This convertible laptop has rather youthful looks, unlike a lot of its rivals. The matte finish on the lid and keyboard deck is brightened up by the very subtle silver inserts around the touchpad, for example. The design elements are complemented well by the 360-degree display hinge and good quality materials used. The laptop doesn’t feel exactly lightweight, tipping the scales at 1.75kg, but is solidly built. The flexibility to push the display all the way back to make it a tablet will come in quite handy at times, when you don’t want to use the keyboard and instead would prefer using the touchscreen.
The Yoga 510 is powered by an Intel Core i5-7200U processor, 4GB RAM and runs Windows 10. This configuration will handle multi-tasking loads as well as high definition media playback. There is a 1TB hard drive for data storage—but these HDDs are much slower in terms of overall performance than solid state drives (SSDs), and we suspect Lenovo has gone with the former to be able to offer more storage space at this price. There is a dedicated graphics card, the AMD Radeon R5 M430 (2GB) which allows some amount of gaming as well, at medium display settings. In terms of the battery life, the Yoga 510 could last as many as 6 hours when used as a laptop at work, which makes this quite relevant for travellers as well.
The 14-inch IPS screen with the Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 resolution) has good brightness levels, but what really stands out is the rich colour reproduction, which is good for watching movies as well as web browsing in general. Overall, a very comfortable display, and doesn’t stress the eyes even after many hours of continuous work.
While the keyboard design and layout is similar to most high-end Lenovo ThinkPad laptops, it does not have the sharp key press response that we would usually associate with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, for example. Apart from that, there are no issues with the key size and spacing, as well as the overall layout. The generous size of the touchpad is welcome as well.
Lenovo Yoga 510 is a solid alternative to most mid-range laptops, with the highlight being the flexibility that allows it to be used as a tablet too. It is at par with standard laptop rivals in terms of performance, offers good battery life and is well built. Do remember, for the tablet flexibility, you may be compromising with a 14-inch screen (most similarly priced laptops have 15.6-inch screens) though.
