Lenovo is one of the popular laptop brands. They have a wide offering of laptops right from basic models, to gaming ones to convertibles. Lenovo’s Yoga series has a good mix of basic to high-end laptops that includes series such as the Yoga 300, Yoga 500, Yoga 700 and the Yoga 900. All of these are well-known for their design, aesthetics and performance. The Lenovo Yoga 510 is a slightly updated laptop than its predecessor, the Yoga 500. The Yoga 510 is a touchscreen laptop with a 360-degree hinge form design. It can be used as a laptop and a tablet as well. Priced at Rs. 49,290*, the Yoga 510 is available in two colour variants – ebony black and pearl white. Armed with a good design and hardware, we test the performance and find out what makes the Yoga 510 different from the rest.
Highlights
14-inch Full HD (1920×1080) touchscreen display
Intel Core i3-7100U processor (7th Generation)
Storage: 1TB hard drive
RAM: 4GB
Rapid charging: 100% battery in 2.5 hours
Form factor: 360-degree hinge feature
Design and Build
The Lenovo Yoga 510 has a stylish and elegant look. The laptop which we tested is the ebony black variant. The curve edges and polished corners make the laptop look slim. It weighs 1.75kg and that’s not very heavy. You don’t really need a large bulky bag to carry this laptop. This make it ideal for frequent travellers. The body is made up of a plastic material, which is solid and sturdy with a matte finish all over. There is a YOGA label engraved on the outer top corner of the lid.
The Yoga 510 comes with a touchscreen display that flips around 360 degrees. You can switch between a laptop, tent, stand and a tablet mode. Touchscreen is smooth and accurate. It is sad to see a 14-inch screen surrounded by a thick bezel covering more than an inch of the display. Also, the screen is reflective and is difficult to use it under bright lights. The most important feature of a convertible laptop is its hinge. It supports the screen and the keyboard. This hinge on the Yoga 510 is strong and flexible. You don’t have to apply much pressure to rotate the screen. Although when you push the screen back more than 90 degrees, we noticed that the hinge loosens up quite a bit. There is a web camera placed on the top for video calling.
Most of the convertible laptops have power button on the sides, for easy access. The Yoga 510 has it on the right side adjacent to two USB ports. We ended up pressing it accidently while holding or lifting up the laptop. The keyboard layout of the Lenovo Yoga 510 is good for people who like typing. The keys are large, smooth and responsive. The keyboard is backlit which makes it good for typing in the dark. The numeric keypad is absent here, which is manageable in a convertible laptop. The touchpad is wide and smooth. The left and right buttons on the touchpad are both integrated and are separated by a thin red line.
The Yoga 510 lacks synthetic strips typically seen on convertibles meant to protect the screen from the keyboard. There is an air vent and two speaker grills at the back.
7.0/10
Features
The Lenovo Yoga 510 is powered by a 7th generation Intel Core i3- 7100U along with 4GB of RAM. This should be good enough to perform most everyday tasks. The laptop is equipped with a 1TB hard drive, which should be ample storage and you won’t need external hard drives anytime soon. You get this storage option on most of the laptops today, so there’s nothing extra-ordinary about it. The laptop runs an integrated Intel HD Graphics 620 solution. This is not the high-end one, but should run some basic games and graphic-intensive tasks easily.
The important feature of the Yoga 510 is its 360 degree hinge feature. It is adaptable in four different modes – laptop, stand, tent or tablet. For example, when you are working at home, you can use like a conventional laptop. At work when you need to present something, you can use it in a stand mode or a tent mode. With addition to this, your kids can also use it for playing games or for drawing by using it like a tablet.
The 14-inch touchscreen display has a 1920 x 1080 (Full HD) resolution. The screen comes with 10 touch point supports. Using a touchscreen is good for web browsing, watching movies, reading, playing games, etc. Also, there is a web camera that lets you shoot at 720p. This is useful when you make a Skype call to your friends or family. The two stereo speakers are branded as Harman. We will check them out a bit later while testing its audio performance.
The Lenovo Yoga 510 offers both wired and wireless connectivity options. They are more or less the same as most traditional laptops. Out of the three USB ports, two are USB 3.0 that helps deliver faster read write speeds. There is an HDMI port to connect the laptop to TVs or gaming consoles. In terms of wireless connectivity options, the laptop supports Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11ac. The Lenovo Yoga 510 is equipped with a non-removable battery which Lenovo claims should last up to 8.5 hours. Lenovo also claims its Rapid Recharge technology can charge your laptop to 100 per cent in 2.5 hours, which is 40 per cent faster than a standard laptop.
For connectivity, there is one USB port, headphone jack and a SD card reader on the left side and on the right side, there are two USB ports, one HDMI port and a LAN port.
7.0/10
We ran a couple of benchmarks to test the performance of the Lenovo Yoga 510. The 3DMark benchmark used to test the graphics performance gave a score of 1339. We also ran the Street Fighter gaming benchmark and it recorded a score of 9968. Both the gaming benchmarks earned pretty average scores. This should help run basic graphics related tasks easily. Cinebench is another such benchmark that puts load on the processor and graphics card. It renders a 3D model as part of the test. The CPU test gave a score of 256cb while the OpenGL score (for graphics solutions) was 31.69. This is a decent score for a convertible laptop.
The boot up time of the Yoga 510 was about 21 seconds, which is good. We ran a Chrome browser with multiple tabs running Facebook, YouTube, Pushbullet, Reliance Digital website and some others. We had no issues using the touchscreen while browsing – the performance was smooth and accurate. Switching between the tabs had some lag. Also, opening and closing of apps took a second or two, not as snappy as some of the more powerful laptops.
We viewed some Full HD photos and found the colours were bright and images appeared sharp. We also played some Full HD videos on YouTube and they ran very smoothly without any lag or stuttering. One thing that didn’t impress us was the sound quality. The speakers weren’t very loud or clear. We cranked up the volume to the highest but it still wasn’t loud. The laptop speakers get covered when you are using the laptop on your lap. If you are going to use this laptop for watching movies or listening to music, you might need to use a pair of headphones or a good speaker.
The Lenovo Yoga 510 comes with a non-removable battery. Lenovo claims that the laptop battery lasts up to 8 hours on a single charge. While testing the laptop, we played games, used some productivity software such as Microsoft, Google Drive, etc. We noticed that on continues usage, the battery lasted for around 3 hours on a single charge.
6.5/10
Verdict
Convertible laptops are becoming popular and are usually meant for home or office use. Based on the performance scores by the Lenovo Yoga 510, we recommend this laptop for everyday use. It is good for running some productivity software, playing basic games. The touchscreen is smooth and accurate and that works really well with all kinds of applications. The 360 degree hinge feature makes the Yoga 510 great for watching movies at home or while presenting at office. The only thing, Lenovo could have bettered is the sound quality. This is still manageable if you are not a movie or music enthusiast who likes their laptop loud!
*Prices are subject to change. Kindly refer to the official site for latest prices and details.
7.0/10
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I have loved my Lenovo Yoga 510 i3 as it was so useful and able to use in a variety of ways. Currently very disappointed however as the rotation and curser no longer work. I have followed all advice from Lenovo support and have even done a full factory reset. Curser returned briefly but has now gone again, it never restored the rotation. Typically, it is just out of warrenty as it is only guarunteed for one year and bought it in Dec 16, you would have thought these devices woul last longer than 18 mths. There disappointed with quality of product.