Lenovo Yoga Book review: A keyless keyboard that will get you talking, not typing

Lenovo made a unique device with the new Yoga Book. I like to describe it as a device the size of a netbook with the design of a convertible and the attitude of a stylus-equipped tablet. Starting at $499, the Yoga Book comes in Android and Windows versions, allowing you to choose your experience with it. However, no matter which operating system you choose, the design remains the most appealing thing about the device. While the display-bearing tablet slab is familiar, the connected keyboard with no keys is unique. The Yoga Book also comes with Lenovo's Real Pen and a magnetic pad of paper, allowing you to draw both on the keyboard itself and on paper to digitize notes and artwork. But like so many convertibles, the Yoga Book tries so hard to be all things to all people that it doesn't truly excel in any one area.

Look and feel

The Yoga Book is the most tablet-like two-in-one I've ever held. Its 10.1-inch size, 1.5-pound weight, and 9.6mm thickness when closed makes it an incredibly light and portable device. Adding to that svelte profile is the matte magnesium alloy shell and Lenovo-signature watchband hinge. It is a convertible, however when I first unboxed the Yoga Book, its appearance struck me so much that it was hard to place it in the convertible category in my head. It's more like a tablet that, instead of having a detachable keyboard or a folio case, has a slim slab attached to it.

Specs at a glance: Lenovo Yoga Book (as reviewed)
Screen	10.1-inch 1920 x 1200 IPS touchscreen
OS	Windows 10 Home (64 bit)
CPU	Intel Atom X5-Z8550 at 1.44GHz
RAM	4GB LPDDR3
GPU	Intel HD 400
HDD	64GB, expandable up to 128GB via microSD
Networking	802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0
Ports	microSD card slot, microUSB, microHDMI, headphone/mic combo
Size	10.1 x 6.72 x 0.38-inches (256.6 x 170.8 x 0.96 mm)
Weight	1.52 pounds (690 grams)
Battery	8500 mAh lithium-ion
Warranty	one year
Starting price	$499
Price as reviewed	$549
Other perks	Create Pad, Real Pen

And the keyboard is the most striking thing about the Yoga Book. There are no physical buttons or keys on it; when you power up the Yoga Book, the backlight illuminates the outlines of traditional keys and the trackpad, almost like drawing lines in the sand with light. The keyboard also doubles as a Wacom digitizer, allowing you to use the Real Pen and the new Create Pad with it to draw and scribble on the screen.

We'll get into the Create Pad technology in its own section below, but the Yoga Book also comes with an additional attachment called the Book Pad. This is a magnetic board that fits over the keyboard and has dotted A5-sized paper in it. You can use the ink refills for the Real Pen to write on the paper and have those notes digitized, thanks to the Create Pad technology. When you run out of paper, you can add more A5-sized paper and continue to have physical and digital notes. You can also just place any old sheet of paper on top of the keyboard and draw on it while it gets backed up by the digitizer.

The Yoga Book's display is a 10.1-inch 1920 x 1200-resolution IPS touchscreen that can reach up to 400 nits of brightness. On the slim sides of the Yoga Book are the power button, speaker grill, volume rocker, and headphone jack (right side), as well as the microUSB charging port, microHDMI port, and microSD card slot (left side). Unfortunately this device doesn't have a USB Type-C port, nor do you get as many connectivity options as you would with a traditional convertible like the $1,029 Lenovo ThinkPad X1. That's another reason why the Yoga Book leans more toward the tablet-side of the spectrum. You can buy the Yoga Book running Windows 10 or Android 6.0 (sorry, no Nougat yet), and the price varies slightly in each model: the Android version is $499 while the Windows version is $549. We only tested the Windows 10 version.

Halo keyboard and trackpad

The Halo keyboard is Lenovo's answer to the on-screen keyboards most tablets rely on. While there is an on-screen keyboard on the Yoga Book, the typing experience is more like that of a laptop when using the Halo keyboard. There are no physical keys, so you just tap on the backlit squares to input text. When you do, there's haptic feedback and sounds that go off (which can be turned off) to signal that you're actually typing. This comes in handy because there's a pen icon at the top of the keyboard you can press when you want to use the included Real Pen instead of the keyboard—when the pen is activated, the Halo keyboard is unresponsive to touch.

I do like the layout of the keyboard: it's mostly standard, excepting a huge backspace button at the top-right corner. I also rejoiced to find two normal-sized Shift keys on either side of the deck, which is something I missed on the $1,599 Yoga 910.

However, I definitely couldn't type at my normal speed on the Yoga Book. It's like typing on a software keyboard without any of the flexibility that software keyboards provide. For example, to capitalize a letter, you still need to hold down the Shift key and press the desired letter while doing so. In Settings, you can also turn on a rule that lets you double-tap the Shift key to turn caps-lock on (even though there is a caps-lock key on the board as well). It's awkward to do when you're expecting the bounce of chiclet keys underneath your fingers and you feel nothing. Also, to accommodate the size of the Yoga Book, the keyboard is on the small side, so that did result in more mistakes than I would make on a regular-sized deck.

But by far the biggest issue I had with the Halo keyboard is the narrowness of the trackpad. It measures about 2.75 x 1.5-inches, not including the slit-like rectangles on its sides that act as the right- and left-click buttons, and it's simply too small to use properly. I wish it had more space on the top because I often ran over it and hit the Space key instead of working within the trackpad's limits. It's also awkward to have to hold down the left-click key and tap the trackpad at the same time to bring up the options menu. If the trackpad had a little more room at the top, the Halo keyboard overall wouldn't be that bad to use on a regular basis—not at the regular speed or comfort level of a full laptop keyboard, but it's doable. Overall, I'm grateful for the Yoga Book's touchscreen since I used that more often than the trackpad to navigate.

Even with the Halo keyboard's shortcomings, I would use it more often than the keyboard on Huawei's $699 Matebook, thanks to the watchband hinge that connects it to the display. It's a very sturdy system, unlike those magnetic keyboard cover accessories that can't support the tablets they're connected to when placed on your lap or a less-than-solid surface. You can pick the Yoga Book up by the display and tote it from room to room without worrying the keyboard will fall off—and since the Halo keyboard has no physical keys, it smoothly lies against the back of the display when folded in tablet mode.

Create Pad and Real Pen

The Yoga Book's Halo keyboard doubles as the Create Pad when the pen icon at the top of the keyboard deck is turned on. Lenovo explains there is a film of electromagnetic resonance (EMR) right underneath the keyboard. Powered by Wacom technology, it can support 2048 levels of pressure with the Real Pen and allows you to draw and take notes both on the pad itself and on paper. EMR waves are sent from the sensor underneath the keyboard, and those pick up the input from the Real Pen. That's then processed using special algorithms and translates what you've written or scribbled into strokes or characters on the display.

The Create Pad is really responsive and a breeze to use with the Real Pen's stylus tip. It's pressure-sensitive as well, so the harder you press, the thicker the strokes will come out on digital paper. I mainly drew and took notes in Microsoft's OneNote, and there was no lag time between my drawing and the appearance of digital ink on the display. It was also really lovely to use in third-party apps like AutoDesk SketchBook, where you can have a number of brush, pen, paint, and marker options to draw with. The Create Pad and Real Pen will work with Microsoft's new Windows Ink Workspace apps including Sticky Notes as well, letting you scribble things to remember on Post-It-like notes that live on your desktop.

To use the Book Pad, you first need to swap out the Real Pen's tip. It comes with three replacement ink tips so you can physically write on the Book Pad's paper, but changing the tips is difficult. You're supposed to do so by sticking the Real Pen tip into a hole on the top of its cap, angling it slightly, and pulling it out. I sat there for a good five minutes every time I wanted to do this—most of the time, the cap wouldn't catch on the tip, no matter if it was the ink or the stylus tip. It's not easy to do when you're relaxed, so it certainly won't be easy to do on the fly. And when they did catch, the tips almost always flew off to the other side of the room because I apparently pulled them out too quickly.

But once you do swap to the ink tip, you can then place the magnetic Book Pad on top of the keyboard, flip open to a blank page, and begin to write. The experience is nearly identical to using the stylus on the Create Pad, only now you have a physical copy of what you're writing or drawing. No doubt this will be essential for artists who want to see what they're sketching underneath their pens in real-time, but conveniently they'll have a digital backup as well. The only issue I had with this method is that the ink is sometimes spotty, like a pen that's running out of ink too soon. And you're restricted to that ink in the Real Pen refills, since you cannot use your own pens, pencils, or markers on the Create Pad to save digital scribbles. Thankfully you get three ink tips with the Yoga Book, but if this is your primary way of using the stylus, you will have to buy more at $14.99 per three-pack.

One good thing about the Real Pen is that it doesn't require charging or batteries, but there's also no space on the Yoga Book to store it. If you plan to travel with this device, be prepared to set aside a small pocket or a pencil case for the pen and its respective stylus and ink tips. Another curious oversight is that you cannot write directly on the Yoga Book's display with the Real Pen—you're confined to the Create Pad or the Book Pad. Artists will be the ones who miss this feature the most, and sometimes I even wanted to be able to fold the device into tablet mode and sketch directly on the display as if it were paper. Most of the time, though, I made do with the connected slab.