Hands On With Lenovo's Flex 14 and Yoga 730

BARCELONA—Alexa, exist a laptop. Lenovo'southward new midrange Yoga 730 and Flex 14 laptops, announced at Mobile World Congress, come with Amazon's voice banana software built in, making them like shooting fish in a barrel-to-apply companions for Alexa-based smart home devices.

Look Alexa, No Telephone

MWC Bug Art When we review vocalization banana products (similar our top smart speakers), we frequently hear from readers who are frustrated past the apparent need for a smartphone to set them upward and manage them—about 15 percent of Americans even so don't take smartphones.

They may not accept smartphones, but they commonly have PCs. This is i manner the The states is different from a lot of the residue of the world; we take unusually loftier PC penetration, and a lower percentage of "mobile-starting time" users than in many other countries. So the idea of setting up Alexa from your PC shouldn't be as strange as information technology apparently is to Amazon. Dorsum at CES in Jan, HP, Asus, and Acer all joined Lenovo in saying that they will have Alexa-enabled PCs.

Alexa has a web app for setup from a PC, but not a lot of people know that. That's the power of defaults: Even though there'south already an Alexa web interface, putting it front end and eye on a laptop volition make information technology more visible and thus more usable for less techie types.

With both Alexa and Microsoft's Cortana preloaded, the new Yoga 730 and Lenovo Flex 14 have far-field microphones that can capture voices from upward to 18 feet away, Lenovo told us. Unfortunately, you accept to unlock the laptop offset earlier you speak at information technology.

Pricing and Specs

Otherwise, the Yoga 730 and Flex 14 (which will also be known as the Yoga 530) are handsome midrange laptops, both of pretty standard Lenovo Yoga blueprint. The Flex fourteen volition cost $599.99, the 13-inch Lenovo Yoga 730 will toll $879.99, and the 15-inch Yoga 730 volition toll $899.99. Those are all base of operations model prices, of class, and they can be leveled upward in terms of processor, memory, and storage.

The processor and graphics are the general upgrades hither from previous models. All 3 new models have 8th-generation Intel Core i7 processors. The Flex 14 has Nvidia MX130 graphics and the 15-inch Yoga 730 has a GTX1050. The thirteen-inch Yoga has Intel integrated graphics, which might exist to reduce weight—information technology's a plume-calorie-free two.46 pounds, every bit compared with the solid four.16 pounds of its bigger sibling.

All 3 laptops have both USB-C and USB-A ports, although beyond that, results are mixed. The Flex 14 also has an HDMI out and a bill of fare reader; the 13-inch 730 has two USB-Cs and a USB-A; and the 15-inch has two USB-Cs, one USB-A, and an HDMI out.

The Flex has a 1080p screen, and the Yogas can come equipped with either 1080p or UHD panels. They're all touch screens.

The laptops all fold back in the typical Yoga fashion, of class. They all have those dandy, bouncy Lenovo keyboards with fingerprint readers just below, and they're all pen uniform.

These laptops will all exist bachelor in April. We've generally given Lenovo Yoga laptops good reviews, and we'll have full assessments of these models when they're available.