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May 23, 2016

Compaq Presario X1100 Battery

According to our colorimeter, the P40 Yoga's display can reproduce a strong 105 percent of the sRGB color gamut (anything over 100 percent is great). That's much better than the 14-inch laptop category average (81 percent), but not quite as vibrant as the Precision 5510 (177 percent), the ZBook Studio G3 (169 percent), the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (109 percent) and the Spectre x360 15t (119 percent).With a Delta-E color accuracy score of 1.1 (0 is perfect), the P40 Yoga is also quite a bit better than the average 14-inch laptop (2.5) and most of its competitors. However, the ThinkPad X1 Yoga has a similar rating of 1.0.

The P40 Yoga's screen registered 260 nits of brightness on our light meter. That's just above the 14-inch laptop category average (250 nits), the ZBook Studio G3 (241 nits) and the HP Spectre x360 (246 nits). However, the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (279 nits) and Dell Precision 5510 (322 nits) are more luminous. Colors stayed true as we moved up to the left and right, but even in a dark room, the panel reflected a lot of light, obstructing our view, even at a very modest 45 degrees.

The P40 Yoga's bottom-facing speakers put out loud, rich sound that was loud enough to fill two adjacent rooms in my house and good enough for real music listening. When I played AC/DC's "Hell's Bells,"I heard a clear separation of sound with the drum section on the left and the guitar and vocals on the right. Unlike on so many other laptops, the percussion and guitar were not tinny at all, even at maximum volume. Chic's bass-heavy "Good Times" sounded even sweeter.

The included Dolby Audio software lets you manually set the equalizer or choose between profiles for Music, Movies, Voice or Gaming. We found that songs sounded best on Music mode, though Dynamic mode, which adjusts the output based on content, was also good.The ThinkPad Yoga P40 has a wide array of ports, but lacks the Ethernet connection many business users still need and eschews the USB Type-C / Thunderbolt 3 ports that appear on a number of mobile workstations, including the P50.

Lenovo ThinkPad P40 YogaThe right side contains an HDMI-out port, two USB 3.0 connections, a mini DisplayPort, a Kensington lock slot and the power button. The left side contains an SD Card reader, Lenovo's OneLink+ docking port, an audio jack and a third USB 3.0 port.A selfie I took accurately captured the green wall behind me and red letters on my shirt while clearly showing the hairs in my beard. When I turned the lights down, more visual noise appeared, but my visage was still more than clear enough for a video call.

With its Core i7-6600U CPU, 16GB of RAM, Nvidia Quadro M500M graphics and 512GB SSD, our review configuration of the ThinkPad P40 Yoga is built for serious computing tasks like 3D modeling, architecture and engineering. It's no surprise, then, that Lenovo's laptop easily handled everything we threw at it, including an intense multitasking session with 14 Chrome tabs open and a video playing in another window. However, it's also not shocking that more-powerful workstations that aren't 2-in-1s scored much higher on our tests.

The P40 Yoga scored a strong 6,740 on Geekbench 3, a synthetic benchmark which measures overall processing power. That's comfortably higher than the 14-inch laptop category average (6,402) and the Core i5-6200U-enabled HP Spectre X360 15t (6,376). However, the HP ZBook Studio G3 (14,276) and the Dell Precision 5510 (14,316) scored more than twice as high, thanks to their much more powerful Intel Xeon E3-1505M CPUs. Somewhat surprisingly, the Core i7-6400-powered ThinkPad X1 Yoga got a slightly higher score (7,064), despite its marginally slower CPU.

Lenovo's convertible workstation fared better on our spreadsheet macro test, taking just 3 minutes and 42 seconds to match 20,000 names with their addresses. That's significantly faster than the category average (6:03), the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (4:31) and the Spectre X360 (4:31). The ZBook Studio (3:23) and the Precision 5510 (3:40) weren't that much better.

Thanks to its 512GB SATA SSD, the P40 performed really well on the Laptop File Transfer test, copying 4.97GB of files in just 17 seconds, a rate of 295.7 MBps. That's far faster than the category average (124.4), the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (186.2) and the Spectre x360 (149.7), but comfortably behind the ZBook Studio (508.9) and the Precision 5510 (565).

The ThinkPad P40 Yoga's Nvidia Quadro M500M graphics processor is optimized for high-end graphics apps like AutoCAD. It scored a strong 87,341 on 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited, a synthetic test that measures graphics prowess. That's way better than the category average (65,946) and the integrated Intel GPUs on the X1 Yoga (70,475) and the Spectre x360 (64,632). However, the ZBook Studio (117,745) and the Precision 5510 (117,636) fared a lot better, thanks to their more-powerful Quadro M1000M GPUs.

Battery Life

With enough juice to get you through two-thirds of a typical workday, the ThinkPad P40 Yoga trails other 2-in-1s and 14-inch laptops by a wide margin but is slightly better than other mobile workstations. Lenovo's laptop lasted 6 hours and 35 minutes on the Laptop Battery Test, which involves continuous surfing over Wi-Fi.

That's far behind the 14-inch laptop category average (7:56) and the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (7:52 for Core i7 version). However, the ZBook Studio G3 (5:0 and the Precision 5510 (5:34) lasted over an hour less.The IntoCircuit is housed in a silver brushed aluminum frame, whereas the RAVPower unit has black metal surfaces, save for the black plastic on the base. I prefered the IntoCircuit because I am rough on my gadgets, and the all-metal construction feels more reassuring than the RAVPower, which creaked when I pressed on the plastic.

UCI doctoral candidate Mya Le Thai was reportedly playing around in the lab when she coated a set of gold nanowires in manganese dioxide before applying a "Plexiglas-likeâ€ electrolyte gel.Nanowires, which are microscopic, ultra-thin and highly conductive fibers, normally die out after 8,000 charge cycles due to their fragile nature. However, the nanowires in Thaiâ€™s gel-coated battery remained intact after three months of tests.The researchers suspect that the gel caused the metal oxide in the battery to plasticize, providing its nanowires new-found flexibility and longevity."The coated electrode holds its shape much better,â€ Thai said.In the tests, the UCI nanobattery was able to endure up to 200,000 charge cycles "with 94â€“96% average Coulombic efficiency.â€ The battery was still rated as brand new by the end of the experiment.To put the new batteryâ€™s performance in better perspective, the average laptop battery has an average lifespan of 300 to 500 charge cycles with diminishing capacity at its top efficiency.With 1,000 cycles every two years, a laptop using UCIâ€™s nanobattery would approximately last for 400 years.

Heat and Noise
The ThinkPad P40 stayed cool throughout our tests, but it didn't necessarily stay quiet. After we streamed a video for 15 minutes, the touchpad measured just 79 degrees, the keyboard clocked in at a cool 83.5 degrees while the bottom hit only 95 degrees Fahrenheit. We consider temperatures around 95 degrees and below to be comfortable.However, while I was using the laptop to write this review and surf the web, I often heard a subtle but scratchy fan noise. Most laptops have some kind of fan, but usually I don't notice the sound unless I'm performing an intense task.

Software and Warranty
Lenovo preloads the ThinkPad P40 Yoga with a few useful first-party applications and a minimal amount of bloatware. In addition to WRITEit for pen input and Dolby Audio for adjusting the sound, the laptop includes Lenovo Settings, which gives you fine control over the keyboard, Wi-Fi, webcam and other key parts of the system.
Unfortunately, like almost every Windows laptop, the P40 Yoga comes with Flipboard and Candy Crush Soda Saga piled onto the Start Menu. There's also a tile that takes you to the Adobe Photoshop Express page in the Windows Store.

Lenovo backs the ThinkPad P40 Yoga with a standard one-year limited "depot" warranty on parts and labor and where the company pays for return shipping. You can add features like accidental damage protection or a warranty extension of up to five years for prices ranging from $19 to $649.

Configuration Options
The ThinkPad P40 Yoga starts at $1,484. For that price, you get a Core i7-6500U CPU, a 1080p screen, Nvidia Quadro M500M graphics, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. At Lenovo.com, you can configure the system to order, choosing a faster Core i7 CPU, a QHD display, more RAM or a larger SSD. Our maxed-out, $2,028 review config came with a Core i7-6600U CUP, a 2560 x 1440 display, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

Bottom Line
The ThinkPad Yoga P40 delivers on a unique value proposition: graphics professionals can have their 2-in-1 hybrid and do compute-intensive work on it, too. In addition to its strong performance and even stronger build quality, Lenovo's laptop benefits from an accurate display, a comfortable keyboard and strong stylus support.

If you need the best possible performance, consider getting a nonconvertible 15-inch workstation like the Dell Precision 5510 ($1,399 to start), which is available with a speedy Xeon CPU and Quadro M1000M graphics. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Lenovo's own X1 Yoga is much lighter and lasts a lot longer on a charge than the P40, but it doesn't have Quadro graphics or as fast a Core i7 CPU. However, if you want a 2-in-1 that's powerful enough to run 3D-modeling software yet flexible enough to sketch on, the ThinkPad Yoga P40 is your best choice.

Asusâ€™ Zenbook series has been on a roll as of late, led by the Zenbook UX305CA, an excellent, affordable ultrabook that won our Editorâ€™s Choice award. Our one small complaint was with its performance, as the UX305CA has a Core M processor â€“ less powerful than a standard Core i3, i5, i7. So we were excited when Asus announced its new UX305UA with a Core i5-6200U. The same notebook with a more powerful CPU. What could be better?
As it turns out, though, the UX305CA and the UX305UA are not direct relatives, as their names suggest. The UX305UA is in fact a different system, thicker and heavier than the UX305CA. It not only has a faster Core i5 processor but also a different hard drive, a bigger battery, and an active cooling fan. These changes have also bumped the MSRP up by $50, from $700 to $750.
While these changes may seem subtle, theyâ€™re important. The UX305CA is an affordable, super-portable system that excuses its lackluster speed with extreme light-weight design and great battery life. Asusâ€™ UX305UA, on the other hand, is a direct competitor to Dellâ€™s excellent XPS 13. Does this new Zenbook continue Asusâ€™ winning streak?