The Lenovo Yoga C930 is the successor of the Yoga 920 which we reviewed previously. It is a high-end 14” laptop (13.9” exactly) designed to provide an excellent user experience via its performance, design and overall capabilities.
It is built with an aluminum chassis and features an updated version of the Yoga 900 Series industrial design. Surfaces are clean-cut, and you can tell that the manufacturing methodology is superior to Premium laptops price $700-$1000. The most visible change, at first sight, is the new hinge.
Lenovo has gone away from the “watch bracelet” hinge, despite its super neat design, but it is for a good reason: the new hinge also doubles as a soundbar with two tweeters that will complement the bottom-firing speakers. With this new sound setup, the Lenovo Yoga C930 is certified for Dolby Atmos, and we can’t wait to try it in a serene environment. Trade Shows are notoriously terrible places to test sound quality.
For a long time, audio sound quality did not evolve very much, but in the past year, the competitive pressure is making various OEMs make strides, and we’ve been impressed with the progress.
The Yoga C930 (C stands for Convertible, which also means 2-in-1, or Multimode) display goes as high as 4K/UHD (3840×2160) but a classic 1080p/FHD (1920×1080). Both options use the IPS LCD technology which means that their viewing angle is excellent. They are also both certified for Dolby Vision, which means that there’s HDR support, although it is not clear what their respective brightness level and color-coverage are.
Despite the thin bezels, the top of the screen hosts a webcam that has a physical shutter, just like the more recent X1 laptops. This way, you don’t have to use tapes in places where webcams can be problematic.
This laptop can be configured with up to a Core i7-8550U, 16 GB of RAM (DDR4) and 2TB of SSD PCIe. As you can see, it is more than capable of taking on pretty every task you throw at it, except edgy gaming and workstation workloads. A discrete GPU addition would be perfect, but for now, Lenovo has a couple of other options for this, including the new ThinkPad X1 Extreme and the ThinkPad T480s.
All of the ports are on the left side of the computer, with 1x full-size USB and two USB-C Thunderbolt 3, along with a standard 3.5mm audio port. Finally, there’s one more port in the back that hosts the garaged pen! The Yoga 920 had an outside pen, and there was even a USB pen holder. However, user feedback suggested that storing the pen inside the laptop is the most sought-after option, so Lenovo obliged.
Last, but not least, it is possible to get a version of this laptop with a glass display cover, instead of the aluminum one. It is made of hardened, scratch-resistant, glass.
In conclusion, this new Yoga C930 (price starts at $1399.99 for the base version, avail. in October) is shaping up to be one of the best 14-inch thin & light laptops and should compete well in that ferocious market. We’ll know more when we have an opportunity to run some numbers and push its limits. Stay tuned for a full review.
Filed in . Read more about Editorspick, IFA, IFA 2018, Laptops and Lenovo.