Home Reviews Lenovo Yoga C930 review: aces all day

Lenovo Yoga C930 review: aces all day

Published On: April 19, 2019

“Our take on Lenovo’s premium 2-in-1 convertible — the Yoga C930”

If the idea of using a laptop that can double up as a tablet entices you, chances are you’d already have taken a long, hard look at Lenovo’s Yoga range of convertibles. The company has made a name for itself amongst users who value versatility above everything else and if you’re one of those, then you might find the company’s latest Yoga, the C930 (first impressions) quite appealing.

The laptop was announced back in IFA 2018 and it recently made its way over to Indian shores. I’ve been using the C930 as my go-to notebook for a week and here’s why I feel it’s THE convertible to buy.

Table of Contents

Design and display

Folks, I’m not going to beat around the bush and just say it – the C930 is, in my books, the best-looking convertible in the market, snatching the title away from the Microsoft’s Surface Book 2 (review). You see, while most laptops are manufactured using metal or plastic, Lenovo has added glass to the mix which gives the C930 a unique appearance.

As can be seen from the shots, the entire top lid of the laptop employs glass and features a gorgeous bluish pattern with the company’s branding emblazoned towards the top-left hand side. Moreover, instead of going overboard with customising the lid, the company has opted to keep things simple, which should sit well with all the minimalists in the audience. Suffice it to say, if you were bored of grey and white, all-metal clamshells, then you’ll find plenty to love about the new Yoga C930.

And, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the C930’s premium looks. Barring the top of the lid, the laptop has been constructed using metal which feels exquisite to the touch. The edges have been chamfered to make the machine look sleeker, and there’s zero flex in or around the laptop’s chassis. You could press the keyboard, twist the display or push against it with the bundled stylus – the C930 is as sturdy as it gets.

If you’ve been following Lenovo’s Yoga lineup, then you’ll notice something different about the company’s latest C930 notebook. Unlike its predecessors, the C930 has done away with the watchband-style hinge, which added to the appearance in a big way. This time around, the company is going for substance over style and consequently, the C930 features a 360-degree soundbar on the hinge which is backed by Dolby Atmos technology. Therefore, regardless of how you’re using the machine (be it as a laptop, in tent mode or as a tablet), you’ll always get crystal clear audio from the device.

What’s more, the speakers on the unit don’t sound half bad either. You’ll get a bundled Dolby Atmos app with the device which you can use to switch between different profiles such as gaming, movies, and music, and you can then fine tune the drivers to sound the way you want them to as well. I watched the first season of Hanna on the C930 and I didn’t once reach for my earphones – the audio quality was just that good.

Impressively enough, despite its slim girth, the Lenovo Yoga C930 ships with a decent assortment of ports. The laptop offers two USB Type-C thunderbolt ports and you can use either one to charge the laptop or to hook up an external monitor to the machine. There’s a USB Type-A 3.1 port as well, along with a headphone jack and a slot to house the bundled stylus. Moreover, while the company doesn’t offer an HDMI port, the unit ships with a Type-C to HDMI connector in the box, which is fantastic. The laptop even has a fingerprint sensor which works really well to sweeten the deal. All in all, I am content with the port selection on the Lenovo Yoga C930.

The Lenovo Yoga C930 ships with a 13.9-inch, 4K IPS panel with Dolby Vision which simply put, is a delight to use. The display is sharp and exhibits punchy colours which make consuming media on it a visual feast. The panel has excellent viewing angles too, and the touch response of the display is on par with the competition as well.

Moreover, if you’re the artsy type and like scribbling with the stylus on the display, then you’ll appreciate the pen’s subtle haptic feedback too. If I could, I would tweak the display to be a bit brighter as movies and shows with a lot of dark scenes (Daredevil, Hanna, et al) weren’t legible enough to my eyes. However, barring that, the display on the Lenovo Yoga C930 is among the best in the business and I rate it very high.

Keyboard and trackpad

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times – a high-quality keyboard is extremely important in my line of work and to that extent, the Lenovo Yoga C930 didn’t disappoint me. In fact, I can tell you that typing on the laptop has been extremely fun and the C930 is undoubtedly my favourite laptop to type long-form articles on at the moment.

The keys offer excellent tactility, are super-clicky and have just the right amount of travel. The layout is adequately spaced too, and the keyboard even comes with a backlit LED which should help you get your work done at night. Rest assured, I have never made as little errors on Word as I did when I was using the C930.

The trackpad on the C930 deserves a mention too. The surface of the unit is spacious, and it has a soft touch to it. Consequently, your fingers will glide through the trackpad and since it comes with support for Windows Precision drivers, you’ll also be able to use gesture-based navigation effortlessly. There’s little doubt in my mind that buyers opting for the C930 won’t have to resort to using an external mouse with the device.

Performance and battery life

My review unit of the Lenovo Yoga C930 shipped with Intel’s Core-i5 8250u processor with a base clock speed of 1.6GHz. The CPU can turbo up to 3.4GHz and it works alongside 16GB of dual channel memory and 512GB of SSD. Buyers can also spec the machine with Intel’s i7 CPU, which should offer better performance or save some bucks by opting for the model with a full HD display.

With that said, I was more than content with the performance offered by the Core i5 variant of the laptop. During my time with the C930, I never ran into any lags or stutters and I could comfortably get through my workflow without any hassles. Applications opened swiftly, multitasking was buttery smooth and barring gaming, there wasn’t much else I couldn’t do on the laptop. I did run into some scaling issues with applications like VLC Media Player, but that mostly had to do with the software itself.

Moreover, even with half a dozen apps open, the laptop remained stealthily quiet and the chassis’ temperature didn’t spike unnaturally over extended periods either. Suffice it to say, if you use your laptop to browse the web, watch movies, write and do some lightweight editing on Photoshop, then you’ll find little to complain with the C930.

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The battery life of the laptop held up well too. On average, I could get through a full work day without plugging in the laptop. It goes without saying that those opting for the full HD model will enjoy longer spells away from the charger but moderate users will find the battery life of the 4K variant serviceable too. To round up this subhead, let’s look at how the C930 fared in various synthetic benchmarks and battery tests. I’ve attached necessary screenshots above, so take a gander.

Verdict

The Lenovo C930 gets most if not all things right which is why, I referred to the device as the best convertible in the market at the beginning of the review. As for the pricing, my review unit, the one with the i5 chip and the 4K display retails for Rs 1,39,990 whereas the Core i7 model will set you back Rs 1,59,990. That’s a lot of money but I feel that it’s well invested in Lenovo’s C930.

As for the competition, the market is flush with premium 2-in-1’s from brands like HP and Dell. You could choose one over the other but if I were in your shoes, I’d choose the Lenovo Yoga C930 as it offers a unique design, a fantastic keyboard and a gorgeous 4K display, while others are still stuck on 1080p.