The Lenovo Yoga C930 Review: Atmos Acoustics

Final Words

The Lenovo Yoga C930 has taken the platform another step forward, offering an incredibly sleek design with a fantastic build quality. The ingenious idea of adding a Dolby Atmos sound bar has proved again that Lenovo is an innovator in this product segment. The Yoga brand has been a hit right from day one, and with every generational update, Lenovo has moved the design forward.

The Yoga C930 offers the same advantages of a traditional clamshell laptop, and adds in the versatility of a 2-in-1. There is no other convertible design that works as well, or as easily, as the Yoga. You can switch from laptop to stand mode and back in just a few seconds, with no fiddling around with detachable parts. As a hand-held tablet it is not as strong as a detachable keyboard based tablet, but with Stand and Tent mode, you can get most of the benefits of a touch device without having to hold onto it.

Although the pen isn’t going to set the artistic world on fire, thanks to it being thin enough to fit into the laptop chassis, it still adds yet another helping of versatility. The fact that it lives inside the tablet also has the benefit of it always being charged, and it’s a lot less likely to get lost.

One of the most impressive features was the performance of this Core i7-8550U model, thanks to elevated PL states, but even with the higher power draw, Lenovo’s cooling solution keeps the notebook cool, and most importantly, quiet.

The performance doesn’t come with a loss in battery life either, with the Yoga C930 offering great longevity from its 60 Wh battery when paired with the 1920x1080 display, and insane battery life under movie playback. But about that display…

The FHD display is the one sore spot on the Yoga C930. Despite offering Dolby Vision capabilities, the 1920x1080 panel is dim, offers limited contrast, and is wildly inaccurate out of the box. Calibration will help some, but with the amount of calibration necessary, there will certainly be side effects. Lenovo has done a great job shrinking the side and top bezels, but the poor contrast is immediately noticeable, and the display is a red herring in an otherwise well-thought-out laptop. We didn’t get a chance to test the UHD version, but since Lenovo does say it supports HDR, that should mean the brightness and contrast are improved.

Lenovo has added a lot of features to this notebook, including two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 connections, 160 MHz wireless in the Intel 9260 chipset, and up to a whopping two terabytes of NVMe storage. There’s a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello authentication, and even a couple of color options. Even better, the minimum RAM is 8 GB and the minimum storage is 256 GB. . Features like the Dolby Atmos sound bar really make it shine. Add in the included active pen, and the versatility of a convertible laptop, and the Yoga C930 is a solid contender. As to how much of a contender, that depends on what features you value over others.