Lenovo Yoga 510-15ISK Convertible Review

Communication

The notebook does not offer any surprises in terms of Gigabit-Ethernet. Lenovo uses a familiar chip from Realtek's RTL8168/8111 family, and most notebooks use such a chip. The Wi-Fi module is provided by Qualcomm. The chip with the designation (QCA9377) also supports the fast WLAN 802.11 ac standard (1x1, up to 433 Mbps) besides a/b/g/n. The connection between our router and the convertible was always stable in practice. There were no dropouts.

The Yoga 510 manages a maximum transfer rate of 255 Mbps in our standardized Wi-Fi test. The test device is one meter (~3 ft) away from the router (Linksys EA8500) and the server is a Gigabit-Ethernet PC. All wireless devices in the area are deactivated and the power profile of the review unit is set to "Maximum Performance". The test is either performed in the early morning or in the evening, so the transmission is not disturbed by other Wi-Fi networks in the area. 

Webcam 

The integrated webcam has a maximum resolution of 1280x720 pixels. The pictures will not impress anybody, but the quality is sufficient for video calls.

Keyboard

Lenovo has not equipped the keyboard of the Yoga 510-15ISK with any illumination. This is unfortunate, because it would have suited the device very well. A quick look at the layout shows that the "Arrow Up" key is where you would usually expect the right Shift key, and the latter is right next to it. We therefore sometimes hit the arrow key instead of the Shift key during typing. In other words: It takes some time getting used to the position of the right Shift key. However, that is the only unusual thing.

The flat and smooth keys have limited travel and a well-defined pressure point. We like their resistance. However, the keyboard does bounce a bit during typing; more in the center than on the sides. This also results in a slightly spongy typing experience. Nevertheless, the keyboard is not bad by any means. Lenovo has delivered a decent product, which is more than sufficient for everyday tasks.

Touchpad

The mouse replacement is a ClickPad with multi-touch support with a size of around 10.4 x 7 cm (~4.2 x ~2.7 in), so you get a lot of space for gestures. You can activate and deactivate several gestures individually in the settings. The smooth surface of the pad provides good gliding capabilities for the fingers. You can use the whole surface of the pad, and it is also sensitive in the corners. The pad has limited travel and a clearly audible as well as a perceptible pressure point.

Touchscreen

The touchscreen did not cause any problems. It quickly recognizes inputs and supports up to ten fingers simultaneously.

The colors are already decent ex-works and we can measure an average DeltaE-2000 deviation of 4.23. Therefore, it just misses the target value (DeltaE smaller 3). A calibration can improve the result slightly and the color deviation will drop to 3.26. The improvement is much bigger for the grayscale. They are more balanced and show a much lower deviation from the ideal value. There is no blue cast at any time. The display cannot cover the color spaces AdobeRGB and sRGB; we can only measure 40.4% (AdobeRGB) and 63.5% (sRGB), respectively.

There are no surprises in terms of the processor. Inside the Yoga 510 you will find Intel's Core i5-6200U (Skylake) dual-core processor. This ULV model (TDP: 15 watts) is a mainstream chip and provides sufficient performance for everyday tasks. A similarly equipped Yoga-15ISK with the slightly faster Core i7-6500U is about 120 Euros (~$136) more expensive. This will not pay off for most users; the Core i7 processor is just slightly faster (10 to 15%), but you will not notice it in practice. The Core i5 CPU is usually the better choice. It has a nominal clock of 2.3 GHz, which can be raised to 2.7 GHz (both cores) or 2.8 GHz (one core), respectively, via Turbo Boost. The CPU can utilize the Turbo on mains and battery power.

The predecessor of the Yoga 510-15ISK – the Yoga 500-15IBD – uses the Broadwell predecessor (Core i5-5200U) of our model, so it is good for a comparison. The Skylake model is up to 15% faster than the old model in the CPU benchmarks, which is a result of the improved Skylake architecture as well as the slightly higher clocks. The difference is bigger in multi-core than single-core scenarios.

The system runs quickly and smoothly, and we did not encounter any problems. The PCMark results are also very good. A look at our comparison chart shows that a rival such as the HP Envy 15 x360 gets a lower score in PCMark 8, despite the same CPU, SSD and GeForce GPU. The Yoga 510 has an advantage due to the Radeon GPU, because the PCMark benchmark benefits from AMD GPUs in particular. It is not possible to enhance the system performance any further; Lenovo has already maxed out the system. It is not possible to implement another memory module, because there is only one memory slot.

You can store data on a solid-state disk from LiteOn. It is a 2.5-inch model with a capacity of 256 GB. Users can use around 180 GB for their own files; the rest is occupied by the Windows installation and the recovery partition. The transfer rates of the SSD are good.

The Yoga is equipped with an AMD Radeon R7 M460 graphics card. Even though the designation suggests something different, it is not really a new GPU. It is basically a rebadged Radeon R7 M360 GPU and the technical specifications are also similar, only the maximum core clock of the M460 is slightly higher (984 MHz vs. 980 MHz). The 3DMark scores are therefore identical and it is roughly on par with the Lenovo IdeaPad 500-15ISK in our comparison chart. The latter is slightly faster than our model due to the rather more powerful processor. Nvidia's counterpart of the Radeon GPU is the GeForce 930M GPU.

Besides the AMD graphics core, the system can also use Intel's HD Graphics 520 GPU and it can switch between the GPUs (Enduro). The Radeon GPU handles demanding tasks such as games, while Intel's chip is used for simple tasks and on battery power. This process is usually automated, but Nvidia's counterpart (Optimus) works better than AMD's solution, where you sometimes have to adjust the allocation manually.

The Yoga is quite a frugal device while idling; we measure up to 8.1 watts. The consumption will rise to 57.3 watts during the stress test (Prime95 and FurMark for at least one hour), but this value drops after a short while because both the CPU and the GPU cannot maintain their respective maximum clocks. The gaming consumption will be around 41 watts (+/- 5 watts). The nominal power output of the PSU is 65 watts.

The Yoga 510-15ISK can clearly beat its predecessor (Yoga 500-15IBD) in terms of battery runtimes. The larger battery capacity (35 Wh vs. 30 Wh) is just one reason. Our WLAN test runs for 5:35 hours on the Yoga 510, while the Yoga 500 managed only 2:33 hours. We use a script to simulate the stress when you load web pages with the "Balanced" power profile and a display brightness of around 150 nits. The stamina of the Yoga 510 is similar in the video test with 5:37 hours. We run a loop of the short movie Big Buck Bunny (H.264, 1920x1080 pixels) while the wireless modules are turned off and the luminance is once again adjusted to 150 nits.

A look inside the Yoga 510-15ISK shows that there is actually enough space to integrate a larger battery, and it even looks like a part of the battery is just a placeholder. We cannot understand why Lenovo does not use a larger battery, especially since this is a device that is not used at the desk only.