HP's recent Pavilion x360 promises a full-featured fold-back hybrid design in an 11-inch ultraportable body, for about the same price as a basic budget laptop. Dell's Inspiron 3000 offers much the same thing. Lenovo, the company that made this design popular in the first place with its Yoga series, also sees the need to bring hybrids to budget shoppers, which explains the 11-inch Yoga 2 11.

Like the recent 13-inch Yoga 2, this version keeps the 360-degree fold-back hinge from previous-gen Yogas, but cuts some of the higher-end features, such as better-than-HD displays or ultra-thin designs. At the entry level prices we're looking at, the Yoga 2 11 is also powered by an Intel Pentium CPU, rather than a Core i-series, although those are available as well.

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Speaking of prices, if you want to buy anything from Lenovo, you're usually better off buying one of the company's identical, or ever-so-slightly different, models made especially for Best Buy. Same machines, often with lower prices. In this case, a Yoga 2 11 with a Pentium CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive is $530 (450) from Lenovo (down to $490 for a Celeron CPU, available only in the US). In the US, from Best Buy, the same configuration is a very reasonable $450. (Similar models are not available in Australia, where the only Yoga 2 11 available costs AU$1,000.)

Upgraded, US-only models include a version with a Core i3 CPU for $579, and a Core i5 with a 128GB SSD for $699 -- reasonable, but not exactly bargains, considering the budget-feeling design.

Some configurations of the HP x360 cost less than the Lenovo, but the Yoga has a couple of distinct advantages which make it worth the extra money. It's thinner, lighter, feels a little more solidly built, and -- most importantly -- it has a decent 1,366x768 11.6-inch display. In contrast, the HP x360 has a simply awful display that looks much worse when comparing the two systems side-by-side.

The basic idea behind a fold-back hinge hybrid is the same across products from Dell, Lenovo, HP, and others. You can position the system as a traditional clamshell laptop, then bend the lid backward, past 180 degrees, stopping at a kiosk or table tent form in the middle, or else folding it all the way back into a tablet shape.

It's a concept we've supported since the original Lenovo Yoga model, and it's telling that both Microsoft and Best Buy used the Yoga extensively in Windows 8 launch ad campaigns to describe the utility of the Windows 8 tile menu and touchscreens.

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Why this over pull-apart hybrids or ones with screens that swivel around on a central hinge? The fold-back hinge does the least to interfere with the traditional clamshell laptop design; and it's relatively inexpensive to engineer, according to our conversations with PC makers.

Continued here:
An entry-level Yoga that's flexible but affordable