Lenovo Yoga C940 Review

Since its launch, Lenovo’s yoga laptops have been a playground for innovation. But with the 14-inch version of the Yoga C940, Lenovo focused on refinement rather than significant changes. Like its predecessor, the Yoga C940 has a beautiful design, along with bright, vibrant 4K and 1080p display options, fast performance, and long battery life. This is our Lenovo Yoga C940 Review.

While Lenovo has taken a few small steps forward with the Yoga C940, the company’s rivals have made great strides in recent months. So, as excellent as it is, the 14-inch Yoga C940 is no longer the obvious choice for those looking for a 2-in-1 laptop.

Lenovo Yoga C940 Review – Design

Lenovo tends to tinker with the design of Yoga every year, but the Yoga C940 is more of a refinement than a revision of last year’s C930. As you would expect from a Yoga, the innovation of the C940 is in the hinge, which also serves as a soundbar. I like that Lenovo made the hinge a continuous piece within the new model. That modification may not have a practical advantage, but it looks slimmer than the two-piece hinge of the Yoga C930.

The only other notable design change is a lip added to the top edge of the C940, which makes the lid easier to open and allows for a full 720p webcam above the screen. No matter how divisive the notch is, I’m convinced it contributes more to the laptop’s usability than it detracts from its aesthetics. Yoga “9 Series” branding is etched on the front of that lip and gives this model an absolute authority.

Lenovo offers the Yoga C940 in two colors: Mica and Iron Gray. The earthy shades are not the most interesting, but they are a nice alternative to silver. The Yoga C940 doesn’t have many ports, but you get at least two Thunderbolt 3 ports and a USB Type-A port. All these inputs are located on the left side of the laptop next to a headphone/mic jack. The right side of the laptop is uninterrupted except for an on/off button.

Keyboard and TouchPad

I enjoyed the clicky, illuminated keyboard of the Yoga C940. They offer quite a bit of travel, considering how thin the laptop is, and the generous space they offer is suitable for both small and large hands. I hope Lenovo reduces the control force of the keys, as they can feel heavy and stiff during extended typing sessions.

The Yoga C940’s 4.1 x 2.6-inch touchpad gets the job done. It’s not the largest touchpad we’ve used, but the surface is responsive, and I had no problem running Windows 10 gestures, including pinch to zoom and three-finger swipe to change windows. The stylus of the Yoga C940 is nothing special, except that it fits in the back of the laptop when not in use. This super handy feature should prevent you from losing or damaging the pen.

I had no problem using the stylus to make a drawing in Paint 3D, but those with large hands might find the pen’s short, thin body uncomfortable to hold. Also, prying it out of the stylus storage is pain without long fingernails, so I hope Lenovo will switch to a push-to-remove method next time.

Lenovo Yoga C940 Review – Display

There are two display options for the Yoga C940: a 1080p version and a 4K panel. Both are good enough for streaming movies or editing photos, but the 4K panel is slightly sharper and much more colorful. When I watched a trailer for Christopher Nolan’s next movie, Tenet, the 4K display was brighter and more colorful than the 1080p panel.

The individual strands of Andrew Howard’s salt and pepper stubble were visible on the 4K display but looked mixed on the 1080p panel. His face was a completely different color on each screen, a warm orange on the 4K screen, and lifeless grey on the FHD screen. By looking at these two displays side by side, the limited color range of the 1080p model was exposed.

According to our colorimeter, the 1080p display of the Yoga C940 covers 104% of the sRGB color range, and the 4K panel reaches 139%. That places the FHD display at the bottom of what we find acceptable for a premium laptop, while the 4K panel can compete with the best. The Spectre x360 13 (109%), XPS 13 2-in-1 (113%) and category average (121%) are livelier than the 1080p Yoga C940 but less colorful than the 4K model.

Both displays are bright enough to be seen under direct light. The 1080p panel peaked at 339 nits, while the 4K display peaked at 394 nits. The Spectre x360 13 (369 nits) and the category average (365 nits) fell between these measurements and surpassed the Yoga C930 (273 nits). None of these exceeded the XPS 13 2-in-1 (516 nits).

Graphics

Intel’s new Iris Plus GPU gives the Yoga C940 significantly better graphics performance than its predecessor, although you still want a discreet GPU for playing modern games of the highest quality. The Yoga C940 scored a 110,911 on our 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited graphics benchmark, which is far better than what the Yoga C930 (85,758) deserved. With the same GPU, the Spectre x360 13 (18,408) almost matched the Yoga C940, while the average of the premium laptop (97,615) was below the scores of both machines.

We had no problem racing on a track in Dirt 3 on the Yoga C940, which ran at 55 frames per second. The Yoga C940 passed our 30 fps playability threshold and surpassed the Spectre x360 13 (47 fps), XPS 13 2-in-1 (47 fps), and Yoga C930 (37 fps) in this real-world test. The category average, inflated by laptops with discrete GPUs, is 57 fps.

Audio

Leave your Bluetooth speaker at home; the Yoga C940’s soundbar hinge and two additional speakers provide clear and full sound. Juice Wrld’s “Lucid Dreams” wasn’t loud enough to fill a large meeting room, but I didn’t hear any distortion at the highest volume level either. The bass had surprising depth, and the vocals were clear. The soundbar also provides a better surround sound effect than most laptop speakers.

Lenovo Yoga C940 Review – Performance

The models we reviewed are equipped with a 10th generation Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU and a 512GB SSD. The 4K Yoga C940 had 16GB RAM and a 32GB Intel Optane drive, while the 1080p model had only 12GB RAM. I could not notice any difference in performance between the two models during my real-world testing; they both did an excellent job. I didn’t see any delay or lag, even with 20 open Google Chrome tabs, four of which played 1080p YouTube videos.

The performance of the Yoga C940 was equal to that of competing laptops in our benchmarks. The 4K model scored an 18,709 on the Geekbench 4.3 overall performance test, while the 1080p version just lagged with 18,672. These numbers exceed the scores of the Spectre x360 13 (18,408; Core i7-1065G7) and last year’s Yoga C930 (14,739; Core i7-8550U), as well as the premium laptop average (16,314), but they do not beat the XPS 13 2-in-1s shown (19,225; Core i7-1065G7).

We saw some impressive results on our storage test. While both models have 512GB SSDs, the 1080p version duplicated 4.97GB of multimedia files in 5 seconds for a speed of 1,017.9 megabytes, while the 4K model, with a 32GB Intel Optane drive, needed 13 seconds, with a range of only 391.5MBps. A more in-depth look into the Device Manager revealed that the 1080p unit has a Samsung storage drive, while the 4K version uses a SanDisk drive.

The Spectre x360 13 (319.1 MBps, M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD) and the Yoga C930 (339.3 MBps, PCIe NVMe SSD) lagged behind both C940s, while the category average (541.7 MBps) and the XPS 13 2-in-1 (462 MBps) ended up between the 1080p and 4K versions.

Lenovo Yoga C940 Review – Battery Life

The C940 continues the yoga tradition of extended battery life. The 1080p model lasted 11 hours and 46 seconds on our battery test, surfing the web continuously over Wi-Fi with 150 nits. That excellent result surpasses the XPS 13 2-in-1 (10:57) and the Yoga C930 (10:10), as well as the category average (8:46). Only the long-lasting Spectre x360 13 (13:20) came out. With a time of 7 hours and 27 minutes, the 4K model was about an hour short of the category average.

Heat

The lower panel of the 4K model reached 104 degrees Fahrenheit after we played a 15 minute, 1080p Full-HD video. That’s a bit toasty, so maybe you don’t want to keep the Yoga C940 on your lap. Fortunately, the rest of the laptop stayed well below our 95-degree comfort threshold, with the keyboard hitting 92 degrees and the touchpad warming up to just 83 degrees. Our 1080p Yoga C940 maintained lower temperatures across the board, peaking at 97 degrees.

Price and Configuration Options

The Yoga C940 with a 1080p display, Core i5 CPU, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD starts at $999, placing it in the same price category as the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 and HP Spectre x360. We recommend another $150 to upgrade to a Core i7-1065G7 CPU, 12GB RAM, and 256GB SSD. Our $1,299 review unit increases storage to a 512GB SSD. Lenovo also sent us a $1,599 4K model with a Core i7 CPU, 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD with 32GB of Intel Optane memory.

Lenovo Yoga C940 Review – Conclusion

I like Yoga C940. It’s the kind of laptop that fits just about anyone, from students to business users and content creators. It has a premium chassis, an excellent display (especially the 4K option), reliable performance, and a long battery life. Besides, the unique features of the Yoga C940, a stylus garage, and webcam cover help it stand out from the alternatives.

I wish the 1080p panel were more vibrant because choosing the beautiful 4K screen will cost you more than 4 hours of battery life. The Yoga C940 also lacks a card reader, and the stylus can be challenging to remove from the pen slot.

As excellent as the Yoga C940 is, competitive laptops like the HP Spectre x360 13 and Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 have narrowed the gap and proved Lenovo can’t afford to take its foot off the pedal.