Generally i thought that an i5 was better than an i3, but i'm unsure, which would be a better choice in laptop for basic use and maybe some gaming,
Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga, Intel Core I5-4200U 1.6GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD+16GB SSD, Windows 8.1 Pro
Or
Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga, Intel Core i3 5005U / 2 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB Hybrid Drive ( 16 GB SSD cache ) - Windows 8.1 Pro 64
The i5 is cheaper in price so i'm rather confused.
The I3 is better
The i5 is cheaper largely because it is a much older model. That particular i3 is fairly new and largely a better processor. Going by the benchmarks available the i5 is still slightly faster, in particular with the turbo boost. However the i3 has better multimedia capabilities, with faster and more modern integrated graphics.
If you intend to play any games at all, i'd recommend the i3, otherwise there's not a huge amount in it.
Go for i5.
I'm using an i5 4200U for gaming and everyday use and it performs really well. So if you're going to game go for i5. It will guarantee a smooth experience.
Edit: that core i5 will perform @ 2.6Ghz using turbo boost when you're using it. And btw if you're going to use win8 and game, then upgrade your memory to 6GB. That's what I have and I've never had any problems. I would definitely upgrade the RAM(assuming of course that the windows is 64bit). Everything else looks good to me.
Best of luck.
It's pretty much a coin toss between them, as to which one is better. Neither of them will be any good at games. To play games, you would need a system with either Nvidia or AMD graphics engine alongside the Intel processor. The i3 is a slightly newer generation than the i5, that's about the only reason it's more expensive. But the actual benchmarks show that they are barely any better than each other, and the i5 actually has slightly better single-core performance.
Intel Core i5 4200U vs i3 5005U
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4200U-vs-Intel-Core-i3-5005U#specs
Get i5 5th gen.i5 is better.