Last year's Yoga 3 Pro made some big steps in design, introducing a new style of hinge, nearly universally describes as the "watchband" hinge, with hundreds of individual moving parts coming together for a slimmer, more flexible design. But that otherwise excellent system was held back by a reliance on Intel's then-new Core M processor, intended for slim, premium-price laptops and hybrids. In practice, the Core M gave the Yoga 3 Pro neither the performance nor battery life we expected.
Now Lenovo's high-end Yoga has been rebranded as the Yoga 900, and it keeps the watchband hinge and overall design (with a few tweaks), but moves up to Intel's new sixth-generation Core i5 and Core i7 processors, which we expect will offer much more mainstream performance and battery life.
We've already seen Core i5/Core i7 processors in a few incredibly slim and light systems, such as the Lenovo/NEC LaVie series, to excellent effect. Compared to last year's Yoga 3 Pro, the new Yoga 900 is a hair bigger at 14.9mm thick and 2.8 pounds, but it still feels very portable (the upcoming Surface Book from Microsoft weighs about 3.4 pounds). Lenovo says this the thinnest Core i-series convertible ever.
Besides the new Skylake-generation processors, the Yoga 900 also adds a higher-capacity battery. It has the same 3,200x1,800 13.3-inch display resolution as last year, and is still available in orange, silver and champagne gold.
The Lenovo Yoga 900 will be available from Best Buy and Lenovo's website starting October 19, from $1,199 in the US. International price and availability details are not yet available.