Lenovo Yoga C940
A fine 14in convertibleconv hybrid that outl outlasts and outperformsoutperform the Dell XPS 13 2-in 2-in-1
SCORE
PRICE £1,113 (£1,335 inc in VAT) ) from lenovo.co.uk
While the es essential ld idea behind th the Lenovo C940 is the same as a the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 ( see issue 305 305, p60), this convertible laptop h has two immediate advantages: it comes with an active stylus, which stows away neatly l in a slot in the spine of the machine; ac e; and a d it t includes a larger display. The Yoga’s measures 14in across the diagonal with an aspect ratio of 16:9, while the Dell’s is 13.4in and a squarer 16:10.
You can configure the Yoga C940 with a 1080p or 4K panel, with
Lenovo sending me the former for testing. It’s a fine display but if you’re going to use it for photo editing or colour-critical design work, seek out the Intel Graphics Control Panel by searching for it in the Windows 10 Start menu. With the power-saving settings enabled, dynamic contrast kicked in, dimming the display when there was a lot of dark content on the screen.
With this battery-saving guff disabled, the display was decent without being amazing. Brightness peaks at 369cd/m2 , which is a fair notch behind the Dell XPS 2-in-1’s 538cd/m2 , and it also falls behind for colour accuracy: while a 91.4% figure for sRGB coverage is good, d an average Delta E of 3.08 is not. Dell’s laptop aptop sco scored ed 97. 97.1% % and a d 1.18 .8 in those tests.
I would still be happy watching films on the C940, though, and that’s due to the exceptional speakers. These take the form of a Dolby Atmosbranded “soundbar” that stretches across the centre of the machine, in the crease between the screen and keyboard. These don’t pump out much bass but produce audio with a surprising amount of body and volume. I wouldn’t want to listen to music on these, but talk radio, podcasts and TV shows? No problem.
A 720p webcam sits above the screen, and unlike the Dell it includes a cover that you can slide across for privacy. Alas, you can’t use the webcam to unlock the machine with your face as it isn’t compatible with Windows Hello, but a fingerprint reader sits just below the bottom right-hand corner of the keyboard for speedy unlocking.
While I’d prefer more travel and feedback, the keyboard is pleasant to type on with a good amount of space surrounding each key. The touchpad is large and responsive too: it’s a diving-board design, which means you can’t click it along its top edge, but the clicks aren’t too heavy or rattly.
With a compact chassis
“Whichever way you slice it, the Yoga C940 is a mighty fine 2-in-1. It’s as fast as all its rivals and outlasts them for battery life”
– it weighs 1.35kg – physical connections are inevitably vitably limited, but still beat the Dell l thanks to an old-school USB-A port ort sat alongside a pair of Thunderbolt 3-enabled USB-C ports on the left edge e of the machine.
It’s also good to see ee Wi-Fi 6, but that’s to be expected d alongside Intel’s tenth-gen mobile CPUs. PUs. With a Core i7-1065G7 and 16GB of RAM in this configuration, fig and a 256GB Samsung SSD, the he C940 performed formed strongly in our u benchmarks. nchmarks. A total tal of 102 is three points faster than the Dell. It was a similar story when en it came to graphics performance, mance, with the more advanced Intel ntel Iris Plus graphics (denoted by y the G7 in the processor name) delivering ivering a noticeable performance nce advantage over the less beefy Core i5 in the Acer Swift 5 ( see p58) and a similar performance to the XPS 13 2-in-1. In the GFXBench Car Chase test both the Dell and Lenovo scored around 55fps, compared to 31fps for the Acer.
Note that Lenovo includes a speedy SSD too, with the Samsung drive returning sustained read and write speeds of 2,585MB/sec and 2,062MB/ sec respectively. The latter is three times as fast as the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1. And this laptop’s battery life was even more impressive, lasting 11hrs 13mins in our video rundown test.
That’s a good two hours longer than the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 and three hours better than the similarly specified Surface Laptop 3 ( see issue 304, p54).
Whichever way you slice it, then, the Lenovo Yoga C940 is a mighty fine 2-in-1. It’s as fast as all its rivals and outlasts them for battery life. It has broad connectivity, impressive speakers and its only weakness is the display. (But, in general, it’s still a good screen.) With a sleek chassis, solid 360˚ hinge and a bundled stylus, you have a 2-in-1 that combines good looks and great performance – and all at a keen price. If you want a 2-in-1, it has to be either this or the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1. For my money, the Lenovo Yoga C940 edges it.
SPECIFICATIONS
Quad-core 1.3GHz Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor Intel Iris
Plus graphics 14in 1,920 x 1,080 touchscreen IPS display 256GB SSD 16GB LPDDR4 RAM Full HD webcam
2x2 MIMO 802.11ax Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4.1 2 x Thunderbolt 3 USB-A 3.0
(Gen 2) 60Whr battery active stylus Windows 10 Home 320 x 216 x 15.7mm (WDH) 1.35kg 1yr RTB warranty