March 2013
I travel extensively in the course of my work and needed a lightweight, but powerful tablet to keep up with my schedule: emails, spreadsheets, heavy web usage, web-based programs, etc. I wanted more speed and agility than an Atom processor can deliver, but I wanted to spend under $800.00
Having researched the various options until I couldn't bear it anymore, I settled on what I considered the best option: Lenovo Twist. It is truly an Ultrabook that is ultra-portable like a tablet. And, at $749.00 at my local OD store (sorry Amazon), it was a great value.
My experience so far is very satisfactory. In fact, the more I use the Twist, the more it exceeds my expectations.
PROS
Fast processor, 7200 rpm cached drive, clear, crisp display with a responsive and smooth touchscreen, and all the ports you could want.
Lenovo "QuichLaunch" is an easy and much appreciated replacement for the familiar Windows Desktop. In fact, i find myself effortlessly going back and forth between the two, as I learn the more tablet-like Windows 8 interface.
Build quality is excellent. The unit is sturdy, light, easy to hold (rubberized feel over a magnesium body) and the twist mechanism is solid yet smooth to rotate.
The keyboard is fantastic. I could not really understand what others were saying about the Lenovo keyboards being so wonderful, but now, I get it!
Overall, best value for the money, and I had my list narrowed down to Surface Pro (mt first choice if money were not an issue) and the Asus Iconia W700. In the end, the idea of detached keyboards and docking stations did not fit my idea of true portability.
Minimal bloatware, removed Norton AV fairly quickly.
CONS
Battery life is truly only four to five hours (max). But knowing this going this purchase, it is not a true problem. I travel alot, but my car has a built-in charge plug for these things. Way to go Ford Flex!
Two hours (+) of software and Windows updates, but everything went smoothly.
Battery has a feature that prolongs its service life, but does not allow a full charge. I will be disabling this feature to fully use my battery time.
I am otherwise, very pleased so far with this purchase. And, Windows 8 is not so bad, though they really need to fill out the offerings on the Windows (App) Store. Windows Defender works very well as an AV software and is faster than aftermarket programs, but you need to fully uninstall Norton before the option for Defender shows up as a choice (very tricky). i will update with any issues that arise. Good luck.
I bought Lenovo Twist 12.5 Touchscreen Ultrabook for my father for $649. Built in keyboard and convertibility and the Lenovo brand were the main 3 reasons behind this selection. I also recently bought an Acer W700-6831 for $699 from Amazon. Although Lenovo Twist is almost 1.5 pounds heavier than Acer W700 considering the W700's keyboard and case they both feel equal and not heavy at all.
This laptop looks cool with couple of shortcomings outlined below:
1) Battery life: ~3 hours with heavy usage. If you are looking for a tablet with day long computing with battery back up, Lenovo twist is not for you.
2) Fan Noise: During the start up it has a high pitch fan noise. Other than that fan noise is as expected from any laptop with a hard drive in it. I have to emphasize I think Acer W700 is slightly more quite though.
3) Screen Resolution: Lenovo has a1366 x 768 pixels HD screen. After I see 1920 x 1080 screen at Acer W700, I appreciate the higher screen resolution, this laptop should have a higher resolution screen. That said similar models in the market, in the same price range have also 1366x768 resolution screens.
Overall I am happy with Lenovo, I needed a convertible and there is no other solid tablet in the market to beat Lenovo Twist with a $649 price tag. If the battery life was better, I would give 5* to this product.
Buy Lenovo Thinkpad Twist 12.5-Inch Touchscreen Ultrabook (Black) Now
Pros:
It is light and I can see all notebooks going this way it future. The ability to have a hard disk and the SSD is great. The touch screen is also responsive
Cons:
One of the major limitations is that the memory cannot be upgraded after you buy it. With 4 GB and Windows 8 it is OK for email, Office etc. but slows down considerably when you have too many apps open.
Another problem I had was that intermittently, the screen would change orientation by 90 degrees and it was a pain to click on the key board sequences to make it right. Put the latest updates and it seemed to reduce but still had it happen once. At that point I decided to return it.
Overall:
It is a great concept and I am sure I will look for something like this in future as the vendors and Microsoft tweaks some of the flaws.
Read Best Reviews of Lenovo Thinkpad Twist 12.5-Inch Touchscreen Ultrabook (Black) Here
The Twist is a solid, well-priced tablet that fills a niche today. This is an old-school, flip the screen around and turn it down-kind of tablet, the kind they used to make before slates like the iPad and the Surface Pro became the norm. But unlike the older tablet notebooks, with the plastic displays that scratched easily, the Twist is made from iPad-like Gorilla Glass and is very crisp-feeling to use and very scratch resistant. Most will not need a screen protector, like the old tablets did. The Twist is also a lot thinner than those old convertible notebooks used to be.
The i5 processor and battery life are adequate and the 24GB cache SSD and 500GB 7200RPM hard drive provide a faster experience than most right out of the box. Personally though, I replaced the 24GB mSATA SSD and 500GB stock drives with a 250GB mSATA SSD and a 240GB SSD in the main bay (be careful, the main bay is a 7mm drive, not the standard 9.5mm in height than most notebooks can accept). The speed increase is significant and, with no drives with moving parts, its more suitable as a handheld device and the battery is a bit longer lasting too with an all-SSD configuration.
The port selection is excellent for a small notebook. Two USB 3.0 ports (sensibly, one on each side), a media card slot and both DisplayPort and mini HDMI ports are available. And, most happily, a Gigabit ethernet port is there too. So many tablets (including the Microsoft Surface and Lenovo's own Yoga) lack this critical port. It also has a SIM card slot for a mobile broadband card that can be custom ordered from Lenovo. It uses the mSATA slot that is currently taken up, out of the box, by the 24GB cache drive. But, alas, you cannot remove the mSATA card and replace it with a mobile broadband card because there are no antenna leads to connect to the broadband card.
The screen at 1368 by 768 is perfect for a 12.5 inch screen in my opinion. Unlike MacOS, which scales its desktop to the resolution, the Windows desktop icons and text become smaller and smaller as you increase the screen resolution. The Microsoft Surface, at 1920 by 1080, requires you to increase scaling by 25 to 50 percent to be usable for those of us without perfect eyes. And not all apps look right with that setting. But with the Twist, standard scaling is perfectly usable and the 768 height is adequate for 99.99 percent of what you might use.
The Windows 8 experience has been less than ideal. The lack of a Start button makes the OS difficult to use sometimes. But there are several third party products you can use to give you a Windows 7-like experience. I personally use "StartIsBack", a $3 program that restores the Start button to Windows 8. Its a great product that replicates a Windows 7 Start button exactly, even right down to the config menus and menu transparency effect. That little edition made Windows 8 become a whole new (or should I say old) experience. (rumor has it that Windows 8 Service Pack 1, when it comes out, will restore the Start button to Windows 8)
There are some issues though with the Twist. For one, the 4GB RAM is soldered on and is non-upgradable. You have to custom config order directly from Lenovo to get 8GB. Also, a personal pet peeve no illuminated keyboard. But the biggest issue is that there are some confirmed issues (probably driver-related) with the wifi/bluetooth card (Broadcom). The wifi has problems with some (not all though) routers in maintaining a fast, stable connection. And bluetooth mice will sometimes just drop out. So, that is something that buyers should be aware of.
Once they iron out that wifi/bluetooth problem, things should be looking up. I would give it an overall 5 star review because the Twist is a good, solid experience. But the soldered RAM and wifi issues knock it down to 4 stars in my view.
Want Lenovo Thinkpad Twist 12.5-Inch Touchscreen Ultrabook (Black) Discount?
Things I love about the Twist:
+ The touchscreen is ultra responsive, and provides super clear resolution
+ I have found the moveable monitor to be far more useful than imagined, especially when sitting on planes or giving presentations
+ This was my first Win8 experience. After a few hours, I started to like it now actually preferring to use the touch screen rather than the mouse.
+ The physical keyboard is very nice, but I now prefer the soft keyboard on the touchscreen
+ The Twist is light enough for road warrior use , and seems sturdy and well-made.
Things that could be fixed:
The Wifi support is ok, but is limited on distance compared to my other devices
The energy management causes me to lose Wifi connectivity quite often; I am still experimenting with this to find a better balance
I did have to play with the audio settings to get my headset to work, but there was good help on the Lenovo user site.
I do get frequent messages for my Norton software telling me that CPU utilization is high even if not running many applications or tasks. I am not sure if these are real or phantom but I don't notice much performance degradation.
All in all, I am quite pleased with this platform. A recent WSJ review of touch-screen Win8 devices in general was quite fair. I'm sure this class of products will continue to improve, but if you need to buy a new Ultrabook today the Twist is a decent choice.
I have been using a M405 laptop for over 5 years at work, have turned down new Dell systems because I am happy with my Gateway. Its very durable and works wonderfully with my RP9A Docking Station. The Computer has never had a problem, even though my work has a ton of malware, spyware and firewall software that makes it run a bit slow at times.
