Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Yoga Gen 2 2021, Core i5-1145G7, 16GB, 256GB SSD, Black

Great ports and build quality, but that 720p screen is a crime against your eyes. Buy it only if you're in Canada, get it under CAD 400, and plan to dock it to a real monitor.

The Core i5-1145G7 is fine for office work, email, and light multitasking. It's a 4-core chip from Intel's 11th gen, so it's not going to blow anyone away, but it holds up for spreadsheets and video calls. The 16GB of RAM is the real saving grace here, it keeps Windows 11 Pro from choking when you have 20 browser tabs open. The Iris Xe graphics are integrated and about what you'd expect, fine for streaming, useless for gaming. The 256GB SSD is on the small side, and it's in the 25th percentile for storage, so you'll be leaning on cloud storage or an external drive sooner than you'd like. The port selection is actually a standout, with Thunderbolt, three USB-A ports, HDMI, and Ethernet, which puts it in the 82nd percentile for connectivity. That's rare on a convertible this size.

Against the Apple MacBook Pro M3 Pro, this ThinkPad gets absolutely destroyed on screen quality, performance, and battery life. The MacBook is in a different league, but it also costs way more. The HP OmniBook X Flip 14 is a more direct competitor as a convertible, and it has a much better display and newer internals. The ASUS Zenbook UX3405CA is lighter and has a far superior OLED screen, but you'll pay more for it. If you need a cheap business convertible with great ports, the ThinkPad wins on price alone. If you care about the screen at all, look at the HP or ASUS.

At CAD 380 to CAD 430 from Canadian sellers, this is a budget-friendly way into a ThinkPad convertible. The USD 999 listing in the US is a much worse deal, so if you're south of the border, skip it or find a better config. For Canadians, the CAD 380 listing is the one to grab if you're set on this model. Just know you're paying for the ThinkPad name and ports, not the screen.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Yoga Gen 2 is a weird mix of great bones and a genuinely bad screen. You get the classic ThinkPad build, a 360-degree hinge, Thunderbolt, and 16GB of RAM, which sounds like a solid business convertible. But that 13.3-inch 1280x720 display is a dealbreaker for most people in 2025. It lands in the 2nd percentile for screens, and honestly, that feels generous. If you can live with a dim, low-res panel, the rest of this machine is a tank. But most people shouldn't have to.

If you care about screen quality at all, skip this. The 720p panel is a dealbreaker for anyone who reads, edits photos, or watches video on the laptop itself. Go get a used HP OmniBook X Flip or an ASUS Zenbook instead. If you want to game, this isn't it either. And if you're in the US looking at the USD 999 listing, absolutely skip it, that price is way too high for this config.

The ThinkPad X13 Yoga Gen 2 is a tough sell unless you get it at the low end of the Canadian price range and you genuinely don't care about the display. The 720p screen is a constant reminder that you bought a refurbished budget machine, and the 3.00kg weight makes the 'compact' label feel like a stretch. But if you need a durable, port-rich convertible for basic office work and you can find it around CAD 380, it's a functional beater laptop. Just don't expect to enjoy looking at it.