It’s not often that you find an affordable two-in-one with premium trappings, but Lenovo is offering just that with the Yoga 710. The 15-inch variant introduces Intel’s seventh-generation Kaby Lake CPUs boasting performance gains and a longer battery life. Add in the dedicated graphics, attractive display, and responsive keyboard and you have a well-balanced machine.

Read the full review to see why the Lenovo Yoga 710 has earned our Editors Choice award.

Lenovo Yoga 710 Build and Design

The 15-inch variant of the Lenovo Yoga 710 looks a lot like its smaller counterpartwith a simple clean aesthetic. The black charcoal magnesium-aluminum protective lid is curved along the edges with YOGA silver lettering along the top left corner and Lenovo lettering along the bottom right near the display hinge. The Yoga 710 features a 360-degree display hinge that allows the laptop to switch between clamshell and tablet modes with ease.  

Even though the Yoga 710 is Lenovo’s mid-tier option, it still has the look of a premium device with diamond cut edges running along the rim of the display and lining the outside of the deck. The touchpad and the fingerprint scanner also feature diamond cut edging. The silver slick edges contrast beautifully against the black chassis and help the otherwise simple design stand out.

Measuring 14.13 x 9.57 x 0.71-inches and weighing 4.2 pounds the offers solid portability for a 15.6-inch two-in-one. The Yoga 710 matches the HP Spectre x360 15t and is lighter than the 4.6 pound Dell Inspiron 15 7000. While the Yoga 710 is relatively light for a clamshell laptop, it’s worth noting that the device can feel a bit unwieldy as a tablet.

Lenovo Yoga 710 Ports

One area where the Lenovo Yoga 710 lags behind is in connectivity. The right side of the device features a power connector, SD card slot, and a headphone jack. The right side houses a pair of USB 3.0 ports, a micro-HDMI port, and a power button. If you’re planning on using multiple peripherals you’ll likely need to buy an adapter. The two USB ports are located close enough together that a bulky USB stick could obstruct the other port.

Lenovo Yoga 710 Keyboard and Touchpad

The Lenovo Yoga 710 features a Chiclet-style backlit keyboard. The black glossy keys are rounded along the edges and smooth to the touch. With 1.4mm key travel and solid activation, the Yoga offers a forceful tactile experience. Keys quickly snap back into place after being struck providing a steady rhythm, making it easy to type quickly and accurately.  The only downside to the keyboard is that the right shift key has been shrunk down to fit. The shortened shift key can be a bit disorienting at first. I found myself often accidentally hitting the up arrow key when first using the device.

Located below the space bar is a moderately sized touchpad. The touchpad is devoid of buttons, instead utilizing the bottom of the pad for left and right mouse clicks, as denoted by the small orange graphic. The black soft rubber pad allows for easy travel, affording excellent control and sensitivity. Equipped with Synaptics drivers the pad performs well reading swipes, clicks, and multi-finger gestures without delay.

Lenovo Yoga 710 Screen and Speakers

The Lenovo Yoga 710 features a 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS 10-point touch display. The bright colorful panel is great for viewing a video, editing images, or playing games. NBRwas impressed by how lush and detailed the foliage appeared in a gameplay trailer for Final Fantasy XV. With excellent color accuracy and saturation, the Yoga 710 provides an excellent viewing experience.

With a brightness of 322 nits the Lenovo Yoga 710 affords flexible viewing angles. Images hold up well past 70 degrees without any color loss or distortion. Unfortunately, the glossy screen is a bit sensitive to light. Direct or heavy lighting will cause noticeable reflections. Often the otherwise flexible viewing angles can be diminished by the screen’s reflective surface.

The Lenovo Yoga 710’s speakers are loud enough to easily fill a room with audio. The quality of the sound seems to be a bit of a mixed bag, though. The laptop did a masterful job of capturing the dueling guitar and violin combo in the classical piece Histoire du Tango – Nightclub 1960 by Duo Sonidos. The instruments rang clear and true throughout the entire piece. However, we had a completely different experience listening to Daniela Andrade’scover of the Pixies – Where is My Mind? Here husky mellow voice sounded a bit tiny and distorted. Dialog seems to translate a lot better than vocals, as  we didn’t have too much trouble with the speakers while watching Parks and Rec, but our overall experience was inconsistent.    

Lenovo Yoga 710 Performance

Armed with a 2.5GHz seventh generation Intel Core i5-7200U processor, Nvidia Geforce 940MX GPU, (with 2GB of DDR3L), Intel HD Graphics 520,  8GB of DDR4, and a 256GB SSD the Yoga 710 boasts well-rounded performance. Just like the flexible nature of the form factor, the Yoga 710 is a jack of all trades in terms of performance. Sure it doesn’t feature the same raw productivity power of a high-end enterprise laptop or the video performance of a gaming laptop, but for users that want to dip their toes into all arenas, the Yoga 710 is a great option.

The dedicated graphics are a nice touch and are what help propel the Yoga 710 as a potential all-around multimedia device. The Nvidia GeForce isn’t all that powerful as can be seen from the 3Dmark benchmarks, but it does pack considerably more oomph than your traditional integrated graphics. The card is perfect for those that want to do some more in-depth video editing or image work. The laptop is even capable of handling some less demanding game titles such as League of Legendsor Hearthstoneat lower graphical settings.

However, the real star for the Lenovo Yoga 710 is the new Kaby Lake seventh-generation processor. The new processor offers some modest gains over last year’s generation of CPUs in terms of performance, but where the new chips really shine is video. The new chips are designed to handle 4k and 360-degree video consumption without any issues, even making it easy to multitask while streaming high-resolution video. Unfortunately, there still isn’t as much 4K content as we’d like, but it’s certainly a feature that helps you future proof your device.

The Lenovo Yoga 710 review unit that NBR tested had the following specifications:

• Windows 10
• 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS 10-point Touch Display
• Intel Core i5-7200U 2.5GHz
• Intel HD Graphics 520
• Nvidia GeForce 940MX (2GB of DDR3L)
• 8GB of DDR4
• 256GB SSD
• Intel 8260ac
• Bluetooth 4.0
• Dimensions: 14.13 x 9.57 x 0.71-inches  
• Weight: 4.2 pounds
• Price: $850

Lenovo Yoga 710 Benchmarks

PCMark8 Home (Accelerated) measures overall system performance in Windows 8 for general activities from web browsing and video streaming to typing documents and playing games (higher scores mean better performance):

PCMark8 Work (Accelerated) measures overall system performance in Windows 8 for work-related productivity tasks (higher scores mean better performance):

3DMark Fire Strike is a newer benchmark measuring overall graphics card performance for visually demanding games(higher scores mean better performance):

3DMark 11 measures the overall gaming performance of the GPU (higher scores mean better performance):

CrystalDiskMark storage drive performance test:

Lenovo Yoga 710 Heat and Noise

It doesn’t come as a big surprise due to the lower power consumption of this device, that the Lenovo Yoga 710 runs quite cool. Even after hours of video playback the bottom of the chassis and the deck sat slightly above room temperature. The Yoga 710 is also nice and quiet, the only instances where the sound made noticeable noise was when we booted up a game of Hearthstone, and even then, it was nothing more than a faint hum.

Lenovo Yoga 710 Battery Life

To test battery life, we used Futuremark’s PowerMark benchmark in balanced mode. The test consists of a combination of automated web browsing, word processing, gaming and video playback workloads. The test is far more strenuous than typical web browsing alone, measuring the machine under a litany of scenarios to bettersimulate high-stress usage. With the test being far more demanding the scores are understandably lower than what you’ll experience just checking Facebook or watching Netflix.

PowerMark Balanced battery life test results listed in minutes (higher scores mean better life):

Perhaps the most impressive feature of the seventh generation Intel Core processor found in the Yoga 710 is it’s low power consumption, especially during video playback. The Lenovo Yoga 710 absolutely rocked our powermark test scoring an impressive 6 hours and 17 minutes before shutting off. Considering that our tests are more strenuous than typical use you can easily expect to get upwards of nine or more hours on a single charge. The battery even fairs well with continuous video streaming. While testing the device we had the Yoga 710 stream an entire season of Parks and Recwith battery left to spare.

Lenovo Yoga 710 Review Conclusion

It’s rare to get raw computing value out of a two-in-one, but the Lenovo Yoga 710 offers just that. The seventh generation Intel Core CPU and dedicated graphics offer great all-around performance with a strong focus on multimedia. The laptop boasts a beautiful screen, excellent battery life for a 15.6-inch laptop, has a comfortable responsive keyboard (save for the shrunken down shift key), and a clean pleasing aesthetic. It’s a fantastic all around laptop, add in the fact that the notebook sits well below $1,000 (currently listed at $850) and it easily surpasses most of its current competitors.

If you’re looking for a laptop that excels in one specific area then the Yoga 710 not be for you. However, if you’re looking for a device that can do a bit of everything, then the Yoga 710 is currently one of the better options on the market.

Pros:

• Well-rounded performance
• Comfortable keyboard
• Attractive display
• Strong battery life

Cons:

• Lack of ports
• Inconsistent sound quality