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Lenovo Yoga 530 Review

8.5/10
8.0/10
8.0/10



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Convertibles and detachable laptops are slowly turning into our preferences. We don’t really need bulky bags anymore to carry these laptops because they are thin, lightweight and are easy to carry. Lenovo has launched some premium offerings crafted with thoughtful designs, latest hardware and features. Lenovo’s Yoga series of laptops include basic as well as premium models. They are categorized into series –Yoga 300, Yoga 500, Yoga 700 and the Yoga 900. We had earlier reviewed the Lenovo Yoga 510, priced at Rs. 49,290*. The Yoga 530 and the Yoga 730 are some of the newer additions. We got a chance to test and review the Lenovo Yoga 530, a 14-inch touchscreen laptop packed with an 8th generation Intel Core i5 8250U processor, NVIDIA GeForce MX130 graphic solution, a 512 GB solid-state drive, Active Pen support and more. All of these are expected, since you pay around Rs. 87,199*. Now let’s check it out to see how well it actually performs.

Design and Build

The design of the Lenovo Yoga 530 is different from the majority of laptops, but there is nothing extraordinary from the outgoing Yoga model. The Yoga 530 features nearly the same design. It has the same curvy and polished edges, with a textured plastic on the top. It is tough and sturdy. The laptop we reviewed was a grey variant that Lenovo calls, Mineral Grey. There are two other colour options available – Onyx Black and Liquid Blue. The word “YOGA” is engraved on the right-top corner of the lid. On lifting the lid, there is a neatly fitted keyboard with a brushed metal finish surrounding it. This makes the laptop look premium.

There is a backlit keyboard which is smooth for typing. There is no numeric pad on the keyboard. The screen is connected to the base using two, small, flexible hinges. They are strong and can help fold the laptop into four modes – laptop, tablet, stand and tent mode. The Yoga 530 weighs 1.6 kg, which is a bit heavy to use as a tablet. The display of the Yoga 530 is surrounded by a thin bezel on three sides, but has a larger lower bezel. Like the other Yoga models, the screen on this laptop is also reflective. Using it under very bright lights can be difficult. The track pad is large and wide. It doesn’t have physical left and right keys, or a separator line. Before we got used to it, we kept clicking the right key, when we intended to click on the left.

 

There is a fingerprint sensor just below the keyboard, on the right. It can be used for unlocking the laptop and for making online payments. As far as connectivity ports go, the laptop houses one HDMI, two USB ports, one USB Type-C port, headphone jack and a multimedia card reader. All these ports are common on most laptops these days. On the back, there are two heat vents. One occupies the space between the two hinges, whereas the other is on the back. The speaker grills are also on the back, slightly facing in an upward direction on both sides.

The main highlight of the Lenovo Yoga 530 is its Active Pen stylus. Lenovo claims to offer pen-on-paper experience for those who like to scribble, draw or doodle on the screen for fun. The stylus looks similar to any other ball-point pen. The Active Pen has two clickable buttons on it, for left and right clicking. You can open the top of the pen to insert a single AAAA battery to keep the stylus running.


8.0/10

Features

The Lenovo Yoga 530 should offer a noticeable performance boost with the 8th generation Intel Core i5- 8250U processor. The laptop also has a mix of integrated Intel HD Graphics 620 and NVIDIA GeForce MX 130 graphics card, for handling graphic-intensive tasks. In addition, the Yoga 530 is also set up with a 512 GB of solid-state drive and 8GB of RAM. This is a massive capacity SSD at the price at which it is available. This means you get space, as well as great performance. Lenovo’s Yoga series of laptops are known for their 360-degree hinge feature. Even the Yoga 530 can be used in a standard laptop form, in a tablet mode or in any way you’d like to.

The laptop has 14-inch display sporting a resolution of 1920 x 1080 (Full HD). The touch screen is smooth and accurate. It is useful especially when you are using this laptop in a tablet mode, for browsing the internet, watching movies and reading. You can also choose to use the Active Pen bundled with the laptop for doodling, sketching, managing notes and more. The viewing angles of the laptop are not too great. Since the screen is reflective, it can appear dull under bright lighting.

The Yoga 530 has stereo speakers, which Lenovo claims will offer surround sound experience since it features the Harman branding. We will discuss this a little later in the performance section. The Yoga 530 has a non-removal battery that should last up to 10 hours on a single charge. Another interesting thing is that the Yoga 530 comes with Windows 10 and Microsoft Office out-of-the-box. So, if you already have a subscription plan for Microsoft Office, you just need to enter your credentials and start using it. The Yoga 530 features a 720p HD camera for video calling through Skype or any other video calling software of your choice.

The Yoga 530 supports both wired and wireless connectivity. There are two USB 3.0 ports for faster data transfer, one USB Type-C for connecting a smartphone housing the same Type-C port. That’s not all. You can even choose to connect the Yoga 530 to the TV through an HDMI port. In terms of wireless connectivity, it supports the standard Bluetooth 4.1 and Wi-Fi 802.11 ac. 


8.5/10

Performance


The Yoga 530 has everything you need in a convertible laptop. We had a good experience using this laptop. The first thing we tested was an Active Pen stylus. Using it for scribbling and doodling on a big 14-inch full HD screen was fun. The Active Pen was very smooth on the screen. It supports 2048 levels of pressure, giving you the same pen and paper experience. We then started testing the performance of the Yoga 530 by running different benchmarks on it. The Street Fighter IV is a gaming benchmark based on the popular gaming title by Capcom. It earned a score of 13,955 with an average frame rate of 125.58 fps, at full HD resolution. These scores showcase the decent overall gaming performance of the Yoga 530. Cinebench is another benchmark that puts stress on both, CPU and GPU. The CPU test runs a short racing game, which earned 513 cb while the OpenGL score which renders a 3D object was 73.77 fps. This score is great for a convertible laptop.

The boot time of the Yoga 530 was really impressive, thanks to that insanely good solid-state storage. It took just 6 seconds to shut-down, while the start-up times were 8 seconds. Even the fingerprint unlock was incredibly fast and accurate. To check the read and write scores of the 512GB solid-state storage, we ran CrystalDiskMark. In the sequential data transfer, the Yoga 530 managed to record extra-ordinary read speeds of 1306 MB/s and write speeds of 1238 MB/s. This is rarely seen. Hard drive based laptops performance at a tenth of this kind of performance.

We had 50 tabs opened in Chrome with different websites loaded on each. There wasn’t any problem while switching between the tabs or while opening new folders or tabs. Even, multi-tasking was not a problem at all. There was smooth transition when switching between different applications. To check the audio and video quality, we played some full HD video clips and some from YouTube. The colours were vibrant, but the sound wasn’t that great. The sole reason is the speaker placement. Both the speakers get covered up when using the laptop on your lap.

For a real gaming experience, we tried playing Fortnite and Asphalt 9: Legends on the Yoga 530. It wasn’t as per our expectation. The performance did not match the performance we saw in the slightly older Street Fighter benchmark. Also, there was constant lag and stuttering while playing Fortnite on lowest settings as well. All these were done with the laptop set on high performance mode. We noticed that the non-removable battery on the Yoga 530 was able to power it for around 4 to 5 hours with casual usage that included a mix of browsing, gaming, transferring data, etc. We also ran the Battery Eater Pro benchmark on the Yoga 530. This tool runs a 3D model on the screen, putting a constant load on the laptop’s battery. The Yoga 530 was able to last for roughly an hour and a half.


8.0/10

Verdict

Our experience of reviewing the Yoga 530 was good. It has a 360-degree hinge feature, which can let you use the laptop in a standard mode, tablet, tent or even in a stand mode. The Yoga 530 can handle most tasks such as running productivity software, reading ebooks, watching movies, and browsing. The battery life is pretty standard for a laptop that comes with a discrete graphics solution. The touchscreen of the laptop is really very good. Using an Active Pen was a lot of fun. It helps in taking notes, drawing and sketching. It is smooth and accurate. Some minor complaints we have are to do with the sound quality. It might be a downer for movie, music lovers and gamers. All things considered, we recommend this laptop for those who are travelling, want a mix of work and fun.


8.0/10