I’ve had some time with a production sample of the Lenovo Yoga 710 and while I can’t bring you a full review there’s a lot I can tell you about it. The Yoga 710 is an 11.6-inch ultramobile Windows convertible (laptop-style with 360-degree hinge) running on a Core M CPU. Bloggers had unlimited access to it at CeBIT earlier this month and were able to draw a lot of conclusions. Here’s my summary review.

The Lenovo Yoga 710 is incredibly slick, has a great screen and the keyboard is working very well, at least for me. It’s Macbook-like for sure but not quite the fasion-piece and it’s likely to be offered at a lower price, according to reports.  For me it’s one of the most important subnotebooks of the year.

Note: All information here based on the pre-production sample shown at CeBIT.

The NEC Lavie Z is another 1KG Ultrabook but this isn’t an 11.6” model, this is a 13.3” one. The specifications have just been discovered and we think you’re going to like it!

Read the full story

NEC is jumping into the Ultrabook market this summer with the Lavie Z ( name subject to change, according to the company). The company says that they will use lithium alloy magnesium, “in the body of a PC for the first time in the world”, to achieve a sub-1kg weight on an Ultrabook with a 13.3″ screen — something we’ve yet to see. NEC is apparently holding a competition where you can guess what the lightest model of the Lavie Z will be, and if you guess correctly you could win one!

Read the full story

The live review and Q&A with the Samsung 900X1B went well on Saturday and we got through the 2 hours without any major issues or showstoppers cropping up. Battery life during the 2 hours was good at a projected 6hrs which included constant Wi-Fi and even some high-performance mode gaming. Wi-Fi, something that’s been highlighted by others as an issue on the 900X1B was stable but in a test across a couple of walls to a remote hotspot we confirmed that the throughput was poor. That’s the only potential issue on the 900X1B, the rest of the device was perfect, as long as you don’t mind those mini and micro ports and adaptors.