In spite of the fact that we’ve taken a step down from last month’s model’s Core i7-7600U to the Core i5-7200U, it will be interesting to see how real-world performance differs between the two models considering that there was already a small drop in sustained performance in play in the previous model (as detected in our Cinebench R15 loop test). To summarize what we found in our testing of that unit, repeated runs of Cinebench R15 multi-CPU resulted in fluctuating results between 370 (initially) all the way down to 342, with scores eventually leveling out around the 355 mark. In realistic terms, that’s around a 4 percent performance drop over the long term on average.

If our synthetic benchmarks are any indication, however, the answer is likely that there are few surprises with the Core i5-7200U: even despite the minor turbo frequency constraints we experienced with the i7 unit, its performance is clearly and consistently above that of the Core i5 model, the latter which can barely come within 90% of the multi-core performance of the i7. Still, however, the Core i5-7200U does have one significant advantage on its side: its performance in our tests was stable and unyielding. We witnessed absolutely no performance drop, with scores averaging 321 over a long period of repeated testing. Overall, this means that the actual real-world multi-core performance difference between the Core i7-7600U and Core i5-7200U ThinkPad X1 Yoga models, as tested, is likely close to 9%, give or take a little (versus what would normally be a margin of around 13% if performance was ideal and stable on the Core i7 model).

Regardless of all this nitpicking, neither of these processors is a slouch, and in the world of business computing, both would likely be perfectly adequate for just about any task. Rarely in general use is the CPU the prevailing bottleneck these days, so although this is an interesting analysis, we wouldn’t concern ourselves too heavily over the discrepancies in processor performance between these two configurations.

Our synthetic system performance benchmarks offer a solid endorsement of the ThinkPad X1 Yoga’s capabilities. Processor differences notwithstanding, the only other major contributing factor to application performance discrepancies is likely the choice of storage drive—but we’ll cover that in more detail in a moment. Scores of 4687 and 4599 in PCMark 8 Work and Home Accelerated respectively are very good results overall. In real terms, they’re just 4% and 10% below that of the i7/1 TB SSD model, which is encouraging to say the least. For all practical everyday purposes, the ThinkPad X1 Yoga’s performance should prove to be more than satisfactory.

Although the Samsung PM961 NVMe SSD we tested in our previous review unit is considerably faster overall than today’s Toshiba 256 GB NVMe drive, both are still very fast overall. The latter produced sequential QD32 read/write speeds of 1936 MB/s and 801.1 MB/s in CDM 5.0 as well as decent 4K QD32 R/W values of 396.4 MB/s and 380.4 MB/s. In real-world terms, it’s not a huge step down in terms of performance versus the Samsung PM961, so choose based on your capacity needs rather than your performance concerns.

Drive replacements are relatively easy in the ThinkPad X1 Yoga thanks to its removable rear cover.

Synthetic stress tests are helpful for hypothetical purposes just to see how far a machine can be pushed before it buckles. As with most ultraportable devices with integrated graphics, the ThinkPad X1 Yoga can’t handle combined CPU + GPU stress without throttling its CPU frequency to below the base frequency (in this case, to 1.5 GHz). GPU in this instance remains around 900 MHz, with the CPU/GPU package temperature resting at around 75 °C, which seems to be the thermal limit set by the Yoga firmware.

On the other hand, individual CPU/GPU stress is handled surprisingly smoothly. The notebook still achieves a 3.1 GHz average clock rate during Prime95 CPU stress and a 950 MHz GPU frequency, with temperatures in both scenarios averaging, once again, 75 °C.

The ThinkPad X1 Yoga is a very quiet and unobtrusive machine overall; it’s essentially silent while idling, as the measurements across the board under those conditions match that of our environmental ambient noise level. Load conditions do produce a bit of noise, but it’s hardly anything bothersome: we recorded an overall maximum noise level of 33.6 dB(A), which is only 5.7 dB(A) above ambient noise levels.

It’s also worth pointing out that due to slight discrepancies in background noise levels, our previous Core i7 review unit was comparably quiet—though perhaps slightly noisier overall—even despite somewhat larger differences in absolute measurements as displayed in our table below.

Speakers, of course, are identical across the two review units. To quickly reiterate our previous impressions, volume is adequate, overall sound quality is decent, and voices are clear and easy to understand.

The ThinkPad X1 Yoga did well in our Wi-Fi Surfing benchmark with a result of 10 hours and 47 minutes—quite a bit longer than the 6 hours and 8 minutes of the Core i7/WQHD OLED version of the machine. On the other hand, thanks certainly to the power efficiency of OLED at low brightness values, the latter model actually does better in the Idle benchmark with over 13 hours—whereas today’s review unit managed “only” 12 hours and 33 minutes.