Lenovo Yoga C930 Review - Review 2022

1 of the few things the otherwise-excellent Lenovo Yoga 920 2-in-1 convertible laptop is missing is a convenient identify to shop its digital stylus. That's stock-still with the Yoga 920's replacement, the Yoga C930 ($one,299). Instead of an awkward plastic stylus holder that plugs into a USB port, the Yoga C930 comes with a pen "garage," a pocket-size aqueduct built into the back border that holds the active stylus when information technology's not in use. Several other pocket-sized improvements, including a revamped hinge and an HDR display, help make the Yoga C930 even better than the Yoga 920 information technology replaces, earning it an Editors' Choice award for best convertible laptop.

The Yoga Line, Redefined

The Yoga C930 derives its name from Lenovo's new naming convention. The "Yoga" family name originally signified the power to rotate the laptop'south screen 360 degrees to transform information technology into a tablet, once a novel feature. Now that convertible laptop designs are commonplace, Lenovo bestows the Yoga moniker on its entire line of premium consumer laptops, even if the product happens to be a conventional laptop without a rotating hinge.

In fact, that very rotating swivel, which is a slice of luxury-watchband-style bling on the Yoga 920, is now a more ordinary-looking single piece of metallic on the Yoga C930. But the new hinge has its own charms. Not only does its housing make room for the stylus holder on the upper correct border, but it houses a speaker grille that conceals ii tweeters, giving information technology a pleasingly perforated look.

The new speaker position should theoretically consequence in better audio, since the tweeters face outward regardless of whether the laptop is in laptop or tablet mode. The Yoga 920's downwardly-firing speakers on the bottom of the chassis ways that they're nigh powerful when you utilise the Yoga 920 in Tent or "A-frame" mode, so that the speakers face yous. In that case, in tablet and laptop configurations, the audio is a bit muffled.

In practice, however, the Yoga C930's sound yet isn't every bit good in Tent style as it is in Laptop manner, specially when you're listening to music. In that location'southward a noticeable muffling effect when you lot flip the screen over. The Yoga C930's base features 2 boosted speaker grilles that deliver bass.

When yous do flip the screen over, the laptop transforms into a tablet, albeit an unwieldy one given the 3.one-pound weight of PCMag'south review unit. The Yoga C930 shares this unwieldiness with pretty much every other convertible laptop of its screen size. If you program on using your device primarily in Tablet manner, yous'll desire to opt instead for a dedicated Windows tablet like the Microsoft Surface Pro; some such machines come with a detachable keyboard for occasional laptop use.

The Yoga C930 measures 0.57 by 8.ix past 12.68 inches (HWD), which is par for the course for a thirteen-inch laptop or convertible. The 13-inch MacBook Pro measures 0.59 by eleven.97 by 8.36 inches, for instance, while the Dell Inspiron 13 5000 two-in-1 (5379) measures 0.77 by 12.76 by 8.85 inches. What'south impressive near the Yoga C930 is that information technology fits a larger screen (13.9 inches) into this form factor. Fifty-fifty more impressive: Its dimensions are barely unlike from those of the Yoga 920 (0.55 by 12.72 by viii.8 inches), despite the improver of the integrated pen slot.

The spring-loaded pen slot, located in the right corner of the laptop'south rear edge, is a nifty feature. Its main benefit is helping you non lose the included stylus when you're transporting the laptop, simply it also serves equally a means of charging its congenital-in battery. The stylus itself is piece of cake to utilize and quite precise, thanks to tilt detection and pressure sensitivity. The only downside is that Lenovo reduced information technology in size to fit in the small garage, which means it'south considerably smaller than the Yoga 920's marking-like digital pen.

Alexa Will Hear You Now

In add-on to the new swivel and the integrated stylus holder, other improvements in the Yoga C930 include new far-range microphones that will work with phonation assistants like Microsoft'south Cortana and Amazon's Alexa. Lenovo has been at the forefront of Alexa's integration with Windows 10, first announcing support at CES 2022 in January. But that integration has proven to be a slow process, with Alexa's total capabilities finally arriving in August.

To enable them on the Yoga C930, you tin can type "Alexa" in the search field on the Windows ten taskbar. You'll first be prompted to sign in to your Microsoft account, then your Amazon account. One time everything is ready, you can say "Hey, Cortana, Open up Alexa." The Yoga C930 volition then function merely similar an Amazon Echo speaker or other Alexa-enabled device. Your spoken commands are even displayed on the screen.

Thanks to the laptop's far-field microphones, the Yoga C930 picked up voice commands and understood what I was asking no matter where I was in a big room of about 900 square feet. That means it should function very well in an open-program apartment or the living and dining expanse of a small house. Yous tin configure the microphones so they'll wake up the laptop from sleep mode when you utter a Cortana command, but to speak with Alexa, you'll have to log in to your account commencement.

A fingerprint reader on the Yoga C930'south keyboard deck should brand that Windows sign-in easier, merely information technology failed to recognize my fingerprint about a third of the time over several days of apply. Some versions of the Yoga C930 will include infrared (IR) sensors to allow you log in using face up recognition, but either fashion, y'all'll still take to walk over to the laptop, which could be inconvenient if, say, you're trying to wait upwardly something while y'all're cooking.

If you don't opt for the IR sensors, y'all'll instead become a photographic camera with a built-in sliding shutter to provide peace of mind if yous're worried about hackers spying on y'all. Picture quality from the 720p webcam is decent for casual video conferences, though it's defective compared with loftier-end smartphone cameras, many of which tin can shoot in 4K. I appreciate that the webcam also has an unobtrusive congenital-in physical sliding door, which prevents you from having to use a snip of masking tape to thwart potential privacy-invading hackers. The shutter and its lever are so small and well-integrated that I eventually forgot they were fifty-fifty at that place.

The Yoga C930 comes in several different color options too greyness, and Lenovo as well plans to offer an choice to add a futuristic glass brandish hat. I didn't particularly similar the blue wavy glass hat the company showed me during a brief demo, however. It would certainly raise eyebrows in a conference room.

Two Screen Options

Nigh of the other features of the Yoga C930 remain unchanged from its Yoga 920 predecessor. Processor options include energy-sipping eighth Generation Intel Core i5 or Cadre i7 processors, total Hd (1,920 past 1,080) or 4K (three,840 by 2,160) impact screens, two USB Type-C ports with Thunderbolt 3 support, a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port, and a headphone jack. Unfortunately, there's no memory-card reader, not even a microSD menu slot. Wireless connectivity options include 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

The unit I tested is equipped with the full HD display option, which offered splendid motion-picture show quality in Laptop mode. If you've ever used a higher-resolution tablet similar an Apple iPad ( at Amazon) , you might want to footstep up to the 4K version, though. I definitely noticed graininess when holding the Yoga C930 up shut to my face in Tablet way. Either resolution choice comes with support for Dolby Vision, a High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology that can display a wider range of color and contrast.

You'll only observe the difference if you're watching a video or playing a game that also supports Dolby Vision, and the wider color range is more apparent on a 4K screen, but even so, I certainly noticed the departure while watching some short nature clips on YouTube in HDR at total HD (1080p) resolution.

Storage options are plentiful, ranging from 256GB to 2TB, and each capacity uses the cutting-edge PCI Express SSD interface for fast information access. The test model I take in hand has a 256GB drive.

The buttonless, clickable touchpad and backlit keyboard experience quite sturdy, merely clicks and button presses are shallow. The depth of the key plunge is not most as luxurious as with the keys on Lenovo's ThinkPad lineup, which are the almost comfortable laptop keys I've e'er typed on.

A Modest Performance Increase

For slightly less money than the configuration of the Yoga 920 I tested last twelvemonth, PCMag'south Yoga C930 includes about of the same internal components. That includes the 8th Generation "Kaby Lake R" Intel Cadre i7-8550U processor (a quad-core fleck) and its born Intel UHD Graphics 620. But the Yoga C930 eked out slightly better performance on many of our benchmark tests than its predecessor did, a feat for which the C930'due south increased 12GB memory complement is mostly responsible. (The Yoga 920 unit of measurement we tested had 8GB of RAM.)

I noticed a modest bump of a few hundred points on the all-encompassing PCMark 8 benchmark (3,284 for the Yoga 920; three,575 for the Yoga C930) using the Work Conventional preset, which simulates spider web browsing, video conferencing, and other common function tasks. Annihilation above 3,000 on this test is a solid score.

Similarly small performance improvements occurred on the Cinebench 3D and the Handbrake video-rendering tests, although the Yoga C930 took slightly longer to apply a series of images in our Photoshop CS6 examination than the Yoga 920 did (ii minutes and 54 seconds vs. 3:04). Still, the results hither testify that the Yoga C930 is a reasonable culling to a mobile workstation or a tricked-out Apple MacBook Pro if you demand to do some light video editing or prototype manipulation in the field.

In terms of overall feel, the laptop never felt sluggish, even with multiple browser tabs open, some with streaming video. Unfortunatley, the laptop ships with bloatware from Microsoft (Minecraft, Processed Crush, and similar games), likewise as a complimentary trial of McAfee LiveSafe, complete with pesky upgrade reminders.

The Yoga C930 is non a reasonable alternative to a gaming laptop, every bit the graphics functioning results conspicuously indicate. The but laptop shown above in our comparison set that performed reasonably well on these tests is the Asus ZenBook Flip fourteen, cheers to its modest GeForce MX150 dedicated GPU. Don't effort to play anything other than browser-based games on the Yoga C930 unless you're willing to punch downwards the game's screen resolution and quality settings to their minimums.

At a bit less than 19 hours on our rundown test, the Lenovo Yoga C930's bombardment gave out slightly sooner than the Yoga 920's, which lasted for more than than 22 hours. Still, any laptop than lasts for more than xv hours has a good run a risk of getting you through an entire workday or an unabridged cross-country flight without plugging in. This is a superb consequence.

An Excellent Convertible Laptop

The Lenovo Yoga C930 gets even more than correct nearly the convertible laptop form factor than its predecessor did. That's no small achievement; the Yoga 920 set the bar very loftier. If y'all're looking for a Windows laptop that you can occasionally employ as a tablet for drawing or watching movies, it doesn't get much better than this.

Lenovo Yoga C930 Specs

Laptop Class	Convertible 2-in-1
Processor	Intel Core i7-8550U
Processor Speed	one.8 GHz
RAM (as Tested)	12 GB
Boot Drive Type	SSD
Boot Drive Capacity (every bit Tested)	256 GB
Screen Size	13.9 inches
Native Brandish Resolution	1920 past 1080
Touch Screen	Yep
Panel Technology	IPS
Variable Refresh Support	None
Screen Refresh Rate	60 Hz
Graphics Processor	Intel UHD Graphics 620
Wireless Networking	802.11ac, Bluetooth
Dimensions (HWD)	0.57 by eight.9 by 12.seven inches
Weight	3.02 lbs
Operating System	Windows 10 Home
Tested Battery Life (Hours:Minutes)	eighteen:44

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Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/netbooks-products/29147/lenovo-yoga-c930-review

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