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I purchased this exact i5 Helix pre-launch from an Ebay reseller so I've had about a month of use with it. If you don't already know from watching one of those brief Helix ads, it's a tablet convertible laptop with dual batteries. I'll skip all the specs and go to my experience.
First of all, I come from using a Surface RT, Razer Blade, and self-built PCs. I sold my Surface RT and Razer Blade to pursue my journey of finding my ultimate device to augment my work. Razer Blade was incredibly fast and powerful, but it was too big, gets too hot on the lap, and looks unprofessional. The Surface RT's kickstand is a pain to use on a lap. It keeps falling over and it's ARM processor doesn't allow for freedom of programming languages. I have to use Python and Visual Basic for financial modeling. The Helix fixes all these issues for me of course. Design-wise, I believe it to be the best implementation of a convertible so far. I'll list the negatives though.
The touchpad is frustrating. The usual Thinkpad buttons are gone and the whole pad is allowed to be touched to move the pointer. That's a problem because when I click, I tend to move my finger. I would ultimately start dragging things or clicking the wrong links. Lowering the sensitivity helps but it really shouldn't be that troublesome. Lowering sensitivity obviously makes it less responsive, such as touching the touchpad slightly to the side of your finger won't be registered if sensitivity is too low.
Two-finger scrolling is terribly unresponsive and unusable. I have since switched to one-finger scroll with the circular gesture. I find the one-finger scroll to respond enough of the time to work effectively. However, it is no match to a MacBook's touchpad's two-finger scroll response. I wish they got this right.
Fan is always on. Don't get me wrong, the fan is not noisy compared to something like the Razer, but it's strange that it has not turned off while I just type this review. I can't really figure out how to install TPfancontrol for the Helix. Some help would be appreciated.
The upper right corner of screen/tablet can get pretty hot. It's not too much trouble for me since I usually work on my lap and there is no heat from the keyboard.
The battery life is great but it's nothing like the Surface RT. The Surface RT claims 8 hour battery life. Lenovo claims 10 for the Helix. Well, if both were playing videos, I'm sure the Surface RT would last longer. The Helix drains quicker. The battery life is still phenomenal for a device this powerful, and I haven't needed to charge at work yet. However, I watch my battery life closer with the Helix than I did with the Helix. I drain the keyboard battery so quickly. I understand it is a trade-off though. The Helix has a much nicer display and I can definitely attach an external monitor or TV to the Helix. I would experience horrible, unusable lag if I did that with the Surface.
Next problem may be a Windows 8 issue. Because the Helix is 1080p and only 11.6", everything is pretty small. If I try to get Windows to enlarge icons, text, etc., fonts and pictures would look blurry. I haven't found a solution to this yet except keeping to the default smaller settings.
Next issue is the price. For about $1700, this is extremely expensive. I LOVE the design but I start to doubt whether it's really worth the price. I love a small tablet PC that I can work on in bed with a fantastic feeling keyboard. One alternative is the Thinkpad Tablet 2 which I tried in a store and it was pretty awesome. I actually prefer the design of the Tablet 2 over the Helix. It is so small and Lenovo designed a beautiful case for it. The problem with it is that I cannot adjust the screen angle, hdd space is limited, keyboard trackpoint is annoying, and the performance of the processor with multiple screens is dubious. However, as a simple programming and office device, I could see myself happy with the Tablet 2. For now, I still think the Thinkpad Helix is possibly the best business laptop, but I would love a slimmed down version that's even thinner and cheaper.
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Frequent requests for buying additional software (for PDF, backup's etc)Spacebar key (left side ok, right side or center needed extra push)
The helix has two batteries: keyboard dock and tablet. The tablet one stopped being recognized by the OS after a week.
Stylus would would stop working every other day and I had to recalibrate it every time.
Noisy and overheating (Not a biggie; I had the i7 core; not much that Lenovo could do to fix that).
+ Nice display
+ Touch screen works very nicely
+ Windows 8 works smoothly
+ Two power chargers
After two weeks of playing with it I returned it, mostly because of the battery failure. (Tried to update BIOS, of course loaded all updates, etc).
Nice idea, somewhat poorly executed. For a machine that costs over $2K I expect something better.
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I wish I had time to write a comprehensive review but here is the bottom line. I sell over 1,000 PCs and Notebooks a year and have been doing it since 1987. This is the most impressive machine I've had the pleasure of working with in many, many ways.It's solidly built. The screen is super bright and sharp. It's touch and it has a stylus for jotting notes and marking up documents and presentations. It boots super fast and it runs just as fast (mine is the i7 version but can't be much of a noticeable difference). It presents no compromises as a notebook or as a tablet.
If you fly a lot you will appreciate the battery life which got me to Europe with power to spare. Also by detaching the tablet, turning it 180 degrees around and re-attaching it to the keyboard base you get a tablet that will sit at a 30 degree angle on your trey table. Much easier to manage than a typical tablet sitting flat.
The only weakness I found is not the machine's fault Windows 8 remains a struggle for me. It's a great touch OS but going back and forth between "Metro" applications and the traditional desktop and non-Metro applications is a bit painful. That is probably more my lack of experience than anything but it's definitely an issue for me at this stage.
It's expensive but it's worth the money in my opinion. Not affordable for everyone but neither is a BMW. If you are looking for a flexible travel machine that doubles as a notebook and tablet, the Helix is what I would recommend.
Honest reviews on Lenovo Helix 11.6" i5 4GB 180GB Notebooks
This is how your review will appear:4.0 out of 5 stars Great Hybrid, Great Computer, August 23, 2013
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Kevin Hinton This review is from: Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 36984RU 11.6" Convertible Ultrabook/Tablet i7-3667U 8GB RAM 180GB SSD (Personal Computers)
I've been looking for a tablet/computer that I could use for work and for play (and that runs real Windows) for over a year now and the Helix has delivered on both fronts. The portability is amazing, pop the screen off and you have a tablet you can carry around the house or into meetings, snap it back on and its ready for work (or a little gaming). And through this, the battery keeps on going.
A couple things could be improved on though, it could have the next generation of Intel processors (Haswell) in it. This would drastically increase battery life. Also the graphics card is only on-board (Intel 4000), so don't expect to run anything at high rez, but I've been able to play both SWTOR and Civ V without any real issue. Also the RAM is supposedly soldered onto the board making it pretty much impossible to upgrade later. Though it sounds like the hard drive is removable.
If you can afford to wait, I would wait until these guys have Haswell chips in them (you'll get WAY better battery life). If not, buy this computer. I did a lot of research into all the hybrids on the market right now and this is by far the best.
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Expensive yes, but its a great laptop. No Haswell is not a huge problem as the battery runs 9 hrs as is. Keyboard far better than another hybrid option. Its is a great laptop and a solid tablet. Everything else has a stronger bias, such as the Lenovo Yoga which is great laptop but a mediocre tablet. Or the Microsoft Surface devices, which are very nice tablets but really so-so as laptops. The Helix does both extremely well. Its somewhat overpriced, but if you really want the laptop/ultrabook in one (as many travelers do) and don't want do use two machines to do it (laptop plus tablet) this is the best option on the market today.Update Major issues with trackpad. Hard to use and ultimately resulted in returning the device. The trackpad had a lot of travel when click and causes the pointer to hop around when clicking. Small issue ultimately brought down the utility of a very interesting hybrid.
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