Difference Between Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga and Toshiba Portege M930

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga vs Toshiba Portege M930 | Speed, Performance and Features Reviewed | Full Specs Compared
 

If you have been closely following our reviews, you would have understood that tablet PCs are taking the place of Laptops. While you can’t completely replace laptops by tablets, you can do a decent amount of work with them, and they offer more flexibility in mobility. Almost all of these tablets are powered by ARM based processors although some Intel based tablets were announced at the CES 2012. This obviously is going to impact the sales of Intel in an adverse way. There is an interesting study on the comeback strategies of Intel, but leaving that for another time, we would like to introduce one comeback strategy they have come up with. The family of Ultrabooks is defined by Intel as a high end subnotebook. In design, they promised to be of smaller size and reduced weight with a prolonged battery life compared to normal laptops. They basically use Intel’s low power CULV processors to yield the increase in battery life. Their specification on physical dimensions suggests we’ll be seeing laptop-tablet hybrids of thickness less than 21mm and weight less than 1.4kg. Intel also has declared that Ultrabooks would have a battery life of 5 to 8+ hours and a mainstream price range of $1000, although, we have seen the manufacturers struggling to stay inside the price range. They have allocated a $300 million fund for this initiative and we can be sure to see more Ultrabooks in the near future.

However, today we are going to talk about two Ultrabooks that were featured in the CES 2012. Although not explicitly defined, we were on the impression that these Ultrabooks were second generation as defined by Intel and uses CULV Ivy Bridge processors. These two tablets in question are from renowned vendors in the laptop industry, and we can only agree that they are bound to be great designs. Lenovo is the choice of almost all the computer professionals in the industry for a range of reasons. They offer better battery life, rigid designs and yet impressive performance, as well. It’s rare to find all of these in one package. On the other hand, Toshiba is also considered as a choice for a professional for the aforementioned reasons. So the two Ultrabooks we discuss today, Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga and Toshiba Portege M930, will have a tight competition with each other and let us look at them in detail first.

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga

This Laptop-Tablet hybrid will seem like a normal laptop for you at first. It opens up like a normal tablet and has a Chiclet keyboard with a large click pad and gives the impression of IdeaPad U300 series. The difference is that you can flip the screen 360o and make this laptop a complete tablet. It will seems hard to believe, but that’s how solid the design is, and yes, when you’re to use it as a tablet, the keyboard will be at the bottom, and Lenovo claims that the leather palm rest helps to protect the keyboard. It also feels comfortable on your wrists when you’re in the laptop mode. It has 13.3 inch screen that features a resolution of 1600 x 900 pixels and has a thickness of 17mm. The amazing thing about the display panel is that Lenovo has managed it to be an IPS panel with ten points of input. Thus, needless to say, it has wide viewing angles. It’s heavier than a normal tablet, yet lighter than a normal laptop, emphasizing the definition of Ultrabooks. Lenovo has indicated three modes of operation for IdeaPad Yoga, the laptop mode, the tent mode where you flip the screen about 270 to use the touchscreen with a stand and the tablet mode. We could tell that the hinge was well designed and showed good stability, which is promising.

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga should come with an Intel IvyBridge processor although we didn’t get any official confirmation on that fact. It is said that IdeaPad Yoga will have core i7 third generation processor, but we had no indication about the RAM. If our predictions are correct, IdeaPad will have 4GB+ of RAM to suit the configuration. Good news is that, IdeaPad Yoga will be powered by Windows 8, and the touch friendly Metro UI makes using the Ultrabook an enjoyable experience. It was well responsive, but alas, we will have till the release of Windows 8 to lay our hands on this. The graphics will be powered by Intel HD 3000 series. It is also to come with a Solid State Drive for faster operation times, and with all these hardware, Lenovo still promises a battery life of 8 hours +, which is awesome. Lenovo also says that it will offer this hybrid for $1100, but we are yet to see that day.

Toshiba Portege M930

This is also an Ultrabook that comes with a unique design. It has a completely redesigned hinge that makes the screen come closer to you and avoid the worrisome sliding over the keyboard. Although it may better be seen in a video demonstration, we’ll try to explain the mechanism. When you want it to be in Laptop configuration, the screen locks in a trough that keeps it from moving. There is a kind of stand to hold the screen intact, and you can rotate the screen around the stand and make it rest on top of the keyboard if you want to use it on tablet mode. We hope to bring a video demonstration soon, till then, hope the explanation suffice. Toshiba hasn’t announced this Ultrabook yet, but we were able to locate it in the Microsoft booth at the CES 2012. So we can’t guarantee that this would be a production model; nonetheless, it gave some decent performance and we are hoping Toshiba would release this model.

Portege M930 has 13.3 inch screen featuring a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, and it is a wide screen. It has decent viewing angles, and we are content with the resolution Portege offers. The touchscreen doesn’t respond to finger input, but we reckon Toshiba will fix it if they are to go to the production level. The inbuilt stylus works well and has a good responsiveness. It is said to have a Core i5 processor, probably Intel Ivy Bridge range and 4GB of RAM with a Solid State Drive of 256GB. All the specs are in line with the Ultrabook definitions, but Portege M930 is somewhat thicker and heavier. It is 27mm thick and weighs around 1.9kg, which quite doesn’t fit the range defined by Intel; nonetheless, Microsoft has identified this as an Ultrabook. The increase in size is to be blamed on the extra ports Toshiba has added to Portege, and we consider it may be a good tradeoff, but it sure depends on the way you use the device. The Graphics are powered by Intel HD 3000 series and gives a decent performance. We don’t have official information about the battery life nor the release date or price. But looking at the previous models, we reckon it will have a battery life of 6-7 hours or more and a price range of approximately $1000 because that’s how Ultrabooks are defined to be priced by Intel.

Conclusion

We have been comparing two Ultrabook designs that will be competing against each other soon enough in time to come. As we have discussed the reason for the Ultrabooks to exist in the market, we’ll discuss how these two hybrids comply with the requirements of Intel. Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga complies with almost all the standards except the pricing, which we are not sure of. It has an Ivy Bridge processor that comes with the second phase of Intel’s penetration plan, and it offers 30% increase in integrated Graphics performance and 20% increase in CPU performance than its predecessor Sandy Bridge. It complies with the size standards as well as the battery life standards of Intel. On the other hand, Toshiba Portege is excessively thick and bulk compared to Intel’s standards, but since Microsoft is willing to consider it as an Ultrabook, we’ll go along with that identification. Portege has Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM, whereas IdeaPad Yoga has Ivy Bridge Core i7 processor, which is better. Thus, we can assume Yoga to have better performance than Portege and even in terms of the display panel, Yoga excels. It has the IPS display panel and features a resolution of 1600 x 900 pixels, whereas Portege only features 1280 x 800 pixels resolution. We can gladly recommend the durability of both hinges used, although your preference would rule out one from the other when you make the final purchasing decision.

We are also satisfied about the battery life promises they have made, and we hope to get our hands on these devices to perform some tests to verify their claims. Finally, there is another factor to be considered. Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga runs on Windows 8, and the Metro style UI is just great for the touchscreen input. It also responds to the touch of the fingers while Toshiba Portege M930 only responds to the inbuilt stylus, although, the representative told us that Toshiba might include it when they upgrade the operating system to Windows 8. Till that happens, we can’t be sure about it, but Windows 8 Metro UI will surely look good on Portege M930, as well.