The Yoga 2 Pro has a knack for bending and folding. The first thing you’ll notice about Lenovo’s latest Windows 8 tab-top is its 360-degree hinge, which enables a range of poses. Keep pushing the multi-touch monitor, and it will turn from a keyboard-and-touchpad laptop (stretch) to an upright, counter-sitting tablet (streeetch) to a completely flat tablet (streeeeeeetch, ooh).

Specs at a glance: Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro SCREEN 3200×1800 at 13.3" (276 ppi) OS Windows 8.1 64-bit CPU 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-4200U RAM 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 (one slot, upgradeable to 8GB) GPU Intel HD Graphics 4400 (integrated) HDD 128GB solid-state drive NETWORKING Dual-band 802.11agn, Bluetooth 4.0 PORTS 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0, mini-HDMI, card reader, headphone/microphone dual jack SIZE 12.99 × 8.66 × 0.61" WEIGHT 3.06 lbs BATTERY 4-cell Li-polymer WARRANTY 1 year STARTING PRICE $999.99 OTHER PERKS Webcam, volume rocker, screen orientation lock button, system back-up button

That’s not just a reason to make jokes about “downward facing dog" (like the last model); this form-shifting functionality proves so useful, it now seems like a “duh” move for any multi-touch, keyboard-optional laptop. As such, Lenovo has gone to lengths to make sure the second iteration of the Yoga Pro line brings more to the portable party.

Most notably, the new Yoga has more pixels. The device now comes with a staggering 3200×1800 of those pixels, packed into the same 13.3-inch screen as the original model. Coupled with a slight reduction in chunkiness and a bump in specs, this could set this device up as the ultimate drool-inducing portable in the $1,000 range.

After extensive testing, the Yoga 2 Pro’s size and screen certainly earn it that river of drool. However, in spite of its best qualities (did we mention all of those pixels?), the biggest drawback is the operating system they're tied to.

How to hold it, how to fold it

The Yoga 2 Pro's chassis doesn’t stray far from the last model for better and for worse. It has the same rubberized texture on the inside and out, which feels weird at first touch but proves quite comfortable for lengthy typing stretches. The original Yoga's chiclet keyboard has also seen no changes and fits my large hands pretty well; it lacks anything in the way of distracting design or key placement, and even better, the keys now come backlit.

The trackpad is seemingly unchanged, meaning its sensitivity and usefulness are a little funky. Unfortunately, it didn’t take much time for the trackpad to noticeably darken where our fingers pressed it the most.

Weight has gone down from 3.4 to 3.1 lbs, and our tape measure confirms a thickness of 0.61” on both ends (meaning the tapering cut in material on the front end is mostly illusion). The sides show a minor port shuffling, the only major differences being the HDMI-out port shrinking to mini and the addition of an odd, fingernail-sized button that brings up a system backup menu. Again, Lenovo has elected to include only one USB 3.0 port and to place a USB 2.0 port on the opposite side (seemingly to toy with Ars’ poor Andrew Cunningham, who wants every USB 2.0 port to be replaced as soon as humanly possible, thank you).

The all-important hinge returns, continuing to straddle the fine line between firmness and bendability. It stays mighty still when the Yoga 2 Pro is in “stand” mode, in which the keyboard side lays flat on a table while the touchscreen faces the user, as well as in “tent” mode, in which the screen and keyboard sides form a tent at a roughly 30 degree angle.

Both of these “poses” benefit from rubberized coating on the edges, which plant the device and reduce its wobble. The laptop arrangement results in a teensy bit of wobble, as the screen doesn’t completely lock into place at any upright angle, but you’ll really have to look to notice it.

The tent and stand modes prove great ways to showcase this high-res, 16:9 screen, especially since the modes nix the eight inches of distance that would otherwise be occupied by the keyboard. I’ve quite enjoyed laying in bed with the Yoga 2 Pro propped up in stand mode on my chest so that I could comfortably watch “Super HD” content on Netflix within a few inches of my face. Emphasis on “comfortably.” I've engaged in plenty of acrobatics to make wonky tablet cases hold a screen up anywhere near as elegantly as this unit, and it'll be hard to look back after watching late-night TV this way.

For portability’s sake, there’s no Blu-ray drive, so users will probably rely on streaming and downloaded video. While that content usually maxes out at 1080p, the Yoga 2 Pro does a solid enough job rendering and upsampling that resolution’s content without any glaring visual issues. As of right now, this is the best mix of resolution and screen size on the market to deliver eye-popping portable video quality, especially since the 16:9 ratio means less screen space wasted on black bars. Other videos, particularly those from Hulu Plus, don’t look quite as sexy. There’s only so much upsampling can do to convert from 720p (or less) to 1800p.

You can even enjoy remarkably high-res video content when you split the Yoga 2 Pro’s screen into multiple apps, all without taxing the laptop’s specs too much. Our review unit, currently priced at $999, came packed with a dual-core i5-4200U CPU clocked at 1.6 Ghz, along with 4GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD, and an embedded Intel HD 4400 graphics chip. We've already run some performance benchmarks on this particular chip in our review of Acer's Aspire S7 Ultrabook, and we point you to that in order to see how it stacks up to other comparable CPUs.

Shoppers can add $200 to the MSRP to jump to an i7 CPU and a 256GB SSD. You’ll have to upgrade the RAM yourself by popping the keyboard open, which like last model, will only allow you to replace the default offering with a single 8GB stick. Update: According to several readers and Lenovo's own support site, the Yoga 2 Pro's RAM is soldered to the motherboard. You'll have to buy the system with as much RAM as you need, since aftermarket upgrades won't be possible.

We would love more RAM (that’s our bumper sticker, by the way), but pretty much every productivity app we loaded worked without a hitch or an incredible slowdown. While the system’s fans produce an audible hum, it was certainly meek and never proved noticeable while watching movies or TV.

This is no gaming system by any stretch, but knowing that even a Microsoft Surface Pro can handle a touch-friendly version of Civilization V, we tried booting it up. There were immediate errors. For one, the game would never boot into “full-screen” resolution unless we told the game to render 3200×1800, a move that resulted in an immediate crash. For another, even trying to open the game took 20 minutes of trial-and-error, thanks to Windows being unable to figure out how to register our clicks through the initial “click here to continue” prompt, both with mouse and with touch.