By far the most disappointing thing about the Yoga 11’s hardware is the “Powered by Windows RT” sticker that comes on the palmrest. The sticker comes off easily, but you’re still stuck using the low-end version of Microsoft’s OS that can’t run any of your legacy applications. It can only run the apps available in the Windows Store, which is growing but remains a paltry selection next to what you can do with full-blown Windows 8 or OS X. The one distinct advantage of Windows RT is its bundled version of Office Home and Student 2013. Word’s the only Office app I use frequently, so I wound up using the Yoga 11 like the world’s most advanced typewriter, but there’s a pretty compelling case to be made for an ultraportable laptop with a great keyboard and a copies of Excel and PowerPoint.

The case gets even stronger as you enter about hour nine of using the Yoga 11. This device’s battery life is just ridiculous: I consistently got more than 12 hours of consecutive, intensive use before the battery gave up the ghost. I streamed YouTube videos for 12 hours, and worked for entire days without ever getting the battery into the red; one nice byproduct of the Yoga 11’s limited capabilities is that it kind of feels like it runs forever. It even charges quickly, so with about 30 minutes of being plugged in you’ll get at least two full days of use.

That’s why I really hope Google’s paying attention to the Yoga 11. Lenovo and Microsoft figured out how to squeeze incredible battery life out of these low-powered specs, a feat that has somehow eluded Google and its partners as they’ve built Chromebooks. If the Yoga 11 were a Chromebook and still lasted this long, I bet it’d be cheaper, and I bet I’d buy one. But I digress.

I’d love to give Lenovo credit for limiting the Yoga 11’s functionality and maximizing its performance, but other than the battery life there’s nothing “maximum” here. The Yoga 11 is powered by an Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset like the one inside the Surface RT, and it’s still not up to its task. Swiping and tapping through the tiles of the Windows UI is fast enough, but almost everything else is head-bangingly laggy. Apps take 10 seconds or more to load, are far too prone to crashing, and just always feel a beat behind. Even Word couldn’t keep up, constantly an instant behind me as I typed. The machine felt fast and fresh whenever I booted it up, but by the time I had a couple of apps open it felt downright sluggish.

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