Hands On: Lenovo's Slim $1,499 Yoga S940 Borrows Smartphone Design Elements

Lenovo’s Yoga S940 is an attractive premium laptop with a bit of an identity crisis. Despite the Yoga name, it’s a traditional clamshell laptop—Lenovo is transitioning the Yoga brand to its premium devices, rather than just convertibles. And its 13.9-inch screen (available in both 1080p and 4K options) sports what Lenovo calls Contour Glass, which wraps around the sides, much like Samsung’s Note and Galaxy phones.

The display also sports extremely slim bezels on all four sides, although there’s a smartphone-like notch up top to house the camera and other sensors. Those sensors include an IR camera for Windows Hello login, and eye tracking that Lenovo says will let you move content from the laptop screen to an external monitor with a glance, and the ability to automatically log you out when you walk away. These features, plus auto-leveling software and a Smart Voice feature that recognizes your voice specifically when using Alexa or Cortana, is part of a suite of features Lenovo is calling Smart Assist.

In our brief hands-on time with the Yoga S940 here at CES 2019, we found the laptop as slick and sleek as you'd expect for an ultra-premium laptop. And the slim bezels and curved-edge of the glass over the screen are fetching, although the latter doesn't offer any benefit other than looks. We do, though, like that the bump up top allows Lenovo to keep the camera up top, while delivering what the company says is a 90 percent screen-to-body ratio. 

Lenovo says the Yoga S940 will be available in May for a fairly hefty starting price of $1,499, which is a lot to pay if the starting configuration indeed features 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Also note that, if you care about battery life, Lenovo lists the 1080p screen’s longevity at 15 hours, while the 4K panel drops the rated run time down by more than a third, to 9.5 hours.

Lenovo Yoga C730 with AMOLED

If you’re after a Yoga that’s actually a convertible (and aren't in the US), Lenovo will also offer a Yoga C730 with an AMOLED screen, starting in April for an even pricier starting price of $1649. This is a big convertible, with a 15.6-inch UHD touch display. Interestingly, despite only listing US pricing, the company says this convertible won't be for sale in America.

Curiously, while AMOLED screens tend to be bold and bright, the company didn’t list a brightness rating with this convertible. There’s no doubt that the 4K resolution and the AMOLED display take a heavy toll on battery life, though. Lenovo is targeting “up to 8 hours” of battery life in Mobile Mark 2014, which is a lightweight battery benchmark. The Yoga C730 also supports Lenovo’s Active Pen 2 and sports a fingerprint reader. Both the C730 and the S940 come in a single “Iron Gray” color.

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Photo Credit: Intel