Microsoft Surface Pro 3 vs. Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga Comparison Smackdown By MobileTechReview

This is Lisa from mobile tech review, and it is Smackdown time again. This is one that many of you have asked for the new Surface Pro 3 here by Microsoft, the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga both had pens both have touchscreens we're gonna, look at him now so here it is by popular, and it really is very logical demand shall we say the comparison between the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga. This is not the yoga2pro or any of the other yoga's. This is the ThinkPad branded yoga model and the new Microsoft Surface Pro 3 here different, yet the same both are in the 12-inch class. This is a 12.5 inch. Full HD display uh-huh 12 inch display on the Surface Pro 3 running an even higher resolution, slightly different aspect ratio 3 by 2 versus the normal widescreen display, so that makes using an in portrait orientation a little more natural, which makes sense for saying that is a pure tablet.

This is a convertible right here, so yeah it looks like a laptop, but it converts it. Does that yoga thing you can use it as a tablet. By doing this, you can put it in tent mode and so on, and it weighs three and a half pounds. So it's a handful. If you want to use it as a pure tablet.

You're probably gonna rested on something and yes, the keyboard always faces out. It uses the lift and lock feature from Lenovo, so the keys do not move, it actually locks the keyboard, so you won't feel any jiggly wiggles going on here, but still something to consider so really. First and foremost, this is designed to be used as a laptop or in presentation mode and take it like so do that, for example, you can tent it. You know all sorts of little yoga like things there. You can do that with it.

If you want those are its primary purposes in life. Yes, it can be a tablet. And yes, it's nice for artists really great for artists, in fact, because that is that Wacom digital pen not quite stiff enough. Let's do a very light hand if you're going to be drawing or writing with it like this, and you lean your hand on here, which would be natural. That's kind of move them so Surface Pro 3 again even higher resolution display on this is a gorgeous display notice.

First thing: this is glossy the ThinkPad Yoga with the digitizer pen option, which is the only way that Lenovo sells it from the website you might find in some retailers would touch only but on the Lenovo website is pen plus touch anyway. It has. The yoga is a matte coating which I find really nice this one. It is glossy, so it's going to be doing that. Here's our removable detachable in fact optional, not included in the box keyboard and then what you have is a tablet that weighs just 1.76 pounds, and it has a nifty kickstand to learn everything about this. Of course, you should watch our video review, so you can, but you've got the kickstand, and one thing that is very nice for those who are artists is seen how the kickstand goes like that, so you can put it on the table, and it is stiff enough that you can rest your hand on it and do some drawings.

So that is pretty, pretty neat. Obviously, a lot less to carry around obviously more vulnerable to no protection. It's not a clamshell design. Here, the optional $130 type cover for a Surface Pro 3 will protect it, some not as much as being a clamshell, but if you're reasonably careful with your stuff, it's pretty good magnesium casing nice metal, very classy, gorgeous looking, certainly as a product, it just creates less I got a Best Buy. You always see people just flocking around these and staring at them, because they're pretty darn neat to look in the yoga, on the other hand, is all business.

If you like, the ThinkPad look, you'll think it looks really and if the otherwise it is your basic black, rectangle metal everywhere very strong as well. Link pads are known for their durability. This is a very durable product. Serious big, robust hinges right here, so strong, strong on both sides. A little more protection for the screen.

Obvious here are more than a little, but then again this weighs three and a half pounds versus 1.76 pounds. What's the most important difference, though, to me when you're going to be buying. This is how much time you spend typing Surface Pro 3, as you know, because you've watched our video review right. It has a pretty surprisingly good cover by the way, as you can see when you cover it, it puts it this like these are actual movable, click, keys, and they're backlit too, which is a pretty surprising and nifty thing. It's still a flexible kind of cover.

This is the most rigid one. Yet key travel, it's not awful. Considering what this is, but it's an okay typing experience. It's not a fantastic typing experience with the new design. Here you can see, there's a magnet actually on the surface.

That gives you some angle and some height. So it's no longer just a flat thing on the table. It helps a little. So it's not bad for typing and those who just need to bash on some emails, occasionally type a few things. Do social networking posts? It's fine for those of you who are content.

Creators of the word kind. Like me, I, write reviews all the time. If you're a coder, we're making typos really is not so cool. Is it're going to want something more like this? Of course, Lenovo ThinkPad keyboards are among the best, and this is an excellent keyboard, not quite as the same amount of key travel, maybe as some bigger thing pad models, but still really a very good. Also backlit, keyboard, lovely tactile feel the whole smile shape.

Keys. Think it's a wonderful typing experience and, of course, you get the more normal size track pants. Also, very good synaptic trackpad that Lenovo uses quite nice. The Surface Pro 3 one isn't bad either, but this one's better. So if you spend a lot of time writing papers, if your software developer writing a lot of code, if you write long form anything, this will make more sense but Surface Pro 3.

You can get an external Bluetooth keyboard. You could use the USB keyboard, but that's another thing to carry around. So that's a good solution at the desk if your smoker just needs to reference stuff, mostly on the go and do a little typing, and you're happy to do most you're typing, your desk, it can still work. You can use a bigger keyboard. Next thing is ports: now there are docks available, for both of these Lenovo's is a bit on the fancier side.

It's their new one, one link kind of connector here for the dock, two kinds of dock, so you can get it for those of you who again have more I need a full laptop kind of thing going on you're, going to probably want the thing pad, because we have well there's the charging connector there. We have USB 3.0 port headphone, jack, combo audio. On this side. We have another USB 3.0 port, so we've got two USB ports on this, or you point out micro, HDMI, built-in, with full-size SD card slot, and these are just your volume, controls, power, lock, orientation and the pen actually has a place to live on this now the drawbacks, a dinky little pen is quite thin, but at least you won't lose it surface. Pro 3 is, as ever as most all Windows tablets, pretty port constrained.

We have audio port right there. That's our volume control power button up top. We have one lonely, USB 3.0 port there we have a mini DisplayPort right there. So that's pretty cool if you need to drive higher than full HD resolution displays you can do that without having to worry. There are adapters that go from mini DisplayPort to HDMI, so you do have that there but few reports.

And yes, there is a micro SD card slot, not full-sized SD card, so storage speeds are gelling a little slower for micro SD cards, and it cost a bit more. But it's right hidden in here your micro SD card slot. So on ports it went camera notice, the camera on the back five megapixel camera front and back and the Lenovo being more of a laptop to the style. Convertible has just one front: HD webcam on it, so you get more going on here with the cameras. If that matters to you so have a pricing and configuration availability at launch Surface Pro 3 is available just with the UV core i5 CPU.

That's an Ultrabook CPU same as used in Ultrabooks like well. This thing pad yoga right here. There will be a core i3 and cornea 7 option as well. Pricing starts at 799, call it $800 for the Surface Pro 3, but uh-huh. That does not include this keyboard, so we're going to pick some Microsoft for that I will -.

It's really kind of an integral component that adds another 130 dollars. So you're talking about nine hundred and thirty dollars for the core i3, with only 64 gigs of storage and four gigs of ram, four gigs is as low as you can go with either of these the ThinkPad Yoga. You know, Lenovo is a little more of a moving target of pricing. Some retailers have very good pricing some charge. A lot.

Lenovo constantly has sales on their website, but as of today on their website in the U. S. $900 for the core i3 model, with four gigs of ram and a conventional 500 gigs spinning hard drive. Yes, this has a SATA drive band, a standard two and a half inch drive bay. First, the mSATA SSD that's used in our Surface Pro 3.

Here you can also get the yoga with an SSD drive, and you can obviously upgrade after mark it's a pretty easy thing to do. You just unscrew the screws on the bottom, there's a bunch of them, but they're pretty standard screws. You can take that bottom panel off. Furthermore, you can access everything in there, and you can upgrade your components. Furthermore, you can change the wireless card if you wanted to you, can put in an SSD or a bigger SSD or switch back to a conventional spinning, hard drive.

If you wanted to with our Surface Pro 3, you know the story with the Surface Pro line. Taking these things apart is just not impossible. It is really basically glued together inside there. So you're not going to be upgrading this yourself, most likely both are available either for our 8 gigs of ram that is soldered on board for both of these. So, regardless of whether you could get inside or not, you can't upgrade the RAM on either of these.

With both machines, like I said you can get Core i3 Core i5 core i7. You won't be able to get anything but the core i5 for a couple of months with the Surface Pro 3 according to Microsoft, but that will be available so Lenovo for upgrade ability and variety of configurations. It would win right there just because you can actually get it with different Wireless cause change. The wireless card, though the default Intel 70 to 60 AC card, is really top of the line. You can't go better than that right now.

They both have Bluetooth 4.0, as you start to configure the Lenovo up a little. This one here is the core i5, with 128 gig SSD 4 gigs of ram the digitizer pen full HD display that is around $1,100 or so, if you take the $9.99 Surface Pro 3, which is the same configuration basically and add on the keyboard you're. Looking at roughly the same pricing, these are both full windows, machine windows, 8.1 64-bit. That means you can run all your desktop applications like there's the bestow, which doesn't mean anything necessarily because windows RT has what looks like a desktop if you look, you can see. I have a W Photoshop installed.

Evernote all sorts of nice things that are desktop programs. The same is true for Surface Pro 3. It looks like a tablet feels like a tablet. It does. Everything in Ultrabook does, so you're on even ground there in terms of performance, they're, pretty similar Surface Pro sweet pulls ahead a little, because Microsoft really has a very clean OS there.

That is completely 100%, bloat, free, well ? and so a little little faster on benchmark. It's not a huge significant number, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. So how about the Pens? First we're going to talk about art programs, Painter, x3 or 13. However, you want to call it on both of these we're going to go with the same size image on these, so you can see how the slight difference in resolution effects. You got more space to work with them relative to the resolution slight difference.

Their pens are quite different on these that we're going to have a separate video just on all the different pen technologies, because I know that's gotten pretty confusing for some of you folks and used to be Surface Pro 3 service probe line use the Wacom digitizer. They have switched to intriguing and this kind of pen here, a slightly different look nice metal right here: I have the Wacom Bamboo, feel--it, stylus pen, runner. You can use whatever Wacom compatible pen. You want with a Wacom digitizer as long as it's meant to work with tablet PC, so this one's a little more ergonomic. That's a nice thing with intrigue.

Pens is really not third-party alternatives right now, but the Surface Pro 3 happens to be one of the nicer ones out there you get a little button and that launches OneNote and that actually uses Bluetooth to do it. So your average intrigue pen, which is just an active digitizer pen, it actually is Bluetooth in there just to do that, two buttons on it and with it the Wacom pens. It really depends on what you get which pen, but though the one that comes with it has a two button kind of thing going on and there's some that even have an eraser at the end and functions as an eraser. Now the difference in This is pressure, sensitivity, 256 levels with intrigue and 1,024 with Wacom, and also the pressure curve is make a difference too, and the pressure curves aren't tuned a bit better. There's also the whole wind tap thing.

Those are your digital art people know about that. Wind tab driver is for Wacom have been around for quite some time, and that means easy support for Adobe Photoshop, Core Painter, all those things but ensuring finally came out with some drivers thanks to Surface Pro 3, and now you get wind tab there too, but there is a difference in the drawing sensitivity. Show you here. First we're gonna, just sure you can get to see the nice line. I can go, get light, stuff, I can get heavy stuff, and it's a very nice gradient curve.

So, let's see what happens on our Surface Pro 3 first I have to press harder. The pressure curves aren't tuned the same. This program does have pressure curve tuning on it, but no matter how I've played with it. It's obvious that it's just not getting the curves. This is not too bad.

You just got to really work your technique, a little more here and I prefer to not have to think about something as simple as how much pressure and how carefully I'm using it is I just wanted to feel as much as an instrument of art as possible. The good thing here is: you got edge sensitivity, that's very accurate out to the edges, there's less parallax! The pointer is right under the tip of the pen, because there are different technologies. The active stuff is really going on inside the pen here, and this uses a quadruple a battery with our Wacom, the active stuff. The EMR panel is actually the one that's doing most of the work electrically speaking in the pen is actually passive here and the point at which it calibrates is a little set back in the pen. So you'll notice that more as you tip the panic and go off now, I calibrate every so often- and this is actually pretty good and spot-on.

Writing it also points to that Wacom so for art. I would pick this when it comes to note-taking they're, both excellent. In fact, some people might actually entry better because you do have a bit less parallax, where the line is that your writing is directly under your pen tip in terms of actual screen quality they're, both fairly bright displays they're. Both nice displays. Some people complained about image retention on the yoga, not an uncommon problem with some LG panels in that size and even some bigger ones.

Some MacBook Pros have that problem, but no image retention issues on the Surface Pro 3. My this is my personal yoga and I have not really had serious image retention pause, but you can see a little temporary ghosting if you leave it on the same thing, long enough say: 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and it goes away, but for those of you who are driven mad by that, keep that in mind the slightly higher resolution display is really lovely on the Surface Pro 3, the glare is not the lovely thing higher resolution you've got to use more windows scaling, certainly to make things viewable over there in terms of color gamut surface. Pro 3 gets it right where Surface Pro 2 is kind of middle-of-the-road in terms of supporting a wide color gamut around 50% of adobe RGB, which is what the yoga do they've moved it up to her closer to 75% of Adobe RGB. So for those you who are art people and really depend on color accuracy and wide color gamut that can make the different Surface Pro 3 would be the winner. So how about battery life battery on both of these guys is sealed inside with the ThinkPad Yoga.

If you really had to replace it say it started die of old age years down. You can unscrew the bottom and put in a new battery, but there's no release latch to pull it out. Obviously, it's really sealed and slide on surface here, because this guy is tight like a clam battery life on it's about the same, it's six and a half hours, so you have brightness set at 50%. You have Wi-Fi on and active you're doing mixed productivity tasks, maybe streaming a couple YouTube videos, while you're at it like watching our video about six and a half hours so yeah. That's it that's the drug! So there you have it two 12-inch class windows, 8.1 machines, a lot the same, but some things are very different as you've seen so. Hopefully, this Smackdown has helped.

You figure out what you want. The more pure tablet design the better keyboard. If you do a lot of content creation, things like that I'm Lisa from mobile tech review be sure to watch our video review of each of these products subscribe to our YouTube channel to.

Source : MobileTechReview