LAS VEGAS, NV –– The era of the always-connected laptop is upon us. During CES 2020, Lenovo announced the newest addition to the company’s popular 2-in-1 lineup, the Lenovo Yoga 5G. Formerly known as Project Limitless, the laptop will be one of the first from Lenovo to feature 5G capability. Starting at $1,499, the convertible laptop will be available starting in spring 2020.
Lenovo Yoga 5G pricing and specs
When it starts shipping in spring 2020, the Yoga 5G will feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx 5G Compute Platform, 8GB of RAM, up to 512GB of storage and a Qualcomm Adreno 630 GPU.
Lenovo Yoga 5G design
This Yoga isn’t going to win any design awards. It’s not that the Yoga 5G is ugly. Quite the contrary, it’s actually quite handsome with its slate gray aluminum body. It’s just that the Yoga design could use an update or at least a new color palette. As the name suggests, the laptop has 360-degree hinges that allow the laptop to switch from traditional clamshell mode to a tablet effortlessly.
Taking a peek at the laptop’s interior and you’ll see more of that stately aluminum gracing the keyboard deck, a full-size keyboard and a decently sized touchpad.
Weighing 3 pounds and measuring 12.7 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches, the Yoga 5G is slightly lighter than the Asus ZenBook Flip 14 (3.3 pounds, 12.9 x 8.9 x 0.5 inches). However, it’s heavier than laptops like the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (2.9 pounds, 11.7 x 8.2 x 0.5 inches) and HP Elite Dragonfly (2.7 pounds, 12 x 7.8 x 0.6 inches).
Lenovo Yoga 5G security
The Yoga 5G has a fingerprint reader beneath the right side of the keyboard for an extra layer of security as well as an IR camera for facial recognition logins.
Lenovo Yoga 5G ports
The Lenovo Yoga 5G doesn’t have many ports offering only a pair of USB Type-C ports, a USB 3.1 Gen. 1 Type-A port, a nanoSIM slot and an audio jack.
Lenovo Yoga 5G display
The Yoga 5G’s 14-inch, 1920 x 1080 touchscreen, looked pretty bright and vivid during my brief demo. However, the room was a tad dim, so I definitely want to see how the panel shakes out with our colorimeter and screen brightness meter. Lenovo claims the screen will reach a maximum 400 nits which would top the Dragonfly (373 nits), but not the XPS 13 (516 nits).
The touchscreen is pen compatible in case you ever need to jot down a note or two.
Lenovo Yoga 5G keyboard
It’s not a ThinkPad keyboard, but I’ll take it. Lenovo has some of the best keyboards on the market and the Yoga 5G is a great example. The keys are nice and bouncy and I never felt like I was bottoming out.
Lenovo Yoga 5G battery life
Aside from 5G connectivity, Qualcomm's claim to fame with its chipset is a claim of 24-hour battery life. The company's making this bet due to the lower power consumption of its chips. During my long tech journalism career, I've yet to see a laptop last beyond 13 hours, but there's always a chance, slim as it may be.
Lenovo Yoga 5G connectivity
So what's so great about a 5G capable laptop anyways? Well, for starters, you'll get speeds 10 times faster than 4G LTE. That means whether you're downloading or uploading important documents or video or just want to download a movie before a flight, you'll get the task done in a much quicker fashion.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7
If you're not ready to make the leap to 5G and are looking to save a few dollars, Lenovo also announced a new pair of Yogas, the 14 and 15-inch Slim 7. Available sometime in April, both systems will start at $1,209. There’s also a 14-inch AMD version that starts at $849.
Clad in sleek aluminum, the laptops are available in two shades: Slate Grey and the eye-catching Orchid.
Some of the laptops’ key features are AI focused, including Lenovo’s Q-Control Intelligent Cooling feature, which relies on AI to optimize battery consumption with claims of 20% longer battery life. Lenovo Smart Assist allows you to transfer content from the laptop to a connected monitor with just a simple turn of your head while the Smart Player will play/pause content upon your approach/departure from in front of the display.
The laptops also offer Amazon Alexa functionality such as Announcement, which lets you broadcast your voice through any active Echo devices. You can also attach a Smart Light via dongle that lights up when you summon Alexa.
With the 14-inch version, you can get up to a 4K HDR display. For the 15-inch version, Lenovo is claiming the system gets a 30% battery boost for a time of 13 hours. You can also outfit it with an optional Nvidia GTX graphics.
Bottom Line
Lenovo’s Yoga 5G laptop is a good example of what we can expect from these Qualcomm-powered, always-connected laptops. Not only are you getting always-on connectivity, you’re getting the lightning-fast speeds of 5G. I’m not sure how the 8cx CPUs will hold up to the likes of Intel or how realistic that all-day battery life claim is. But the Yoga 5G is still a great start to the era of 5G.
As far as the Yoga Slim 7, Lenovo has packed each laptop with a host of cool AI and smart home-compatible features that add a lot of useful functionality to a lower-tier brand in the series. I’m eager to get my hands on both systems and give them a few real-world tests.
