Lenovo Yoga 6 13 (2023) Laptop Review

The Lenovo Yoga 6 2-in-1 is only available in the Dark Teal color. Some models have a textured fabric covering the lid. See the bottom of the laptop here.

The Lenovo Yoga 6 feels well-built. The lid and keyboard deck are aluminum, while the bottom is plastic. There's some flex on the lid and keyboard deck, and the touchpad feels a little loose; however, these issues aren't severe enough to be of concern. As for the finish, although it doesn't scratch easily, it picks up a fair amount of fingerprints and smudges, which is typical for a dark color finish. Some models have a textured fabric covering the lid. Unfortunately, we don't have that model, so it's hard to say how durable it feels and whether it'll fray or stain over time. There are no complaints with the feet; they feel solid and stick firmly to the bottom.

The Lenovo Yoga 6 2-in-1 has good hinges. It feels smooth when opening and closing the lid, and it's very stable, exhibiting only a small amount of wobble when moving the laptop or typing heavily. Unfortunately, there's too much resistance for a one-handed lift.

Accessing the internals is straightforward; you only need to remove six T5 screws and undo the clips holding the bottom panel with a prying tool. The included drive is an M.2 2242 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD, though the slot also supports the larger M.2 2280 format.

Get the hardware maintenance manual here.

• 45W USB-C power adapter and cord
• Documentation

The Lenovo Yoga 6 is only available with an FHD+ display. While this resolution may seem low, it isn't really an issue on a 13-inch screen. The display looks sharp and provides just enough real estate for split-screen multitasking. Its 16:10 aspect ratio is great for productivity, as it gives you slightly more vertical space than a standard 16:9 display, allowing you to see more information at once when reading a document or website.

You can only get this laptop with a 60Hz display. This panel has a slow response time, resulting in visible ghosting in fast-moving scenes.

The display's contrast ratio is okay and within the typical range for most IPS panels; however, it's still relatively low compared to other display technologies like VA and OLED. This contrast level makes blacks look gray in dim settings.

The display's maximum brightness is acceptable. It's fine for most indoor settings but isn't ideal for sunny rooms or outdoors in broad daylight. It gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting, which is great for dark room viewing as it causes less eye strain.

The display handles reflections relatively well. Its glossy coating mainly struggles with bright light sources, like a lamp or open window during the day. These reflections are visible, even with the screen at maximum brightness.

The display's horizontal viewing angle is passable. The image dims and washes out quickly as you move to the side. It's best to be directly in front of the screen if you need perfect accuracy for color-critical work.

The display's vertical viewing angle is passable. Like the horizontal viewing angle, the image dims and washes when viewing from above and below, so you need to look at the screen more or less straight on to see an accurate image, which can be challenging in tight places where you have little room to tilt the screen, like on a bus or airplane.

The display's accuracy is bad out of the box. The white balance is visibly inaccurate, especially at higher brightness levels where it's overly warm, and the gamma is too high throughout, over-darkening everything. As for color accuracy, the greens and blues are fine; it's mainly the reds and purples that are off. The color temperature is quite warm, giving the image a noticeable reddish tint.

The Lenovo Yoga 6 has an sRGB display, meaning it only has full coverage of the commonly used sRGB color space. It doesn't have enough coverage of the wider Adobe RGB or DCI P3 color spaces for professional photo editing and HDR video production.

The Lenovo Yoga 6 has a great keyboard. Its layout feels spacious and is easy to get used to. The keys are mostly stable and require little force to actuate; however, they could use a bit more travel and tactility. You can adjust between two backlight brightness levels or turn it off completely.

The touchpad is good. It tracks all movements and gestures well, and palm rejection works as intended. It's relatively large for a 13-inch laptop, though it could be a tad wider, as it would make some actions easier, like dragging and dropping over a long distance and manipulating maps. This is a diving board touchpad, so you can only click in the bottom half. Unfortunately, the buttons feel cheap, and they push deeply into the chassis, which might be an issue later, as debris can fall into the crack.

The speakers get very loud with minimal compression at higher volume levels; however, they sound muffled and slightly unnatural, with almost no bass.

The webcam's video quality is sub-par. The image looks soft and underexposed, with an unnatural tint and colors. Thankfully, the audio is much better—voices sound loud and clear, with no static background noise. The privacy cover is only a physical barrier, so it doesn't disable the camera or the microphone at the software level. You can manually turn off the microphone via the F4 shortcut.

The Lenovo Yoga 6 has a great port selection. All USB ports (type A and C) support USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed of up to 5Gbps. The USB-A next to the MicroSD card slot is always on, meaning you can use it to charge an external device even when the computer is off. The HDMI's maximum output resolution is 4k @ 60Hz.

The wireless adapter is a MediaTek MT7921. Wi-Fi 6E gives access to the 6GHz band, providing faster speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference than previous Wi-Fi standards. However, you need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features.

The Lenovo Yoga 6 is available with the following CPUs:

• AMD Ryzen 5 7530U (6 cores/12 threads, up to 4.5GHz, 16MB L3 cache)
• AMD Ryzen 7 7730U (8 cores/16 threads, up to 4.5GHz, 16MB L3 cache)

Based on AMD's older Zen 3 architecture, the Ryzen 5 7530U and Ryzen 7 7730U are low-power processors typically found in ultraportable laptops. They can only handle light to moderately intensive productivity tasks like text processing, web browsing, spreadsheets, and video playback. Most people with such a workload can likely get by with the 6-core Ryzen 5. The Ryzen 7 7730U has more cores and threads, making it a better option for heavy multitaskers or more intensive applications.

The Lenovo Yoga 6 is only available with integrated Radeon graphics. This GPU can only handle light tasks like text processing, web browsing, and video playback. It isn't powerful enough to run graphically intensive games; some older or lighter titles will run, but you'll have to play with the lowest graphical settings to get playable frame rates.

You can configure this laptop with 8GB or 16GB of RAM. The memory isn't user-replaceable.

You can get this laptop with 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of storage. The SSD is user-replaceable; the slot supports M.2 2242 and 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.

The Lenovo Yoga 6's AMD Ryzen 5 7530U is fast enough to provide a relatively smooth desktop experience in light, general productivity workloads like text processing and web browsing; however, don't expect to do anything remotely intensive, as its multi-thread performance is lacking. If you're a heavy multitasker, it's best to get a model with a Ryzen 7 7730U, as its two additional cores will give you more headroom. Like most integrated GPUs, the Radeon Graphics processor performs poorly and isn't suitable for demanding workloads.

The AMD Ryzen 5 7530U's single-thread performance is pretty good for a low-power CPU based on AMD's older Zen 3 architecture; however, its multi-thread performance is lacking. As for the Ryzen 7 7730U, it has better multi-thread performance because it has two additional cores, but bear in mind that there'll be some thermal throttling, as this is a thin and light, general productivity laptop with limited cooling.

While you can render 3D images in Blender using the CPU, getting a laptop with a discrete GPU is best, as even an entry-level GPU, like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, can render images much faster.

The AMD Radeon Graphics perform poorly in the Basemark GPU benchmark. This integrated GPU is far too slow for graphically intensive games. You can play some simple, puzzle-like games or older titles at 1080p, but you'll have to play at a lower resolution or with low graphics settings to get playable frame rates.

Borderlands 3 isn't playable on the Lenovo Yoga 6. The CPU and integrated GPU can't handle such demanding titles. You can get over 30 fps with the lowest graphical settings, but the gameplay is still very choppy due to frame drops.

Civilization VI is playable at 1080p if you turn down the graphical settings a bit; however, the average turn time is pretty long.

Counter-Strike 2 isn't playable. Although you can get over 60 fps at 1080p with low graphical settings, the gameplay is very choppy due to frequent frame drops.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider isn't playable on the Lenovo Yoga 6 at 1080p. Even with low graphical settings, the gameplay is extremely choppy, sometimes freezing completely. The CPU and integrated GPU aren't powerful enough to handle this and other similarly demanding games.

The keyboard only gets mildly warm under load, and the hot spot is at the top of the keyboard deck, away from where most people rest their hands. The fan is very quiet and isn't bothersome at all. Unlike higher-end Lenovo devices, the Lenovo Vantage app on this machine is more barebones and doesn't include fan control settings.

Although we report the CPU performance loss as 0%, there's clearly some throttling when looking at the graph. This is because we calculate the performance loss based on the initial runs, which score lower than the subsequent runs, resulting in a performance increase. The throttling is fairly minimal and isn't noticeable if you only perform light productivity tasks.

The Lenovo Yoga 6 has a few pre-installed apps, including:

• Lenovo Pen Settings: This lets you change the pen's settings.
• Lenovo Smart Appearance: Improves your appearance and applies a background on video calls.
• Lenovo Vantage: Contains warranty information and ads for Lenovo products.
• McAfee: Antivirus software. Requires subscription.

There's a fingerprint sensor and a facial recognition IR camera. You can use either one to log in quickly, authorize purchases in the Windows Store, and auto-fill saved passwords on supported websites.

The display supports pen input, but not all models include a pen in the box, as it depends on the region and retailer. The included stylus is a Lenovo Digital Pen; you can buy it separately if there isn't one included in the box. This stylus uses Wacom AES technology, so any Wacom AES stylus will work.