There are two Ultrabooks in the wings that get more search hits than any other Ultrabook on the Ultrabooknews website at the moment – the Lenovo Thinkpad Helix and the Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 11S. The 11S gets a few more promotional videos today so at least we know it’s still coming, but when, at what price, what battery life and what performance. There’s so much unknown at the moment so let’s take a closer look.
Latest specifications, an image set, videos and comment on the Lenovo 11S is always available in our product database.
Let’s tackle a few of those questions. Firstly, price. Lenovo are being very price competitive with their Thinkpad range of Ultrabooks and convertibles and the 11S appears, with its smaller build and lower-power CPUs, to be a product built for more of the same competitiveness. The battery capacity is unknown but it is likely to be less than the Yoga 13 thus reducing costs further. Lenovo have let slip a target price of $799 but I’ll take a stab at the Core i3-3229Y version being available for $749 putting it below the Core i3 Yoga 13 and the Windows RT Yoga 11 and more competitive with some of the deals and offers that are available now. FOr an SSD-based Ultrabook Convertible that will be very competitive.
On battery life you’ve got two things to consider. 1) It’s using a down-clocked range of CPUs 2) There’s a smaller screen. Although the battery capacity is likely to be in the region of 40Wh, battery life could be 5hrs under normal use. Lenovo are claiming 6hrs in one of their promotional videos so that matches well.
As for when, the last we heard was June but that seems late. Lenovo are still saying it’s “Coming in May 2013.” [link] Computex is around the corner but let’s be honest about this, new Haswell Ultrabooks aren’t going to be flowing into the market immediately. Our 2013 Ultrabook timeline states that you’ll see staged-availability in July with a ramp-up of more models in August. It won’t be until October until we see a wide range of options and some competitive street pricing. If you’re looking for a smaller, lighter, good-value Ultrabook convertible with what is very likely to be a good keyboard, the Lenovo 11S should really be on your list.
8 Lenovo Yoga 11S videos are currently available on our Lenovo Yoga 11S product page which is being updated regularly.
Would you recommend this for editing audio and video (15 to 20 minute vids) power wise? Or should I go for a core i5 or i7? I don’t mind the small screen, I’m just concerned with power. If not, what would you recommend in this range of portability?
If the SSD is fast and the GPU is not down-clocked too much then for 720p it will be fine – much the same performance as the first generation Ultrabooks which I still use for 720p editing occasionally. (I use Powerdirector which has good support for the Intel video features.)
You can get his with up to an i7 processor, although its a ULV i7 dual core, no quad cores here. It should still have enough processing power for video editing, albeit the 1366×768 resolution needs to be abolished from anything but the lowest end PCs. This isn’t to be confused with the yoga 11 which is running an ARM CPU… this is the 11s which has intel i series processors.
There’s an option to add a 1600×900 resolution, and it probably costs $50 or so.
Even then, its a very good price for the Yoga 11S. It’s probably one of the most appealing devices out there now. The Dell XPS 12 was good hardware but the shoddy software and tech support makes it not a contender. There’s a good reason why Lenovo is a top tier PC vendor.
That’s a nice option. A hope they add 5ghz wifi support though. The yoga 13 is only 2.4 Realtek which isn’t great for public wifi.
I realy like the 11″ Yoga formfactor. Hopefully Lenovo will release a next version with a 1080p display, Haswell processor and a +8 hour battery in the near future: That will be my next! :)
In that promo video, at 0:20 and 0:22, it seems like a skype popup in the startscreen… strange.. ;)
I agree this 11S looks like the hot ticket for me. I may pick one up but sure wish it had the new Haswell processor and 8+ hours of battery life as you indicated you’d like too.
I’ve liked the Lenovo Yoga design from the start, but the 13 was a little large for me. This 11S is very attractive and in my opinion the best thing out there for a Windows 8 convertible.
Good that Lenovo includes an SD slot. For me that is a must.
Im hopelessly holding my breath for a digitizer to be an option.