Hey folks. Welcome to Teddy Tech TV. I've got the Lenovo C 940 2-in-1 laptop teed up
for review and I think Lenovo has made a number of really well considered
decisions here, though there are still a thing or two that I would improve. The
laptop's got a minimal aesthetic, but it's still beautiful and functional. If you want
to find out more, come with me. The model I've got has an
Intel i7-1065G7, a 14-inch IPS display, 12GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and
integrated graphics. So this particular model is on sale right now for $1,699 CAD
though the regular price is $1,899 and that's that's the model with 12GB
of RAM that I've got here. If you want to buy directly from Lenovo you
can get a model that is spec'd exactly the same except it only has 8GB
RAM for $1,679 CAD or $1,849 at regular price. Compare that to a similarly spec'd
Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 with 16GB of RAM instead of 8 GB and you're
looking at $1,949 CAD on sale and $1699 USD. Alright. Let's take a closer look
at the way this thing is built. The all-metal machine enclosure weighs just
1.35 kgs or 2.98 kbs pounds it looks gorgeous especially in the light,
though it does pick up fingerprints like gangbusters. As for ports, we've got two
Thunderbolt 3 ports, both of which can be used for charging, and the handy little
charging light right next door to them, a USB 3.1 port and a headphone jack. And
then on the other side, no ports, but a power button with an LED recessed into
it. There's a really nice feel to it. The hinge is nice and stiff as well. It
incorporates this really neat and striking sound bar. Underneath you've got
full length rubber pads for support and in the back there is the pen garage, which
holds and charges the stylus which we'll take a closer look at later. So, this is a 14-
inch laptop that's a 14-inch IPS display. And though it's not the absolute best
display I've seen on a laptop, it's still really nice. Now this is the 1080p model
I've got the resolution of 1920x1080 and a aspect ratio of 16:9.
Not my favorite aspect ratio. I would have liked to see 16x10 on this
although 3:2 is my favorite aspect ratio on any laptop. The Full HD display
is capable of 100% srgb and 400 nits of brightness and is a touchscreen, and you
can upgrade to a 4K UHD display that's capable of 500 nits of brightness for
$250 CAD or $200 USD, but you're gonna take a serious hit to battery life.
One other thing you want to keep in mind is that this laptop is really prone
to reflections. I don't know if it has any non-reflective coating but if it
does it doesn't work very well, so you need to keep that in mind when using it
in well-lit spaces. This is a 2- in-1, which actually means it has three
different functions. Go figure. So, there's laptop mode, which
is the traditional clamshell laptop, there's tent mode where you basically
flip the keyboard around so you can prop it up on both the keyboard and the
display. When you do this the speakers are all still in really good positions, and
the soundbar actually becomes an upward-facing speaker and the two speakers on
the bottom become forward-facing and this is a perfect mode for watching
video like Netflix or YouTube. It's just really comfortable, the screen looks
great in this mode, and it's great to get the keyboard out of the way sometimes.
And then there's tablet mode, which turns it into a large 16:9 tablet, which is
the thing it does least well, really. I mean the screen is just it's just too
tall in tablet mode. The laptop is just sort of too heavy to carry, especially
one-handed. You have the pen and the way it's garaged and then charges while it's
in its garage is really nice but it's not spring loaded and, to be honest, from
some angles it's actually kind of hard to remove. Now let's talk about the
keyboard and the trackpad. The keyboard is something that I really, really like
about this laptop. It's something I like about all Lenovo laptops, especially
ThinkPads, and this laptop does a good job as well.
The keys are all really stable, they have good travel, they feel pillowy when you
press them and not mushy, and there's two levels of backlighting here. The trackpad
is pretty good for a Windows laptop. It's not the best. It's got a fairly solid
click, but only when you're clicking at the bottom of the trackpad. The whole
trackpad doesn't click, so if you try clicking in the middle or the top you
get very little travel in it and it's kind of uncomfortable. There is a
fingerprint reader, as well. The fingerprint reader read my fingerprint
perfectly every time. It's in a good place. I like it here much better
than as part of the trackpad or along the side of a laptop. This laptop performs
really well, which isn't surprising considering the 10th-generation i7
processor that's in here, and it can easily handle any productivity tasks you
might throw at it. So this 4-core, 8-thread processor regularly
runs at 1.3GHz though it turbo boosts
to 3.9 GHz, and that gets to you a Geekbench 5 score of 1299 single-core
and 4331 multi-core. On PCMark 10, which measures sort of an overall productivity
workflow looking at 4502. Now the storage in here is the fast NVMe kind, so
you're looking at sequential reads of 3563 MB/s
and sequential writes of 2979 MB/s.
The Wi-Fi spec is good too. It supports Wi-Fi 6.
Now as for graphics performance this is an integrated GPU so don't expect
anything crazy, but graphics performance actually isn't that bad. If you run
games at low to medium settings and you don't expect miracles, then you can get
decent performance on games that are a few years old. And yes, it can play Fortnite.
Another area where this laptop just shines is battery life, and that's
something that people who are looking for this class of laptop are really
gonna appreciate, I think. On PCMark 8, which is an artificial benchmark, which
runs a laptop through a constant productivity workload, the laptop scored
5 hours and 56 minutes, which, though it doesn't sound like a lot is actually the
most I've measured on any laptop I've reviewed. And this is an artificial
benchmark so in real world use you could actually expect several hours more. And
finally I want to talk about the speakers, because that's something that,
at least from a marketing perspective, kind of sets this laptop apart. It's got
that Dolby Atmos branded soundbar. It's really hard to judge speakers or a
soundbar over YouTube, but I'm gonna tell you, these speakers sound really
goo. They've got great sort of deep low-end, and because of the number and
placement of speakers, there's the two on the bottom and then there's the soundbar
and the way that they move when you move from mode to mode you get pretty
good sound and pretty good coverage in both laptop mode and
tent mode. Not so much in tablet mode, which covers up the two speakers on the
bottom and sees the soundbar sort of pointing out to the side. So at the end
of this review what's the take-home message? Well, if it isn't already clear, I
think this is an excellent buy, especially if you already know that you
want this sort of 2-in-1 type of laptop. I really enjoyed the ability to
put it into tent mode, though I think tablet mode is something people will use
a lot less. If you compare it to the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1, it's actually
significantly cheaper, though that model has a. slightly better spec'd display. Now
Lenovo tends to have a decent number of sales, so I would suggest waiting it out.
Don't pay full price for this laptop. Get it on sale and it'll be excellent value.