Lenovo Yoga C740 Review: All-Rounder - Tech Advisor

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Our Verdict

Lenovo has done it again with the Yoga C740, creating a quality convertible with long battery life and nice design at a reasonable price. We’d like more ports and a slightly lower weight but this is made up for with a better screen and performance than you might expect at this kind of money.

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Do you like the idea of having a PC that can be used as a tablet, yet still enjoy the power of a computer? The Yoga C740 from Lenovo is a perfect example of this, as is the entire Yoga range from the Chinese manufacturer.

If you’re looking for a large hybrid notebook for everyday use that’s right for you, then the Yoga C740, in our opinion, deserves your full attention.

Price

The Yoga C740 computer is sold on the official Lenovo website starting at £749/US$859. We’ve tested the 15in model (15IML) but you can also get a 14in version at £799.

That starting price wil get you an Intel Core i5 and 256GB of storage. Things then jump to a still reasonable £899/US$1,199 for a Core i7 and double the storage.

Check our best laptops chart to see what other options are out there.

Design & Build

The design of the C740 is stylish and elegant. The aluminium chassis of the C740 gives it a premium look; our model is in Mica colour (gold shade), it is also available in Steel Grey. This 360° Yoga is also equipped with a solid and flexible hinge.

Its wide screen is majestic, its edges are thin; at the top it is equipped with an extremely discreet TrueBlock physical webcam shutter, it avoids any software hack.

The keys of the backlit keyboard are delicate, wide, shallow and curved to fit your phalanxes as well as possible. Typing is pleasant and silent.

The numeric keypad is well integrated into the keyboard, without being too cramped. There’s also a large touchpad, which Lenovo has chosen to place on the left, rather than in the middle. This is to align it with the keyboard and the space bar.

This is welcome since it leaves a nice free surface to type quietly and enjoy the keyboard at its best. Finally, just below the numeric keypad is the fingerprint reader. The process of registering your fingerprint is quick and easy, so is the recognition.

The C740 weighs 1.88kg, which is a little over the average weight of a laptop, but it’s hard to expect anything hugely lighter for a 15in convertible. It’s still portable and can be used on the lap easily but almost 2kg is quite heavy when being used as a tablet.

All in all, we appreciate the Yoga C740, our only regret is that Lenovo did not create a system for one-handed opening without the screen lifting. So please be careful when you want to open it.

Screen & Speakers

The C740, which we tested, has a 15.6in touch screen, its panel is an Full HD with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and has slim bezels around the edge. We should also add that the C740’s panel is covered with an anti-reflection filter, and that it has the good enough brightness for both indoor and outdoor use.

It’s IPS for good viewing angles supports Dolby Vision, a dynamic HDR standard which provides vivid colour and deep black levels when you’re watching supported content. The display also supports touch input and Lenovo provides an Active Pen stylus, which you can use to navigate, draw and write.

The Dolby Atmos enabled speakers are decent with above average quality and suitable for all types of music. Where are they located? They only reveal themselves when the C740 is folded, as Lenovo preferred this location rather than the sides of the keyboard.

Specs & Performance

The model we tested is the most expensive in the range. It is equipped with solid hardware, starting with the Intel Core i7-10510U processor (Comet Lake 2019 10th-generation), which is a quad-core chip clocked at 1.8GHz.

As far as memory is concerned, our Lenovo is equipped with 8GB off RAM and there’s a 512GB SSD M.2 to quickly back up your files and folders.

In order to know its hidden talents, we submitted the C740 to PCM10 benchmark, it allows us to check its general performance, and it obtained a score of 4429. This shows that it’s perfectly powerful enough for everyday office use.

As for measuring its graphics power, in the 3D Mark test it scored 4,526, which is much lower than an Acer Swift 5 (2019), which reached 5,461, even though it has the same graphic chip (Intel UHD Graphics). Still it’s a good result for on-board graphics.

There’s no dedicated graphics card so you won’t want to opt for the C740 for any serious work such as video editing or gaming.

In the Geekbench 4 test, the C740 scores 5501 in single-core and 16842 in multi-core, in the GeekBench 5 they are 1257 and 4121 respectively. Here are its results compared to the HP Envy 13, the Acer Swift 5 and the Surface Laptop 3.

Connectivity

Speaking of ports now, the C740 is equipped with a pair of USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 outputs, a headphone jack and 2x USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 inputs, for connecting an SSD, or other external device. It also allows you to attach the stylus holder which is neat but blocks the port.

Unfortunately, the C740’s connectors are not the most generous. Let’s take this opportunity to underline that Lenovo has passed the Thunderbolt 3 and that no microSD card slot has been included.

Finally, it integrates Wi-Fi 6 (11ac), a Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity.

Battery Life

While the Lenovo C740 may not shine in terms of graphics, its longevity is very convincing.

Indeed, our video test played continuously showed that this 2-in-1 can work for 12 hours and 26 min before it runs out of juice. This is a very good result, meaning that it will last a full day’s work and even longer. As for charging, the battery reached an ok 28% in 30 minutes.

In comparison, the battery life of the Acer Switch 5 (11h25min) and HP Envy 13 (10h01min) is longer than an Acer Switch 5 (11h25min) and HP Envy 13 (10h01min).

Verdict

The Yoga C740 from Lenovo is an impressively implemented 2-in-1 convertible laptop. It’s flexible and rugged enough to use in the various modes.

We appreciate its keyboard, the position and size of its trackpad; enough room is made for efficient, fast typing and effective mouse control. We’d like some more ports and somewhere better to store the stylus but those are minor quibbles.

Its matte screen is high quality and the bezels are small. It is, moreover, very pleasant to use as a tablet because of its responsiveness – with or without the supplied Active Pen.

There’s also plenty of power available for day-to-day tasks thanks to the Core i7 processor. Just don’t expect to do anything too intensive without things slowing down.

Specs

Lenovo Yoga C740: Specs

• Intel Core i7-10510U Processor (1.80GHz 8MB)
• Intel UHD Graphics
• Windows 10 Home 64
• 15.6in FHD IPS AntiGlare 1920×1080
• 8GB RAM
• 512GB SSD M.2
• Fingerprint reader, Active Pen
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 6, 2x USB-A 3.1, 2x USB Type-C 3.1, Headphone jack
• Weight: 1.88kg
• Battery: 65W