Mawoka's Blog - Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 370

Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 370

09 August 2024

What makes it special?

It's a convertible 2-in-1. That means, that you can fold the display by 360°, so you can use it as a laptop and as a tablet with a built-in stand. It also has a pen integrated in the case and a digitizer with touchscreen. That's already great, but the cherry on top is the one Thunderbolt 3 port.

Hardware/Specs

My ThinkPad has an Intel Core i5-7300U and 8GB soldered (boo) RAM, paired with 256GB NVME storage. This package is rounded off with the highest quality feeling plastics I've ever handled, the best laptop keyboard I've ever used and a 13" FullHD glossy screen. The bonus features include a linux-compatible fingerprint sensor, a brightness sensor, an nfc-module and many security features (TPM, Intel Anti Theft sth and more).

My particular unit

I've bought mine used for 140€ and it has a 4G card instead of an extra RAM-slot. I'll probably never use 4G, but that's just how it is. The paint is coming off at the edges, as it has seen some usage over the years, but one less to worry about for me. Another strange one: The plastic black film on the touchpad is kinda peeling off at the bottom. Nothing to dramatic yet and it doesn't seem to affect the functionality at all. The seller sent it to me with a fresh install of Windows 10 and the original power brick which uses Lenovo's proprietary power plug, which doesn't really matter as I exclusively charge through USB-C anyways. As we're already talking battery: it reports a health of 75%. Not that much, but for 7 years still quite a lot and I get at least 4 hours out of it (depending on the power profile, later more)

Linux

Okay, as we all know, Windows sucks, I quickly installed Fedora Kionite on it, which went smoothly and that's also what I mainly use, but keeping windows around can't hurt when I should ever need it. The fingerprint reader also worked after installing python-validity and resetting the sensor. But neither the nfc sensor nor the brightness sensors are working or useful: The brightness sensor works, but there's no nice usable program which links the sensor to the backlight and the nfc sensor seems to be missing some drivers. But I'm experiencing problems as well: The fingerprint reader doesn't work on the lock screen after waking up from sleep and the speakers don't switch left and right, depending on the screen orientation.

Convertible Experience

After turning off the floating taskbar feature of KDE, it works better than in windows! The keyboard comes up as reliable as in Android, but getting rid of it is sometimes a bit difficult, but you can easily activate and deactivate it in the taskbar in one tap (or click)! I really can't stress enough how awesome this form factor is! It's simply a laptop and a tablet with built-in stand!

Tips

Check Python Validity out, to get the fingerprint reader working in the first place. For writing, I'd recommend rnote over Xournal++ as it feels faster and is way more intuitive to use.

Conclusion

My next laptop will be such a convertible as well! I also really like the idea of those detachable keyboards like the surfaces, but those devices are even less upgradable than the 2in1s. And being able to open up the machine without destroying the screen glue is a necessity in my opinion.

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