Lenovo Yoga 3 11.6″ Review

By Tech Powered Dad | August 13, 2015

Lenovo 3.11.6

A little less than a month ago, I picked up a Lenovo Yoga 3 11.6″ 2 in 1 tablet from Best Buy. Unfortunately, this past weekend, I felt compelled to return it out of disappointment. Consequently, this will be one of the shorter reviews I’ve written. I had high hopes for this tablet. My brother has an entry level Yoga 2 tablet, and based on his experience and many positive reviews I had read, I was ready to jump in with the unique Yoga form factor. The launch of Windows 10 seemed like a perfect time to get on board.

My Yoga 3 Disappointments

There were several, but the biggest involved build quality. Right out of the box, the touchpad was loose, making an annoying vibrating sound not only when I clicked it, but also when I used the keyboard to type anything. Then, a couple of weeks later, the the display started to flicker very obviously. And while it’s possible that my inexperience with bootable USB drives was partially to blame, the Ubuntu thumb drive I created was also an unpleasant experience, despite several hours of manipulating BIOS settings as suggested on forum posts.

Moving Forward

When doing some searches on Google to find if I was alone with these problems, I found others reporting each of these issues (even the bootable USB stick) for various Yoga 2 and 3 models. When I returned my Yoga 3 to Best Buy and looked at other models, I stumbled across another Yoga 3 11.6″, which didn’t visibly show any of these problems. I even put my ear to the touchpad to listen for the looseness I experienced with my model, and I heard none of it, so maybe I just got really unlucky. I had Windows 10 for a brief time on my Yoga 3, and while I enjoyed the UI, it performed in a very sluggish manner. The store models didn’t suffer from that at all.

Perhaps my Yoga 3 was just a fluke, but the experience left me gun shy, so much so that I strongly considered buying a Mac for the first time ever. I decided the price premium was still a bit higher than I wanted to pay, as I can honestly get by pretty happily with a mid-level model, so I’m giving Windows 10 another shot with a Dell that I’ll write about after I’ve had a chance to vet it thoroughly. I still have quite a bit to learn with my new PC as I plan to install an SSD on it, and I would really like to set up a dual boot on it, both things that are new for me.

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