You probably haven’t worked on a Windows notebook this light before. The Yoga Book C930 from Lenovo is unusually light and uses and e-ink display as its keyboard. But our test found that e-ink software and writing on the screen has its limits.
A Windows notebook weighing less than 800 grams is rare. The Yoga Book C930 from Lenovo weighs just 779 grams and is barely one centimetre thick. Yet despite these compact dimensions, it is a full-fledged Windows notebook.
What distinguishes the Yoga Book C930 from other Ultrabooks is that instead of a classic keyboard it has an e-ink display. This screen serves as a virtual keyboard, but it can also be used as a digital notepad or e-reader. So essentially the device has two screens.
The conventional colour display has a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels (IPS LCD) with the usual Windows 10 interface. The resolution of the e-ink screen is not quite as high at 1920 x 1080 pixels.
The C930 may not suit fast typists as the e-ink software is not very quick to respond to inputs. In our test a prolific writer who can type blindly with ten fingers on a computer couldn’t type a single sentence on the Lenovo device without errors. People who type with three or four fingers achieved significantly better results.
The Yoga Book C930 comes with two USB-C ports and a fingerprint sensor for unlocking the device. The more expensive versions come with a pen that can be used to write or draw on the e-ink display.
The two screens are connected by a 350-degree hinge so that you can place the Yoga Book in a variety of positions or lay it flat on a table. You can also set it in tent mode for video watching.
If you want to use the e-ink display as an e-book reader, you can completely fold back the colour screen and use the device as a kind of tablet. The colour display then turns off, which helps battery life.
Currently, only PDF documents can be displayed on the e-ink display but Lenovo has announced support for ePub, Mobi and TXT formats in 2019.
The Yoga Book C930 comes in three models. The entry-level device with 128 gigabytes of SSD storage, an Intel Core m3-7Y30 processor and no pen costs around 1,000 dollars.
The two more expensive models come with a pen and have a more powerful Intel Core i5-7Y54 processor and twice as much memory (256 GB).
The cheaper of the two costs 1,300 dollars and, like the entry level model, has a WiFi connection. The most expensive model costs 1,800 dollars and offers an LTE mobile connection. – dpa
