Being stuck under quarantine meant that I had to work from the comfort of my own room. With the amount of tasks I had to accomplish within the 8.5 hours, I wanted a laptop that could help me accomplish these faster and more efficiently. Naturally, I had my work laptop with me but I decided to give another laptop a try during my work from home saga.

Luckily, before this quarantine started, I got my hands on the Lenovo Yoga S740 in a very beautiful package. The company pegs this as a creative mind’s laptop, doubling down on hardware pieces fit for photo and video work. When you’re not using it for Photoshop or Premiere Pro, it’s supposedly an excellent work laptop.

So, maybe it won’t be too bad to give this laptop a shot — even with my work laptop in full reach. Here’s what the Lenovo Yoga S740 brings to the table:

It has a 14-inch IPS glossy display that flips 180 degrees

It has an NVIDIA MX250 discrete GPU inside

It comes in a thin and light chassis, in the Iron Grey color

Masterful performance for its intended use

The Lenovo Yoga S740 comes with premium hardware fit for professional work laptops out there. The 10th generation Intel Core i7-1065G7 chip they put inside this device provides more than enough power for most of the tasks I did. From making tons of spreadsheets to doing some video editing, this device clearly holds its own against all of it.

It didn’t even take that long to boot up the laptop thanks to the 512GB M.2 SSD inside. Load times for most applications are what you’d expect from a new processor and 16GB of RAM inside. It’s almost like this laptop sets the standard for how work laptops should be based on the hardware.

With the NVIDIA MX250 inside, you can play games at a fairly decent frame rate. In my experience however, I don’t recommend it as part of your main activities with the device. Apart from playable frame rates of 30-40 FPS, the device warms up pretty fast and its thermals are not exactly built for that.

Solid battery life across the board

Lenovo claims the device can last up to 14 hours provided you just use it for most everyday tasks. On my end, I got about 10 to 11 hours all while using it strictly for work-related tasks like writing reports and processing data. When using the device along with social media, Netflix, and a little bit of gaming, it’s around 8 to 9 hours, which is pretty decent.

The device doesn’t take too long to charge either, as it took two and a half hours to fully charge it. If you decide to charge the device using the Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C port, it takes about three hours for a full charge. I found out that you can use any USB-C charger you have lying around, whether it’s for your phone or for your Nintendo Switch.

The way the thermals work confuses me

For me, it’s important to keep any portable device well ventilated. I’ve had experiences both with phones and laptops that just heat up real fast, then take a long while before cooling down. The Lenovo Yoga S740 proved to be no exception to this, but it also manages to do it a little worse than most laptops I’ve had — and I don’t know why.

For starters, the device has rubber feet that elevate it a little bit when placed on any surface. Ideally, this gives the laptop room to exhaust hot air through its ventilation grills underneath, which it was able to do on regular use. However, when you’re doing a lot of tasks at the same time (not necessarily gaming-heavy), the fans get loud and the hot air can’t get out properly. I say that mostly because I feel the warmth on the keyboard when this happens.

Another thing I observed was that even in sleep mode, this device pumps the fans up. Ideally, it shouldn’t pump out as much air as it should when you’re actively using it. However, when I decided to just put it to sleep by closing the lid shut, it still pumped out a lot of hot air. I thought closing the lid shut also means the device would be put in a low power state, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

Other features that deserve your attention

There were a bunch of other features that you should look at before even thinking of getting this device. First, the overall design is pretty great for any use case. The FHD IPS display folds up to 180 degrees, and honestly best used when you’re typing something while lying down. The speakers are found just beside the keyboard, and are pretty decent when you’re watching movies.

Second, the 720p IR camera is just, well bad. I didn’t run into any problems setting it up for Windows Hello’s facial recognition, which makes up for a lack of a fingerprint sensor. But the moment you start using the webcam on its own, it’s not promising at all. The images show obvious grain, not much attention to even sharpening the details a bit. If you ever need to do a conference call, this camera won’t help you.

And lastly, there are some ports that this device had to sacrifice but these were not good sacrifices. For most creative professionals, having an HDMI port also helps — apart from the Thunderbolt 3 port. Most external displays readily available still use an HDMI port, so there’s a missed opportunity there. Also, the lack of an SD card reader will have you sacrificing one of your two USB Type-A ports — especially for photographers.

Is this your GadgetMatch?

At PhP 74,995, the Lenovo Yoga S740 is one great on-the-go work device. The hardware inside is great for most work and creative tasks. Plus, it lasts pretty long provided you use it just for work or creativity purposes. You can game on it a little, but don’t expect mind-boggling frame rates unless you get the unit with the NVIDIA GTX 1650 inside.

There are some things that do deserve a second opinion before you get this device. The lack of substantial ports, a grainy 720p camera, and the hard pumping thermals leave a lot to be desired. But, if you feel that you can manage with these, then this device is great on its own.

Overall, I think that this is a great alternative to most work laptops I have. When I’m not using it for work, it’s also great for most past times I have. If I were a creative professional, I’d highly consider getting this, but maybe once the quarantine is over.

SEE ALSO: Why the Lenovo Yoga S940 makes for a perfect business travel companion