Review: Lenovo Yoga C940

Lenovo’s pioneering 2-in-1 Yoga brand manages to refine a near-perfect model

The Lenovo Yoga brand is known for being the pioneer of the 2-in-1 category, offering convertible laptops with touchscreens that double as large tablets. The Lenovo Yoga C930 is the top-tier in the brand, replacing 2018’s watch strap-like hinge for a soundbar with a Dolby Atmos Speaker System. As great of a laptop as the C930 is, everything (literally) revolves around its soundbar hinge – which has to be the all-time cleverest innovation to laptops – at least where audio is concerned.

The entire laptop hinge is a Dolby Atmos powered 5.1 soundbar, that rotates so the subwoofers always face downward, no matter the orientation of the laptop. It’s the perfect union of style and function, the result of some pretty innovative engineering.

“Dolby Atmos delivers breathtaking, three-dimensional audio that flows above and around you with depth and precision. Combining two sets of speakers – featuring powerful down-firing woofers, custom tweeters, and unique vibration buffers that reduce unwanted noise – your audio will sound bigger, deeper, and more accurate. It’s sound you can feel.”

The Internals

The review unit we received from Lenovo came equipped with an Core i7 processor, 12GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. All Yoga c930s come with security focused features like fingerprint readers and Lenovo’s Thinkshutter cover for the 2MP webcam, which is pretty much useless in all scenarios except for the most well-lit environments. On the creative side, it also conceals an active stylus in a slot right behind the screen that charges the pen when it’s stored away.

Boot up time is impressive, getting you from the Lenovo boot up logo to the log-in screen in under 10 seconds – thanks to Yogo c940 having Intel’s Project Athena certification. While it’s not quite matching Chromebook times, that’s darned close.

Battery life is impressive as well, averaging about 8 hours on performance-focused settings, and getting well over 10 with battery conservation on.

Display

(In Progress)

Our review model came with a 15.6″ FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS, touchscreen, that can get as bright as 500 nits – which is the model to go for if you’re concerned with battery longevity. You can equip it with a 15.6″ UHD (3840 x 2160) 4K display, though the crisp and vivid visuals the Full HD display provides is more than adequate enough for all but the most demanding spec fanatics.

Conclusion

The Yoga C940 is one of the best laptops that I’ve ever used, the accurate glass trackpad and comfy keyboard are great input devices and the speakers are only rivaled by the latest Macbook Pro’s audio. The 360-degree hinge, touchscreen, and active stylus put the c940 firmly in a unique category where owning a tablet and laptop (iPad and Macbook) feel redundant. Why own a tablet and a laptop when you can have a reliable 2-in-1 with a 5.1 soundbar and active stylus included? Why buy a Wacom drawing pad, when you can just flip the keyboard back on your laptop and draw right on the screen? Sure, you can do this on a lot of laptop models today, but very few (if any) bring every aspect of media creation into one package for the creative professional.