Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1 14" Touchscreen Laptop Review

 As my child had been getting into video games, we decided to get them a laptop of their own so they wouldn't need to borrow my wife's.

Here were my list of requirements:

• Priced less than $700
• 11-14" Screen
• IPS or OLED
• at least 300 nits
• at least 45% NTSC coverage
• A recent processor with great integrated graphics
• AMD Ryzen 7 7840U with Radeon 780M
• AMD Ryzen 7 8840U with Radeon 780M
• Intel Core Ultra 7 155U
• or newer
• RAM >= 16GB 
• Storage >= 512GB 
• USB C charging
• WiFi 7/6E with 2x2 antennas
• Backlit keyboard (optional)
• USB C charging on both sides (optional)

Best Buy had a sale for the Lenovo Yoga 2-in-1 14" Touchscreen Laptop (83DK000AUS / 12IAHP9), which we bought as it met most of my criteria.

• Price: $600
• 14" Screen 300 nits 45% NTSC coverage (~60% sRGB)
• AMD Ryzen 7 8840U with Radeon 780M
• RAM: 16GB
• Storage: 1TB
• USB C charging
• WiFi 6E with 2x2 antennas
• Backlit keyboard
• USB C only on a single side :-(
• Left ports:
• 2 x USB C (one USB4 40Gbps)
• 1 x HDMI 2.1
• 1 x 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack
• Right ports:
• 1 x USB A
• 1 x microSD
• 3.55 lbs
• Charger is a 65W brick style with 3 pin power cord

Compared to my wife's Lenovo Yoga 2-in-1 16" Touchscreen Laptop (82QG0001US / 16IAP7) which we bought in 2022:

• Price: $600
• 16" Screen 400 nits 72% NTSC coverage (100% sRGB)
• Intel Core i5-1240P
• RAM: 8GB
• Storage: 256GB
• USB C charging
• WiFi 6E with 2x2 antennas
• Backlit keyboard
• USB C only on a single side :-(
• Left ports:
• 2 x USB C (thunderbolt)
• 1 x USB A
• 1 x HDMI 2.0
• 1 x SD card reader
• Right ports:
• 1 x USB A
• 1 x 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack
• 4.37 lbs
• Charger is a 65W wall-wort style with 2 folding pins

My thoughts:

• The laptop feels sturdy and premium
• While the screen is not for color accurate work, or as good as my wife's, it looks plenty good to my eyes when not looking side-by-side
• The memory and storage should be sufficient for many years to come
• GPU should be about 2x more performant than my wife's, which should be plenty to play the types of games that my child likes
• The included 65W charger works well. Unfortunately, the laptop charges extremely slowly on our existing 45W chargers.

Child acceptance factor, in general they like it except:

• it is too heavy (would prefer a ligher 11")
• sometimes when starting screen share on Zoom, Zoom will stop responding

Appendix

Sources:

• https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-yoga-7-2-in-1-14-2k-touchscreen-laptop-amd-ryzen-7-8840hs-with-16gb-memory-1-tb-ssd-artic-grey/6571366.p?skuId=6571366
• https://psref.lenovo.com/Detail/Yoga_7_2_in_1_14AHP9?M=83DK000AUS
• https://psref.lenovo.com/Detail/Yoga/Yoga_7_16IAP7?M=82QG0001US

Other Reviews:

• https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-780M-iGPU-analysis-AMD-s-new-RDNA-3-GPU-takes-on-its-competitors.714019.0.html
• https://www.rtings.com/laptop/reviews/lenovo/yoga-7-2-in-1-14-2024
• https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/best-lenovo-laptop/

Ensuring USB DVD order

As my USB dvd drives were being detected into a seemingly random order, I wanted to be able to control what device each was being assigned.

Adding udev rules

• Find serials to add
• sudo udevadm info /dev/sr0 | grep ID_SERIAL_SHORT
• sudo udevadm info /dev/sr1 | grep ID_SERIAL_SHORT
• sudo udevadm info /dev/sr2 | grep ID_SERIAL_SHORT
• Create /etc/udev/rules.d/99-dvd.rules

ACTION="add", KERNEL="sr[0-9]", ENV{ID_SERIAL_SHORT}="first drive serial", SYMLINK+="dvd0"

ACTION="add", KERNEL="sr[0-9]", ENV{ID_SERIAL_SHORT}="second drive serial", SYMLINK+="dvd1"

ACTION="add", KERNEL="sr[0-9]", ENV{ID_SERIAL_SHORT}="third drive serial", SYMLINK+="dvd2"

• Reboot or force rerunning the rules
• sudo udevadm control --reload
• sudo udevadm trigger
• However, this did not work
• Edit /etc/udev/rules.d/99-dvd.rules and remove the ACTION

KERNEL="sr[0-9]", ENV{ID_SERIAL_SHORT}="first drive serial", SYMLINK+="dvd0"

KERNEL="sr[0-9]", ENV{ID_SERIAL_SHORT}="second drive serial", SYMLINK+="dvd1"

KERNEL="sr[0-9]", ENV{ID_SERIAL_SHORT}="third drive serial", SYMLINK+="dvd2"

• Reboot or force rerunning the rules
• sudo udevadm control --reload
• sudo udevadm trigger

Outcome

Success, it now creates the /dev/dvd* in a consistent order. Unfortunately, Handbrake still tries to use the /dev/sr* labels.

Appendix

Sources

• https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1ci1nsj/fixed_identity_location_for_multiple_optical/
• https://reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html#basic
• https://dev.to/enbis/how-udev-rules-can-help-us-to-recognize-a-usb-to-serial-device-over-dev-tty-interface-pbk

Recursively Mount ZFS datasets

In order to simplify mounting and unmounting my encrypted volumes, I wanted some scripts.

Recursively Mount

#!/usr/bin/env sh

dataset=$1

zfs load-key "${dataset}"
zfs list -rH -o name "${dataset}"  | xargs -L 1 zfs mount

Unmount and unload key

#!/usr/bin/env sh

dataset=$1

zfs unmount "${dataset}"

zfs unload-key "${dataset}"

Usage

# mount example

sh mount.sh storage/encrypted
Passphrase:

# unmount example
sh unmount.sh storage/encrypted

Appendix

Sources

•  https://serverfault.com/questions/450818/recursively-mounting-zfs-filesystems