option, however small, will likely play well in
larger businesses, where IT departments tend to lock down which applications
can be installed.
Overall,
the Twist brings the ruggedness of the ThinkPad line with some of the most
usable features of Windows 8 tablets. The only significant omission is
a 3G/4G mobile broadband option, which would make the Twist a more
attractive hybrid for frequent travelers. Nevertheless, the Lenovo Twist
is compact and reasonably light, which should allow it to travel well.
Almost a tablet: Sony
Duo 11
The Sony Duo 11 looks like a tablet most of the time.
When you carry it around in its folded state, a seam conceals a sliding keyboard
hidden underneath the bottom of the display. It's the laptop version of those
old-school slider phones, complete with a compact, Chiclet-style keyboard.
Make no
mistake: Touch typists will not like the keyboard on the Duo 11. Really, the
most postiive thing I can say about the keyboard is that it's functional,
offers tactile feedback, and is a little easier to use than an on-screen
keyboard. For the most part, however, the keyboard is cramped and
uncomfortable. Luckily, the sliding hinge seems durable enough. And given that
that the Duo 11 will likely be used more in tablet mode than laptop mode, the
slider bit works pretty well.
The
entire affair weighs 2 pounds, 13 ounces under 3 pounds, in other words. The
11.6-inch screen is an IPS display offering full HD (1080p) resolution. Sony
also includes an N-trig stylus that supports 256 pressure levels, making it a
useful adjunct for artistically inclined users. If what you need is a tablet
for touch-sensitive art applications, the Duo 11 bears closer scrutiny.
PC performance in a
tablet design: Acer Iconia W700
In the Iconia W700, Acer crams an Ultrabook
into a relatively thin tablet. No one will mistake this device for an iPad or
Microsoft's Surface RT, but in weight and thickness, it's pretty close to what
Microsoft's Surface Pro will be. It's also 2.1 pounds; while that's
significantly lighter than the Sony Duo 11, it still means that lugging it
around propped on your forearm (as many tablet users do) may get tiring.
The
tradeoff for the weight is robust, PC-like performance and features, including
USB 3.0 and mini-HDMI video output. As with most tablets, it's got both
forward-facing and rear-facing cameras.
As with
Sony's Duo 11, the Iconia includes a full HD, 1920-by-1080 display. This
delivers gorgeous-looking images and text, but it's also problematic for touch
use when running desktop applications. It's simply difficult to put one's
finger on desktop buttons and window bars that render so small. While Acer
bundles a Bluetooth keyboard, the only pointing device is the touch interface
itself no mouse is included, and the keyboard lacks a trackpad. The W700 is
really the purest, most recent incarnation of Bill Gates' vision of the Tablet
PC.
But the
real problem lies with the overall size, bulk, and weight. An 11.6-inch tablet,
particularly with a 16:9 aspect ratio, will always be a little awkward to hold
and use in landscape mode. Portrait mode is a little more usable, but often
won't accommodate documents at their full width.
Nonetheless,
despite all these caveats, if you're looking for a pure tablet that offers
PC-like performance, the W700 delivers. It's a nice product, but we expect the
Microsoft Surface with Windows 8 Pro to eclipse the W700 early next year.
The pure tablet:
Microsoft Surface RT
The Surface RT is Microsoft's bid for the tablet
space currently owned by Apple's iPad. Sure, Android tablets may cost a little
less and aspire to the same market, but none have been able to come close to
the iPad in terms of ease-of-use and user adoption.
While
the aspect ratio is more widescreen than Apple's, the 10.6-inch display seems a
little more usable than the slightly unbalanced, 11.6-inch displays that
dominate the Windows 8 tablet market. Windows RT is fast and responsive on the
ARM-based, Nvidia Tegra processor. The Surface's 1366-by-768 resolution doesn't
match the beauty of Apple's iPad Retina display, but most users probably won't
notice.
In the
Surface RT, Microsoft has introduced some clever touches, such as a built-in
kickstand and the optional Type Cover, which integrates a flat, tactile-free,
but extremely thin keyboard. The company also bundles a reduced version of
Microsoft Office, but using those Office apps kicks you into desktop mode,
which feels very weird on a device that's really meant to be a pure tablet. On
the Surface RT, the Windows Start Screen is the native interface, and seems
capable and usable.
