Looking for a business laptop that's a little more flexible than your usual system? The ThinkPad Yoga 14 ($1,099 as tested) brings Lenovo's 360-degree multimode hinge into the office with the 14-inch follow-up to last year's Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga( at Amazon). While the convertible design is great, it may not be the ideal alternative to regular business-class ultrabooks, like the Editors' Choice Dell Latitude E7440 Touch($201.99 at Amazon), one of the best premium business models on the market.

Design
The ThinkPad Yoga 14( at Amazon) continues Lenovo's multimode design that the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga brought to the stolid, business-oriented ThinkPad line. The new model is larger, with a 14-inch display and a slightly different profile, but with all of the flipping, folding features we expect in a Yoga system. The 360-degree hinge uses the same design seen on most of the Yoga systems—though not on the recent Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro($949.99 at Lenovo)—allowing it to open up like a laptop, and then open further to lay flat, to be flipped around into Display mode, Tent mode, and then folded back for Tablet mode.

The ThinkPad Yoga 14 keeps some of the features I most liked in the previous iteration, like a sturdy magnesium-alloy frame, scratch-resistant finish, and the lift-and-lock keyboard that brings up the keyboard frame flush with the tops of the keys in Tablet mode. Unlike last year's Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga, this model has no stylus or built-in stylus storage. In the center of the keyboard is the bright red pointing stick that should be familiar to longtime ThinkPad users.

When closed, the Yoga 14 measures
0.88 by 13.25 by 9 inches (HWD), and the laptop weighs 4.2 pounds—it's a little beefier than the 0.71-inch-thick, 3.38-pound Apple MacBook Pro 13-Inch, Retina Display (2014)($1,249.99 at Adorama), but it's not an egregious difference, given the contrast between the 13- and 14-inch sizes. Really, the only complaint I have about the size and weight of the ThinkPad Yoga 14 is that the 14-inch size is a bit too large for comfortable tablet use, an issue I did not have with the previous 12.5-inch Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga. It feels heavy when held with one hand or even cradled in one arm, and the 16:9 aspect ratio of the display is a little long when held in Portrait mode. I will mention, however, that when the onscreen keyboard is engaged, the length of the display becomes less of an issue, since the remaining visible page that's not taken up by the keyboard is good.

The 14-inch display boasts an In-Plane Switching (IPS) screen with a 1,920-by-1,080 resolution and 10-point multitouch capability. The screen is covered with Dragontrail scratch- and smudge-resistant glass, so you can tap and swipe with confidence. It offers excellent viewing angles from multiple directions, a quality that's far more important in a tablet than a standard laptop. This display quality is matched by the sound, with integrated stereo speakers that provide crisp, clear sound and room-filling volume, along with Dolby Home Theater software enhancement.

Features
The ThinkPad Yoga 14 has a decent selection of ports and features in addition to the multimode hinge and touch screen. On the right are two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI-out port, and physical buttons for Power, volume control, and display-rotation lock. On the left are a third USB 3.0 port, an SD card slot, and a headset jack, along with a power connector that doubles as a OneLink docking port for use with Lenovo's desktop docks. Internally, the system features a dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter with Bluetooth 4.0 for wireless connectivity.

For storage, the laptop has a 1TB hard
drive with an extra 16GB of solid-state cache for faster boot times and snappier performance than you would get with a hard drive alone. While that performance bump isn't enough to top the solid-state drives (SSDs) used in other systems, like the Acer TravelMate TMP645-MG-9419( at Amazon) or the Dell E7440 Touch, which both feature 256GB SSDs, it does offer significantly more storage space.

Preinstalled on the drive is a selection of apps and programs, including 30-day trials of Norton Studio and Microsoft Office 365, and apps like Amazon Kindle Reader, The Weather Channel, and Evernote Touch. Lenovo covers the ThinkPad Yoga 14 with a one-year warranty, which seems a bit short for a business system, especially compared with the likes of the three-year warranty on the Dell E7440 Touch or the two-year warranty on the Acer TMP645-MG-9419.

Performance
The ThinkPad Yoga 14 is outfitted with an Intel Core i5-4210U processor, a low-voltage CPU for ultrabooks, which is paired with 8GB of RAM. It's not substantially different from the Core i5 CPU used in the previous ThinkPad Yoga, though its graphics performance is bolstered with the addition of an Nvidia GeForce GT 840M graphics card. This combination of hardware makes for a system more suited to the demands of business users than, say, the Intel Core M processor used in the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro, but not as potent as the Intel Core i7 of the Acer TMP645-MG-9419. In PCMark 8 Work Conventional, for example, the ThinkPad Yoga 14 scored 2,410 points, well ahead of the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro (2,094 points). In Photoshop, the ThinkPad Yoga 14 managed a reasonable 5 minutes 51 seconds. The Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro, by comparison, was more than a minute behind (6:55) while other business systems, like the Dell E7440 Touch (5:24) and the Acer TMP645-MG-9419 (2:53) were both faster.

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Graphics performance was definitely boosted by the Nvidia GPU, with the ThinkPad Yoga 14 serving up better graphics and gaming scores than both the Apple MacBook Pro 13-Inch, Retina Display (2014) and the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro across the board, which use Intel Iris Graphics and Intel HD Graphics, respectively. That discrete graphics card will be a boon to anyone, but don't expect gaming-level performance out of the system, as it's meant more for speeding up Web page rendering, working with images, and streaming media.

Finally, we tested battery life. While the 6 hours 13 minutes that the ThinkPad Yoga 14 scored in our battery test is good, it lingers behind other competing systems. The Dell E7440 Touch (7:44) and the Acer TMP645-MG-9419 (7:50) each managed more than an hour and half longer, while the Apple MacBook Pro (13:41) outpaced it by multiple hours.

Conclusion
While I've been pretty positive about every Yoga product I've seen, and am sure that Lenovo will find plenty of business users eager to get a Yoga convertible that's geared for office use, the ThinkPad Yoga 14 is not ready to replace everyone's work system just yet. If you need the flexibility of a convertible-hybrid system, switching from laptop to tablet and back, then it may be worthwhile for the multimode hinge alone. On the other hand, if productivity and business-friendly features are more important, you should take a look at the Dell Latitude E7440 Touch, our top pick for business ultrabooks.

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