ISSUE 378|COMPUTERSHOPPER|AUGUST 2019
two buttons, and sticks to the laptop’s
back magnetically when not in use.
The Precision Penisn’t essential for
standard touchscreen activities, but
you’ll need it to take full advantage of
the EInk display.INKING PROBLEM
This displayisthe Yoga Book C930’s
star feature,and the laptop’s success
relies on this working well. The appeal
is self-evident, because it truly is
versatile,but the practicalities aren’t
fully convincing.
Let’s start with the virtual keyboard.
There are two layouts available,modern
or classic, and you can also choose
between black or whitestyles. Whatever
you choose,there’s no getting around
the slow keyresponse,which lags behind
even amodest typing speed.
Since these aren’t real keys but rather
sensors on apanel, theyhavenotactile
feedback, making it immensely difficult to
touch-type.When typing, we found
ourselves looking down almost constantly
to make sure our hands stayed in the
right place.You can set the keyboard to
vibratewhen you hit akey,but even
with this set to maximum strength
there’s not enough sensation to make
you feel as if you’re actually typing.
The virtual touchpad is also
abnormally small and frustrating to
use.Inthe ‘modern’keyboard
layout it’s just asmall button that
expands when you tap it,
swallowing the spacebar and
disappearing when any other
keyispressed.OUT OFTOUCH
Annoyingly,the Precision Pen
stylus can’t interact with the
EInk surface in keyboard
mode.When you’re already holding the
stylus, it feels as though this would be more
intuitive than bringing up the main display’s
onscreen keyboard, which obscures the entire
bottom half of the screen. In Notemode,it
works perfectly,although this mode isn’t
without its problems, either.
To begin with, the Yoga Book C930 is
slow to swap between keyboard and Note
functions, and sometimes it fails to load
entirely.Many times we tapped the Note
button on the EInk panel and were presented
with ablank displayfor five seconds, only to
be brought back to the keyboard. When we
did make it to Notemode,itwas accurateand
responsive,both fordrawing and writing.
There’s abutton that allows you to draw
with your fingers, and Notemode also has
ascreen-grab function forannotation
purposes. Simply press one button and
the main displayismirrored on to the
secondary display. Of course,the EInk Note
mode is entirely black and white, which may
not be an issue when annotating aWord
document or aPDF,but fordesigners and
artists, the lack of colour is hardly ideal.
The third and final use of the E-Ink display
is turning the Yoga Book C930 intoan
e-reader.Lenovo doesn’t list all the formats
you can read in this mode,but it’s at least
compatible with EPUB, MOBI, TXT and PDF.
Kindle File Format, unfortunately,isn’t
currently supported.
Reading ebooks and PDFsonthe displayis
awkward, to saythe least. Because said display
is attached to alaptop,it’s unwieldy to use on
the go and cannot be held comfortably or
safely in just one hand. It’s much easier to
prop up the laptop in ‘tent’ mode and read
hands-free.Page turning works by tapping the
corners, but this often elicits no response.
There’s also the option to keep the laptop flat
and read in landscape mode,and you can turn
this intoatwo-page spread with two smaller
pages visible side by side.It’s still abit
unwieldy,however,and the lack of Kindle
ebook support will be offputting to many.SLOWZONE
The Yoga Book C930’s primary displayisa
more regular affair.Ithas excellent sRGB
colour gamut coverage of 97.2%, although
there is atendency to oversaturateacross
much of this range; green, reds and yellows
are where it’s worst. The screen is atouch
on the reflective side,and this effect is
worsened by the weak maximum brightness
of 308cd/m^2 .Put simply,it’s hard to view
the displayoutdoors or under bright lights.
The 1,174:1 contrast ratio is fine,however,and
it’s perfectly possible to get asatisfactory
viewing experience out of this IPS panel.
Performance,sadly,falls well short of
£1,300 laptop standards. It scored apaltry
25 overall in our 4K benchmarks, including
just asingle point in the multitasking test,
with the low-power Core i5-7Y54 struggling
to come anywhere near the Core i5-8250U
of the more conventional Yoga C930.
This only costs £54 more,but scored a
much higher 80 overall.The Yoga Book C930 can still handle abit
of multi-tab browsing, but you can forget
about demanding video editing and gaming.
Even Dirt Showdown, which can run playably
on certain integrated graphics, only averaged
16fps with alowered 720p resolution.
SSD performance is better,with the 256GB
drive recording asequential read speed of
1,200MB/s and asequential writespeed of
531MB/s in AS SSD.Battery life, however,
drags the Yoga Book C930 back down, as it
could manage only amediocre 6h 16m of
looped video playback. If you’re planning to
take the Yoga Book C930 out of the house,
make sure your charger comes along as well.JUDGINGABOOK
There are some good things here: the Yoga
Book C930 is easily one of the most portable
Windows10laptopsever,andtheE-Inkdisplay
makes it incredibly versatile –when it works.
Still, even this is riddled with flaws and
annoyances, and while we could look past a
dodgy typing experience on the cheap
first-generation Yoga Book, it’s much harder
to forgive at £1,300. That goes foralot of
other things, too. If you’re paying this much,
you should really be entitled to much better
performance,connectivity and battery life
than the Yoga Book C930 can offer.
TomBruceSPECIFICATIONS
Windowsoverall
Multitasking
Batterylife
0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100
Seepage110forperformancedetailsPROCESSORDual-core1.2GHzIntelCorei5-7Y54•RAM
4GB•DIMENSIONS260x179x9.9mm•WEIGHT775g•
SCREENSIZE10.8in•SCREENRESOLUTION2,560x1,600•
GRAPHICSADAPTORIntelHDGraphics615•TOTAL
STORAGE256GBSSD•OPERATINGSYSTEMWindows10
Home•WARRANTYOneyearRTB•DETAILSwww.lenovo.
com•PARTCODEYogaBookC93025
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