There are already a number of thoughtful reviews here on Best Buy of the Yoga 6, so I thought it might be worthwhile to compare the Yoga 6 to another similar 2-in-1 that people may also be considering - the HP Envy x360 13” 2-in-1 available here at Best Buy with an 11th-gen Intel i7 and the new top-tier Xe integrated graphics.
I purchased both laptops as open box, excellent condition items while each was on sale. I paid $674.99 for the HP ENVY x360 2-in-1 and about $539.99 for the Lenovo Yoga 6. Both come with current-gen processors and integrated graphics, and both come with 8GB RAM. The HP does have a larger SSD, though at 512GB vs 256 for the Yoga 6.
The HP x360 is quite a nice little laptop. Compared to the Yoga 6, it’s a little thinner, a little lighter and has an overall slightly smaller footprint. It’s made of metal, its screen is brighter, its audio is better (despite downward-firing speakers), and I like that its keyboard has media controls and buttons to kill the webcam and mike. I also like that it has a micro-USB slot, and Thunderbolt 4. The Yoga 6 has none of these things. But ultimately, I returned the HP in favor of the Lenovo Yoga 6. Why? The Yoga 6 has significantly higher performance and is a better all-around package for me.
While the HP x360 uses a 4-core, 8-thread 11th-gen Intel i7 w/the new Xe integrated graphics, the Yoga 6 uses the excellent AMD Ryzen 4650U Pro, a 6-core, 12-thread processor that is simply faster than Intel’s offering overall in my testing. And while Intel has been touting their new Xe graphics as going head-to-head with the NVidia MX350 discrete graphics card, the truth is that in real-world applications, and at lower TDPs than Intel’s 28W reference laptop design, that’s just not true (in my testing). Perhaps in time better drivers from Intel will close the gap, but it’s certainly not the case now. In fact, in actual use, the Xe graphics couldn’t even keep up with the (excellent) integrated Radeon Vega 6 graphics in the Yoga 6. I ran a few benchmarks on these and will show just a couple of results here.
In the photo of the two laptops side by side, you can see the results of a graphics benchmark test using the game Dirt Rally on battery power (since I like to game on the go with small laptops like these, I test on battery as well as plugged in.) Settings were identical for each – 1600x900, medium preset, identical options, both laptops set to their performance modes, etc. You can see that the Yoga 6 had an avg of 67.42 FPS with its Radeon Vega 6 graphics, vs 43.88 for the HP x360 with its intel Xe graphics. Min and max frames were also much higher with the Yoga 6, and you can see from the test summary that over the course of the benchmarking, the HP Envy dropped thousands of frames compared to the Yoga 6. Every gaming benchmark I tested showed the Yoga 6 to consistently beat the HP ENVY x360 in frame rates.
I also like to use the benchmarking application Novabench. (This benchmarking suite completes in minutes and does not really stress any component with long-term sustained loads. It’s good for a quick snapshot before more detailed testing.) I show a representative run with both laptops on battery power at their highest-performing modes. Here again, the Yoga 6 scored faster overall (Yoga 6 = 2405, HP x360 = 2057). The Yoga 6 had higher sub-scores for CPU and DISK (1602 and 261, respectively, vs 1302 and 159 for the HP) while the HP scored slightly higher on the GPU and RAM 363 and 233, respectively, vs 331 and 211 for the Yoga 6) This did *not*, however, translate into real-world performance gains for the HP, graphically or otherwise.
The Yoga 6 was just a little bit faster in daily use, and significantly faster in games. It was also significantly faster to boot up ~6 seconds compared to ~12 seconds. In addition to the generally higher performance of the Yoga 6, it also stayed cooler and had significantly better battery life (not a surprise given the CPUs in each).
So, again, the HP ENVY is a nice little laptop, and some people will have no issue paying more for the slightly smaller metal build, thunderbolt, brighter screen, etc. I don’t think it’s unreasonably priced (especially at its current sale price) at all and would recommend it for those who understand what it can do, and what it can't. But I think the better *value* by far is with the Yoga 6, and for my needs, that is what I ultimately chose.
I hope this is helpful for someone making a purchasing decision.