Lenovo Yoga 710-11ISK Upgrade

Over the 2016 Labor Day weekend, I stopped by Best Buy and saw that they had a table of open box items. On the table was an 11 inch Lenovo Yoga 710-11ISK for $419. The Yoga 710 was on sale for $449 new. I was going to buy it new, but Best Buy was SOLD OUT of the new Lenovo Yoga 710-11ISK. Instead they sold me the open box for $350, boom, done, bought.

Processor: Intel Pentium 4405Y (1.50GHz 1866MHz 2MB)
Operating system: Windows 10 Home x64
Display: 11.6" FHD IPS LED Backlit Multitouch (1920x1080) with integrated camera
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 515
Memory: 4.0GB LPDDR3-1866 MHz (Onboard)
Hard Drive: 128GB SSD
Optical Drive: No Optical Disk Drive
Network Card: 802.11 AC (1x1)
Bluetooth: Bluetooth Version 4.1
Warranty: One year
Battery: 4 Cell 40 Watt Hour Li-Polymer
Keyboard: English Keyboard

The notebook definitely needs a SSD upgrade. 128GB is way too small. It supports an m.2 SSD. A 1TB m.2 SSD is going for about $350. That's not too bad, maybe I'll go for that. The 500GB m.2 SSD is about $170.

I have ulterior motives with the Lenovo Yoga 710. I'm looking to replace the motherboard with the Intel Pentium 4405Y and 4GB memory with the model with the 6th Generation Intel Core m5-6Y54 (1.10GHz 1866MHz 4MB) and 8GB memory. Rest assured that when the Lenovo Yoga 710-11 with the Intel Core m5-6Y54 motherboard becomes available, I will be buying it and upgrading this little guy with with real horsepower. Stay tuned.

See Lenovo Yoga 710 (11") models here.

See the disassembly guide for the Lenovo Yoga 710 (11") here.

I haven't gotten around to taking the Lenovo Yoga 710 apart, but the above link shows how to take the 710 apart.

As a note, this laptop is great with a few annoyances.

• The power adapter is awkwardly fat and takes up unnecessary space.

• The keyboard arrow keys are awkwardly set where the UP arrow key is between the ? and the left shift keys, making it easy to hit the UP arrow key instead of the left shift key...INFURIATING. The Logitech K400 wireless keyboard had the same layout and it was super annoying.

• Lastly, the power adapter connector on the laptop side is thin and plugs in at a right angle to the laptop. I've had these kinds of connectors break on me because it's always pulling at a funny angle. Personally, I prefer the straight plugs.