Lenovo Yoga C930 2-in-1 Review:

Lenovo is making some changes to its premium lineup – though only diehard fans (and a tech reporter) may notice. Instead of the "Yoga" moniker denoting only convertible flexible PCs, Lenovo will use the name of its premium consumer devices. Yes, we'll start to see Yoga laptops in addition to Yoga 2-in-1s and experimental devices, but today we're taking a look at Lenovo's answer to the Dell XPS 13 Convertible and the HP Specter x360 13: the Yoga C930 2-in-1.

The new convertible C930 replaces last year's C920 and attempts to fix its problems, mostly surrounding speaker and stylus placement. It's also one of the first Yogas to leave Lenovo's signature watchband hinge behind, instead opting for a solid metal hinge that doubles as a sound bar. It's likely to be one of the most traditionally-advanced, and its small yet crucial upgrades make it much better than its predecessor.

Look and feel

The Yoga C930's chassis and lid resembles that of the C920-all-metal rectangle wearing a satin finish, the lid is stamped with a shiny Yoga label. Sadly, the lid holds on fingerprints and smudges more than the chassis does, but the uninterrupted metal look is nonetheless sleek and professional. Weighing 3.04 pounds, it's as heavy as other ultrabooks in its size and price range. Its powerful internals prevent it from being the thinnest or the lightest, but it strikes a good balance of style, lightness, and performance.

The Yoga convertible C930 comes in iron gray, white, and blue. Aside from the blue model, which has a strange, wavy design on the lid, Lenovo opts not to pepper the notebook with metallic lines, soft-touch accent areas, or other conspicuous accents. I appreciate that decision; today, it can be difficult to make an attractive design, but Lenovo achieved that with this convertible.

Display and bezels

Like other convertible, the C930 suffers from a huge-chinese syndrome. The top bezel is roughly double the width of the side bezels because it houses the webcam.

While the C930's keyboard has a camera-disable button, Lenovo also built a privacy camera shutter (dubbed TrueBlock) above the webcam. Lenovo's notebooks: it's so tiny that it's almost invisible, so you'll be able to find your way around the webcam. Users can slide the shutter to the webcam whenever they please.

The 13.9-inch touchscreen comes in an FHD panel or 4K panel, and both support Dolby Vision HDR. It's a nice perk to have a lot of Dolby Vision content (Netflix, iTunes, and other services have some now). However, with the screen at 300 nits of brightness, you will not be able to watch the HDR content on a TV screen.

Sound bar hinge

Lenovo revamped the convertible's audio to complement the enhanced screen, hoping users will see it as an all-purpose ultrabook. Instead of the down-firing speakers in the C920, the C930 has a Dolby Atmos sound bar that connects the lid to the chassis. No matter how you use the C930-a laptop while doing work, in a fashionable way to watch YouTube videos, or as a tablet while sketching-the speaker rotates so it always faces outward so sound remains unmarred by desks, tables, laps, and other surfaces.

Sound coming from other devices can be obtained from the speaker's placement. Lenovo's solution is one of the most clever I've seen that does not matter the overall design of the device. Nixing the watchband hinge for this sound bar hinge served a practical purpose while maintaining the device's premium look.

The C930 comes with Dolby Atmos Audio software to enhance its new speakers, which allows you to customize sound preferences for movies, music, games, and voice. There's also a personalized profile that you can customize further by manipulating the surround visualizer, dialogue enhancer, and volume leveler.

The speaker itself is just fine, but it's not unintentionally blocked, it did not wow me. Atmos Audio sound settings, I turned the volume up to 100, and I was tested other laptops and convertibles, I was not afraid of my neighbors being irritated by the loud music. It's woody enough to fill my entire living room and tiny, attached kitchen, but the music was faint when I moved to the opposite end of my apartment.

Lenovo went all-in with Dolby on this one, and it can convince some users that the C930 is better equipped with a media consumption device. Although, I think its convertible design and the Dolby audio profiles do more for the device than the HDR features. The flexibility of convertibles makes them inherently better than watching videos and listening to music. Since HDR on portable PCs is not quite the same as HDR on TVs, users will be able to make audio improvements (especially those they choose to edit and customize) more than the visual ones.

The C930 also has some far-range mics so it can pick up commands you say to Cortana and Alexa. As far as connectivity goes, Lenovo rearranged the ports slightly on the C930 but it does not gain or lose anything significant of the C920. Only the power button lives on its right side, while a USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 port, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, and a headphone / mic jack sit on its left side. While I appreciate a USB-A port, the device would benefit from some kind of card reader, be it a regular SD card slot or a microSD card slot.

Keyboard, trackpad, and active pen

The C930 borrows some design elements from ThinkPad keyboards, though the two are not exactly the same. The keys have that rounded-with-a-flat-top look, but they are not ThinkPad devices. There is also a TrackPoint in the center of the keys, which will disappoint some. However, I enjoyed typing on the C930 even if it could not replicate my experience with this ThinkPad X1 Carbon year.

The space below the keyboard holds a moderately sized trackpad and a fingerprint reader, the bottom of the right corner of the keys. The C930 Convertible does not come with an IR camera, nor is it an optional feature, so the fingerprint reader is the only form of Windows Hello biometric authentication available.

When looking at the keyboard and trackpad, the chassis looks pretty standard. But hidden in the back corner of the C930, it's a garage that holds the active pen. Like most convertible, last year's C920 did not have a good way to keep it active. This is the first time you want to go to the table, where it is waiting (and charging) for you to use it.

The pen itself is not my favorite-it's short and quite thin, making it difficult to hold and nothing like holding a regular pen or pencil. But it does make up for that with its low sensitivity and low-latency performance. Its two side buttons also come in handy, too, giving you access to erasers, right-click menus, and more (depending on the program you're using).

While I'm doing it, I love its home in the C930 because it makes the pen one less thing I have to remember when I take the convertible out of my office or out of my home all together. It's great that Lenovo includes the pen in the C930's price, but it's even better than it's kept at all times. The active pen is almost always accessible, too, only blocked by the lid when it's at a specific angle.

Performance

Our review of the Yoga C930 2-in-1 runs on a Core i7-8550U processor, Intel HD Graphics 620, 12GB of RAM, and 256GB of PCIe SSD. Unsurprisingly, it served me as my primary work notebook during my testing days. I never experienced any lag or stuttering, though the fans were quick make noise even when I was doing fairly light web browsing. They are not anywhere near the fans on Huawei's Matebook X Pro, but you'll be able to hear them if you're working in a quiet room. We're interested in seeing how the Yoga C930's performance compares to that of the new Specter x360 13, which will be available this November.

Battery life

Lenovo estimates the Yoga Convertible C930 will last between 9 and 14 hours on a single charge, and our testing proved to be true. It lasted an average of 767 minutes, or just under 13 hours, on our Wi-Fi battery test, and an average of 674 minutes, or just over 11 hours, on our WebGL test. That's an above-average Wi-Fi score and a killer WebGL score, as well as the best competing devices (Matebook X Pro, XPS 13, Pen's Notebook 9, and others) lasted half of that amount of time on the graphics-intensive test at best.

The new-ish Lenovo premium

Lenovo came out of the gate with the convertible Yoga C930. It's a solid notebook to reintroduce the Yoga line as Lenovo's premium consumer family. (While ThinkPads are arguably more premium than Yogas, Lenovo still categorizes them as workplace or commercial devices.)

Lenovo is particularly good at taking important features-webcam shutters, booming speakers, integrated active thinking, and more-and-thoughtfully incorporating them into a device design without using gimmicks. Lenovo's notebooks, the C930 and the ThinkPad X1 Carbon alike, may not be the flashiest ultrabooks available, but they are understatedly attractive while being powerful to boot.

That being said, the Yoga C930 is not the device for you if you want a lighter, more customizable device that also has that signature ThinkPad keyboard experience. The X1 Carbon scratches that itch, and you'll pay for it with the device's higher price tag. But the Yoga C930 targets those who are considering a spectrum, an XPS, or a Samsung convertible premium. I'm still curious to test the specter x360 13, and to see if and how Dell updates the XPS 13 convertible in the coming months. However, anyone looking to upgrade their options has a new option in the Yoga C930.

The Good

• Sleek all-metal design.
• Standard Dolby Vision HDR support.
• Sound bar hinge ensures speakers will remain unblocked at all times.
• New far-range for Cortana and Alexa support.
• Built-in garage to hold and charge active pen.
• Good performance.
• Great battery life.

The Bad

• Speakers are not as loud as they could be.
• No optional IR camera.
• No optional LTE.
• Fans can get noisy.

The Ugly