I bought the YOGA Pad Pro 14.5 AIYuanqi.
14.5-inch Notch-less OLED
The Lenovo YOGA Pad Pro 14.5 AIYuanqi (YOGA Pad Pro 14.5 AI元启版) is Lenovo’s first tablet to feature its proprietary SoC, the SS1101.
While its performance is close to the MediaTek Dimensity 9300, its power efficiency is significantly inferior. Looking at the SoC performance alone, it seems like a spec that only the most patriotic Chinese consumers would buy.
However, it has advantages over other tablets in terms of its display and ports. The 14.5-inch, 3000 x 1876 resolution, notch-less OLED display allows you to enjoy videos, games, and manga on a large screen.
In addition to video output to a monitor via the USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, it also has a USB Type-C port capable of DisplayPort input, allowing the YOGA Pad Pro 14.5’s display to be used as a monitor for a Windows PC or other devices.
This review is based on the 16GB+512GB version, TB571FU_CN_SEC_USER_H0414_V_ZUXOS_1.1.11.039_ST_250521.
AndroPlus- Vibrant and clear 14.5-inch OLED display
- Notch-less
- Bright at a measured 1087 nits
- Large 12,300mAh battery
- USB 3.2 Gen 2 port supports both video output & input
- Performance is mediocre
- Poor power efficiency
- Bypass charging not supported (though stopping at 80% is possible)
| Lenovo YOGA Pad Pro 14.5 AIYuanqi (TB571FU) | |
|---|---|
| OS | Android 15 |
| RAM | 16GB LPDDR4X? |
| Storage | 512GB UFS 3.1? |
| SoC | Smarter Silicon SS1101 |
| Display | 14.5-inch 3000 x 1876 Aspect Ratio 16:10.01 120Hz Refresh Rate OLED |
| Size | 327.1 × 210.44 × 5.45mm |
| Weight | Measured 718.1g |
| Rear Camera | 13MP (OMNIVISION OV13B10) + 8MP (Ultra-wide GalaxyCore GC08A8) |
| Front Camera | 32MP (GalaxyCore GC13A2) |
| Battery | 12,300mAh |
| USB Port | USB Type-C (USB 3.2 Gen 2 / DisplayPort Out) + USB Type-C (DisplayPort In) |
Index
Display: Clear and Easy to See
The YOGA Pad Pro 14.5 AIYuanqi features a 14.5-inch 3000 x 1876 resolution OLED display.
It’s specified with 107% NTSC, a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and DeltaE<1. Indeed, compared to the previous model, the Lenovo Legion Y900, the colors appeared more vibrant and clearer.
Color temperature and other settings are adjustable, and it supports double-tap to wake/sleep the screen.
Unlike the Xiaomi Pad 7 Ultra, it has no notch, so nothing obstructs your content when reading manga or browsing websites.
It uses a Shift BRBG arrangement instead of a diamond pixel layout.
The panel was an HX5329 made by EverDisplay (EDO).
When I measured the brightness with an LX-1336B while displaying a full white image at maximum brightness, it reached a peak of 1087 nits.
It’s bright enough to be easily visible outdoors during the day.
It’s a unit that indicates the level of brightness; the higher the number, the brighter it is.
It is said that 400-500 nits are needed for indoor visibility, and 800-1000 nits for outdoor visibility.
By the way, on many devices, the maximum brightness is limited unless auto-brightness is turned on.
It supports a 120Hz refresh rate.
Using Touch Sample Rate Tester, I measured the touch sampling rate. The Movement Rate for both single-touch and multi-touch averaged around 120Hz.
This relates to the sensitivity of the screen when touched.
A higher number often means the screen responds more quickly to touches.
However, actual touch latency is not determined by this alone; other factors can contribute to a larger overall touch delay.
As a rule of thumb, a Movement Rate that is about twice the screen’s refresh rate is average. If it’s over three times, it’s high, and gaming phones often reach 5-6 times the refresh rate.
The total touch latency measured with WALT Latency Timer was 55.7ms.
This is the time it takes for the screen to respond after being touched.
The smaller this number, the faster the response.
Gaming phones typically have a latency of around 25ms, while regular smartphones are generally in the 30-40ms range.
It has Widevine L1, enabling high-quality streaming playback on services like Amazon Prime Video.
Back: Two-Tone Design
The back has a matte finish, which is resistant to fingerprints and smudges.
The camera bump extends across the full width, so the tablet doesn’t wobble much when placed on a desk.
The weight is 718.1g.
Speakers: 6-Speaker System
It is equipped with six speakers, with a claimed 17cc and 34W.
They are tuned by Harman Kardon and support Dolby Atmos.
The soundstage is wide, and the bass is strong, making drums and basslines clearly audible.
The treble is a bit subdued but still sounds clear enough.
The default setting could sometimes sound a bit muffled, so it seems better to set Dolby Atmos to the “Music” profile.
The internal components are almost all from Chinese manufacturers.
It appears to use an AW88396 and a Cirrus Logic CS47L90.
Checking the supported codecs with Bluetooth Codec Changer, it showed support for AAC / aptX / aptX HD / LDAC.
Ports: Supports Both Video Output and Input
The YOGA Pad Pro 14.5 AIYuanqi has a large 12,300mAh battery and supports 68W fast charging.
In addition to a mode that maintains the battery level between 40-60%, there is also a mode that stops charging at 80%. Unfortunately, it does not support bypass charging.
The previous model, the Lenovo Legion Y900, only had the mode to maintain the battery between 40-60%. After two years of being plugged in, its cycle count was 196 and maximum capacity was at 87%.
The mode that stops charging at 80% seems to draw some power directly from the charger, so the battery life should be longer than the Y900’s.
The USB 3.2 Gen 2 port allows for fast data transfer and supports video/audio output via DisplayPort Alt Mode.
The USB Type-C port at the bottom edge supports DisplayPort-In, allowing the YOGA Pad Pro 14.5 AIYuanqi’s display to be used as a monitor for devices like a Windows PC.
It’s wonderful to have a single device that can fulfill two needs: displaying Android apps on a larger screen, and serving as a beautiful portable sub-monitor for a laptop or mini PC.
The display modes include “Mirror Mode,” which shows the same image on the tablet and monitor, and “Extended Mode,” which allows for different content on each screen.
The power and volume buttons are located on the top left side.
Performance: Power Efficiency Still Lags Behind
The YOGA Pad Pro 14.5 AIYuanqi secretly houses ‘SS1101,’ a proprietary Lenovo SoC. It has a unique configuration of 2 x 3.29GHz, 3 x 2.83GHz, 2 x 1.9GHz, and 3 x 1.71GHz cores, with a Mali-Immortalis-G720 GPU.
Smarter Silicon (Shanghai) Technologies Co., Ltd. seems to be involved in its manufacturing, and the SoC manufacturer was listed as SmarterSilicon, not Lenovo.
Its CPU performance is comparable to the Google Tensor G3 or MediaTek Dimensity 9300+, and its GPU performance is slightly better than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which is decent. However, its power efficiency is poor due to high power consumption.
In Geekbench 6, the package-name-spoofed version (unaffected by the manufacturer’s unfair boosting) scored 1892 in single-core and 4376 in multi-core. The regular version scored 2020 in single-core and 6859 in multi-core.
The significant difference, especially in multi-core, suggests that the device uses package name detection to control performance.
Many manufacturers have been caught cheating by detecting popular benchmark apps like AnTuTu by their package name. They then loosen thermal controls or lock the CPU to high clocks during the benchmark to inflate the score.
This behavior is different from normal app usage, leading to situations where “benchmarks are great, but performance in other apps isn’t as good.”
Since each manufacturer’s boosting behavior is different, comparing boosted results is meaningless.
Therefore, it’s crucial to change the package name to disguise the benchmark as a general app to get a true, unboosted score.
This is explained in detail in this article.
It’s a benchmark that quantifies CPU processing performance in tasks like background blurring and text processing.
Single-core performance is important for light, everyday tasks, while multi-core performance is crucial for heavy tasks like gaming.
A single-core score over 1200 and a multi-core score over 3000 will generally provide a comfortable experience.
Benchmark results are compiled in this article.
In the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Stress Test with a spoofed package name, the score went from 3694 down to 3004.
The stability was 81.3%, and the battery temperature rose to 41°C.
Wild Life Extreme is a benchmark that uses the Vulkan API to quantify GPU performance with 3840×2160 resolution graphics.
A higher score means smoother 3D rendering in games, and high Stability means the device can maintain high performance over long periods.
This is just a simple, general indicator for Vulkan API usage. Considering that popular games rarely use the Vulkan API, the score isn’t very useful. It’s mainly for checking heat generation during GPU use.
It only allows for inferences like, “If performance is good in Vulkan, it will likely be good in OpenGL too,” or “If it tends to get hot, it will likely have trouble maintaining FPS in real games.”
The PCMark Work 3.0 (package name spoofed), which measures performance in everyday tasks like document editing, scored 14705.
It’s a benchmark that quantifies processing performance for tasks like web browsing and image/video editing.
A higher score means faster processing, but the balance with battery consumption is also important, so a lower score isn’t necessarily bad.
A score of 8000 or more is sufficient for most uses.
The memory and storage specifications are not disclosed, but results from the CPDT Benchmark suggest it’s likely LPDDR4X and UFS 3.1 or lower, or that the performance is not being fully utilized.
While it doesn’t have a major impact on perceived speed, it’s disappointing that there’s almost no evolution from the Legion Y900.
Sequential read/write speeds affect the reading and writing of large files, such as during file copying or video encoding/decoding.
Random read/write speeds are for small files and are more important for app and game performance.
I played the CPU-intensive game Genshin Impact for 30 minutes in Performance Mode, at the highest graphics settings, and 60 FPS target. I measured it with Scene 8 while running a set path in Natlan (using a skill at Mualani and following the road). The result was an average of 55.5 FPS with a power consumption of 232.43 mW per FPS.
The battery temperature rose to a maximum of about 39.6°C.
Its average FPS and power efficiency are inferior to the ALLDOCUBE iPlay 70 mini Ultra, which has a Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3. From a user’s perspective, there is absolutely no benefit to using a proprietary SoC; it merely serves as a stepping stone for China’s national policy of domestic production.
I’d like to say I have high hopes for future development, but with US sanctions against China now in place, they are unable to use the latest technology. It seems that without a major breakthrough, they will continue to lag far behind Qualcomm and MediaTek.
Lower power consumption per FPS indicates better power efficiency.
Good power efficiency means less battery consumption, while poor efficiency leads to rapid battery drain.
A phone with poor power efficiency in games tends to have high battery consumption in other apps as well, often making you feel like the battery drains quickly.
Average FPS (frames per second) indicates how smoothly the display can be maintained, and higher is better.
(To be precise, a high average FPS combined with low “jank” or stuttering results in a smoother perceived experience.)
When playing the GPU-intensive game Honkai: Star Rail for 30 minutes in Performance Mode at the highest graphics settings (repeatedly using Acheron’s Technique in Penacony’s “Golden Hour”), it averaged 39.7 FPS.
After about 4 minutes, the frame rate was already capped below 40 FPS. While the temperature was kept down to 39.4°C, the performance is not comfortable, and the power efficiency is also poor.
Summary
- Vibrant and clear 14.5-inch OLED display
- Notch-less
- Bright at a measured 1087 nits
- Large 12,300mAh battery
- USB 3.2 Gen 2 port supports both video output & input
- Performance is mediocre
- Poor power efficiency
- Bypass charging not supported (though stopping at 80% is possible)
Lenovo’s first proprietary SoC, the SS1101, has performance comparable to the MediaTek Dimensity 9300 but with inferior power efficiency, so there’s no significant performance improvement over the previous model.
Besides Lenovo, Xiaomi has also equipped a proprietary SoC, the XRING O1, in its Xiaomi 15S Pro and Xiaomi Pad 7 Ultra, which has also been criticized for poor power efficiency.
It seems various companies have ventured into developing proprietary SoCs to circumvent sanctions, but this has only served to demonstrate that they cannot easily catch up to the top manufacturers.
If the ‘bright and beautiful 14.5-inch OLED’ and the ‘ability to use it as a monitor’ are appealing to you, the YOGA Pad Pro 14.5 AIYuanqi is unique and recommended.
If you’re fine with an LCD for a large screen and want a high-performance tablet that can also handle games comfortably, the 13.2-inch OnePlus Pad 3 with a Snapdragon 8 Elite is cheaper and more powerful.
AndroPlusIn China, it can be purchased from 4999 yuan (tax included, approx. $685 USD).