Author: batteryforpc

When Lenovo announced its new Yoga C940 at IFA this year, it was a sure winner. It takes the best of last year’s Yoga C930 and combines it with the best of this year’s S940 clamshell.

It keeps those features that I really loved last year, like the rotating Dolby Atmos soundbar in the hinge, and the built-in pen. And it shares the design language of the IdeaPad S940, packing the reverse notch, which doesn’t really serve a purpose anymore other than to provide an easier way of lifting the lid.

This is also the first 15-inch convertible to come out of the Yoga 900 series, and it packs a punch. This machine has a 45W Intel H-series processor, along with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 GPU. Indeed, it’s the rare powerful convertible, something that’s also seen in the HP Spectre x360 15, and in very few other places.

It’s worth noting that you can actually configure this PC with a Core i9-9880H, which is kind of wild. Even HP’s Spectre x360 15 doesn’t have that kind of offering, and I’m not sure there are any convertibles that do.

Design

The Lenovo Yoga C940 looks pretty much the same as the C930 did, being built out of aluminum and coming in the Iron Gray color. Of course, the 15-inch model is a bit bigger, a bit thicker, and a bit heavier. This thing weighs 4.41 pounds, and that’s what you get with powerful internals like this, which also require better thermals and a bigger battery. Note that the 14-inch model is almost a pound and a half lighter, although it has a 15W quad-core processor and no discrete graphics.

The lid has a black Yoga logo stamped on the top-left, and there isn’t anything else, even a Lenovo logo. Not that this matters at all, but I’d rather see at least a silver Yoga logo, something to add a bit of sexy to it. I also really like the design of the ThinkPad X1 Yoga, so Lenovo can do aluminum laptops that look pretty on the outside. I just feel like the design could use a bit more spice.

On the back of the device, you’ll see the rotating soundbar on the hinge. The other sides are flat with angled edges.

On the left side, there’s a power port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and two Thunderbolt 3 ports. Indeed, it does not come with a USB Type-C charger. Being that this is a powerful machine, it takes a 135W charger, and that’s too much for USB Type-C. Dell does make a 130W USB Type-C charger, but it’s the only one that does it. Luckily, if you buy that charger from Dell, you can use it to charge the C940.

On the other side, you’ll find the power button all the way toward the back, and a single USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A port. It’s a bit strange that it uses the 5Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 1, as the 14-inch model has a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A port, which gets 10Gbps. What’s also strange is that Lenovo.com lists this machine as using USB 3.1 Gen 2; however, both the reviewer’s guide and the marking on the port itself show it as Gen 1.

Another thing that you’ll find on the right side of the PC is the pen garage. Yes, like last year’s C930, this year’s model has a pen that’s built right into the device. There’s no worrying about a magnetically attached pen falling off in your bag, or a pen loop getting in your way. It’s just there when you need it, and it charges while you’re not using it. Naturally, this does mean that the pen will be a bit smaller than a standard one, but you can always pick up a Wacom pen if you need to.

Display and audio

The model that Lenovo sent me includes a 15.6-inch 1080p display, although it’s offered at 4K resolution. Other than the resolution, the screens are the same, both supporting Dolby Vision HDR400 at 500 nits.

Dolby Vision is one of those things that you want in a display. In fact, with any screen, HDR, color, and contrast are way more important then the resolution. Dolby Vision decodes the 12-bit PQ signal from a supported video, producing the content in the widest range of color possible, providing the most accurate colors, as long as you’re playing supported content.

But while that’s all more important than the resolution, I do think that you’ll want the 4K model. 1080p just doesn’t cut it for me on a 15.6-inch laptop. There’s definitely a fair bit of pixelation when using it. Naturally, that means that you’ll be sacrificing battery life.

I’m also a bit disappointed that there’s no OLED option. 15.6-inch OLED panels are becoming increasingly common, and they’ve recently been introduced in Lenovo’s entire range of 15.6-inch ThinkPads. The main reason I point this out though is because this PC is pretty much the ultimate media machine.

Aside from the Dolby Vision display, it has a Dolby Atmos soundbar. If this isn’t the best audio on a laptop, it’s easily close. It’s a rare combination of a speaker that gets super loud, but it’s also crystal clear. If you’re streaming media on it, you get a great display and killer speakers, and it makes for a phenomenal experience.

As mentioned above, it follows the same design as the Yoga S940 (IdeaPad S940 in the U.S.), and it has a reverse notch above the screen. What’s strange here is that it only seems to serve as a way to more easily open the lid. The Yoga S940 had that area packed with sensors and an IR camera. Those aren’t included in this PC. And I don’t think that the top bezel is small enough to where that reverse notch is needed to fit it.

Another thing that the C940 doesn’t borrow from the S940 is the curved-edge glass. This was a really nice touch on the S940, so I was sad to see it omitted from the C940.

Keyboard and trackpad

Like many 15.6-inch laptops, the Yoga C940 includes a number pad to the right of the alphabetical keys. The keys are shallower than what you’d find on a ThinkPad. Indeed, Lenovo’s consumer laptop keyboards are a more modern approach.

I really think that this is the best approach these days. The keyboard feels very comfortable to type on, and it’s comfortable to type on. Lenovo is really good at making keyboards, and I’ve never had a truly bad experience with one as I have with pretty much every other manufacturer.

I’ve typed a lot of articles on this machine, and I never got tired of it. Aside from the great keyboard, the big screen makes it great for productivity. And of course, it’s a convertible with pen support, so there’s a wide range of use cases.

The trackpad uses Microsoft Precision drivers, so it’s responsive and accurate. It’s aligned to the left, rather than in the center. Again, this is common for devices like this. You’ll also find a fingerprint sensor to the right of it, and that’s your only method for Windows Hello biometric authentication, since there’s no IR camera.

Performance and battery life

The performance on the Lenovo Yoga C940 15 is awesome, possibly the best of any consumer convertible. As I noted above, it’s the only one I know of that offers a Core i9-9880H, a vPro chip with a 45W TDP, eight cores, and 16 threads.

This one includes a Core i7-9750H, also a 45W chip but with six cores and 12 threads. The H-series is what you’ll find in gaming laptops and mobile workstations, so it’s pretty powerful. And of course, there’s the dedicated GPU, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650, which is built on the Turing architecture.

You can use the Lenovo Yoga C940 15 for just about anything. You can play games on it, edit video on it, or use it for general productivity tasks. Since it’s a convertible, you can use it as a tablet, and use the pen to draw, take handwritten notes, and so on. It’s powerful enough to handle Adobe CC, using tablet-centric interfaces in the various apps that support it.

That power affects the battery life, of course, but the battery life on this machine was weirdly good. I got a solid six hours of general use out of it, and in some cases, I could stretch it to eight hours. Lenovo lists the 4K UHD model as getting about three quarters the battery life of this, which is still pretty good. But make no mistake, the higher resolution will affect battery life.

I did have a few strange software issues, which I assume will eventually be fixed with software updates. I was completely unable to install Nvidia GeForce driver updates. Lenovo ended up sending me a new model because I had a touchscreen issue with the first one, and I still couldn’t install an Nvidia update on the new one. Windows 10 cumulative updates wouldn’t install either, oddly enough.

For benchmarks, I ran PCMark 8, PCMark 10, 3DMark, and VRMark. There’s only one VRMark test since it didn’t hit the minimum frame rate, so there wasn’t much sense in running the more advanced tests.

As I noted above, this is a powerful machine. That’s why I ran 3DMark and VRMark, which I don’t run on ultrabooks as they always come in at the 1% mark. It’s not a VR machine though. If you’re serious about gaming, you’ll still want a gaming PC. If you’re serious about video editing, you should look for more powerful dedicated graphics. This is better for an all-around solution.

Conclusion

The Lenovo Yoga C940 15 is sort of the ultimate PC. It’s great for streaming media, with a solid display and amazing speakers. It has the power to do what you need to do, from productivity, to editing video, to gaming. And it’s a convertible, meaning that you can use it in a wide range of form factors, such as as a tablet, where you can use the pen to draw, take handwritten notes, mark up photos, and more.

That’s not to say that I don’t have any issues with it though. Software issues were one thing, but I look at that as a temporary problem. I do find it irritating that a premium PC in 2019 could ship without an IR camera for facial recognition, and of course, I’m disappointed that there’s no OLED option in a market where 15.6-inch OLED displays are becoming common and when this is already such an amazing media consumption machine. When something gets to be so good at consuming media, the lack of an OLED option becomes a blemish.

But again, this PC is amazing all-around. Just the sheer versatility of it is fantastic. It has this diversity of things that it’s good at that make it a delight to use. It gets the job done, no matter what the job is.

On October 23rd, Huawei officially launched the HUAWEI VR Glass which – as the name suggests – is a pair of VR glasses. The product was announced with a price tag of 2999 Yuan, around $430 at the current exchange rates. Today, we learn that the headset is finally hitting the market on Thursday, December 19th; while also acquiring further details.

So, let’s start with a very important factor when talking about virtual reality glasses: the weight. Huawei‘s VR Glass come weighing just 166 grams, for a thickness of the lens system of about 26.6mm. According to the company, this is a huge leap over current VR headsets (in terms of lightness) and it’s also what got Huawei a World VR Industry Conference Innovation Gold Award in 2019.

The HUAWEI VR Glass uses an ultra-short focus optical system, a three-stage folding optical path and a 5-pixel high-precision calibration. The glasses can be adjusted for those who suffer of myopia in a range that goes from 0 to 700 degrees; meanwhile the adaptive pupillary distance goes from 55 to 71 mm. The headset also features a breathable shading mask, making it more comfortable to wear and to enjoy the content.

Other important specs include a screen resolution of 3200×160 for a PPI of up to 1058. We then have a 90-degree field of view and 70 / 90Hz variable refresh rate.

The headset also supports 3D sound effects, IMAX giant screen mode and VR mobile phone projection screen mode. Meanwhile on the content side, Huawei will provide 30,000 hours of VR video, over 100 Mobile VR games and thousands of computer VR games (6DoF games).

So, the Huawei VR Glass appears to be a solid device in a market (VR) that’s rapidly picking up. In the first quarter of 2019, global shipments of AR / VR headsets have indeed increased by 27.2% year-on-year. Will it continue to grow in 2020? Well, we’re going to find out very soon!

Dell’s XPS 13 is widely-regarded as the pinnacle of ultrabook excellence. This 13-inch notebook weighs just 2.7 pounds and lasts over 12 hours on a charge when you have its default, 1080p non-touch screen. It also has a slew of attractive features such as a nearly-bezel free display and a luxurious soft-touch deck (on the silver / gold models).

While the XPS 13 typically starts at less than $900 for a stripped-down model with a Core i3 CPU, 4GB of RAM and a paltry 128GB SSD, you usually have to pay a lot more than $1,200 to get it with a decent processor, RAM and storage. However, right now, B&H has a configuration of the XPS 13 with a Core i7-8565U “Whiskey Lake” CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD for just $1,049, reduced from $1,649. This model is in the silver color and has the bright, 1080p screen which, in Laptop Mag’s tests, hit a brilliant 375 nits.

If 256GB of storage sounds like too little for you, you can get the same configuration in Rose Gold or Frost White, but with a 512GB SSD, for just $1,143 on Dell.com by using code 12AWXPS at checkout. If you prefer Dell to B&H or B&H is out of stock, you can get the 256GB model at Dell.com at the same URL and with the same coupon code for just $1,100.

Because these Dell XPS 13s have “Whiskey Lake” Core i7-8565U CPUs, they are not the quite as fast as the brand-new Dell XPS 13 with a Comet Lake, Core i7-10710U CPU that we recently reviewed. And they still have the webcam in their bottom bezels (a problem that was finally fixed on the brand new model).

However, this generation of the Dell XPS 13, model 9380, is still plenty fast and power-efficient. The Dell XPS 13 is also one of the thinnest laptops on the market, at just 0.6 inches thick.

If the Dell XPS 13 isn’t for you and you’re looking for a different kind of laptop sale, check out our list of best holiday tech deals.

As spotted by Shaun Fosmark, Australian overclocker jordan.hyde99 has set a new world record in wPrime 1024M with AMD’s Ryzen 9 3900X processor. What’s fascinating is the fact that the AMD processor was running a much slower clock speed than the previous record holder, the Intel Core i9-7920X.

The Ryzen 9 3900X and Core i9-7920X are both equipped with 12 cores and 24 threads, so both chips are on even ground in terms of core counts. The first is based on AMD’s Zen 2 microarchitecture and rocks a 3.8 GHz base clock and 4.6 GHz boost clock, while the latter utilizes Intel’s Skylake microarchitecture and clocks in with a 2.9 GHz and 4.4 GHz base and boost clock, respectively.

Overclocker jordan.hyde99 overclocked his Ryzen 9 3900X to 5,625 MHz on liquid nitrogen and finished the wPrime 1024M benchmark run in 35 seconds and 517 milliseconds to take the crown away from the Core i9-7920X.

In comparison, the Core i9-7920X previously held the record at 35 seconds 693 milliseconds while being overclocked to 5,955 MHz with the same type of exotic cooling.

Although the Ryzen 9 3900X only managed to beat the Core i9-7920X by a negligible margin (less than one percent), the big takeaway here is the clock speed. The Ryzen 9 3900X was able to match the Core i9-7920X’s score while running with a 5.8% lower operating clock. This stands as testimony that Zen 2’s instructions per cycle (IPC) is higher than Skylake, and subsequent microarchitectures based on the same design, in many workloads.

A leaked Intel CPU has been discovered on the SiSoft database. This CPU has six cores, Hyper-Threading, and was used in a server or workstation configuration with another identical six-core for a total of 12 cores and 24 threads. What’s interesting, however, is that the amount of L2 cache per core has been increased from just 256 KB on Coffee Lake CPUs, like the Core i9-9900K, to 1.25 MB. This is even more cache per core than offered by the Core i9-10980XE (1 MB) and Ice Lake mobile CPUs (512 KB).

The amount of L2 cache per core is important to note because it has a big architectural impact on performance. This difference might be between two totally different architectures (AMD’s Bulldozer vs. Zen), or between two architectures that share the same core but almost nothing else (Intel’s Skylake vs. Skylake X). This Intel CPU likely isn’t using a Skylake core, however, considering that Intel already has an architecture in this segment that is based on Skylake: Coffee Lake, soon to be succeeded by Comet Lake. This CPU is very likely to be using one of Intel’s new architectures that it designed for the 10nm node. But which architecture is used?

Given that 10nm Ice Lake CPUs launched earlier this year and we don’t have any indication whatsoever that Intel plans to launch variants with more cores for the desktop, we can probably disregard the possibility that this is an Ice Lake CPU. We can also likely disregard this potentially being Comet Lake because the Comet Lake U series has launched as a 14nm, Skylake derivative. This CPU is extremely unlikely to be launched in the near future.

The two most likely possibilities are that either this is a 10nm Tiger Lake CPU or a 14nm Rocket Lake CPU. There is little information on either architecture, but one Tiger Lake leak revealed it has 1.25 MB of L2 cache per core, just like this leaked CPU. That might be strong evidence that this is actually Tiger lake, but there has been no indication thus far that Tiger Lake will offer more than four cores, while Rocket Lake has been seen with eight cores. This leaked CPU also has less L3 cache than the leaked Tiger Lake CPU; because L3 caches can be quite large, it makes sense that a CPU on a less-dense node would have less L3 cache than a CPU on a denser node. Considering also this leaked CPU is a desktop CPU, and that Rocket Lake is expected to succeed Comet Lake, it seems more likely this leaked CPU is Rocket Lake on the 14nm node, using Willow Cove cores like Tiger Lake.

Intel has already revealed it has the option of backporting architectures intended for 7nm onto the 10nm node, so the possibility of Rocket Lake being a 14nm architecture with designs intended for 10nm CPUs is certainly there.

It is important to point out that Intel did promise 10nm desktop CPUs are coming, so that might be an indication that this is a 10nm desktop CPU, but there is little to go on. Ever since it was suggested earlier this year that Rocket Lake was a 14nm architecture, it’s been tough to see where exactly these 10nm desktop CPUs are going to slot in. Are 10nm desktop CPUs supposed to be for gamers like the mainstream 9600K, 9700K, and 9900K? Or are these CPUs going into NUCs? Or maybe Intel will position these 10nm CPUs as competition for AMD’s APUs? Hopefully, Intel isn’t planning on introducing a 10nm successor to Rocket Lake, because by then the 7nm node will power its new products.

It is worth suggesting that maybe this isn’t a desktop workstation at all, but a server using a server CPU. That opens up the possibility that this is actually Ice Lake for server, which would have more L2 cache per core than Ice Lake for mobile (see Skylake vs. Skylake X). But given the low core count and the fact that Tiger Lake has the same L2 cache per core, it would be a really weird coincidence. It is worth considering, however.

Overall, it’s hard to make any firm conclusions based on this result. The possibilities are many and the evidence is very thin. The one certainty is that this CPU is not a Skylake derivative. What isn’t certain is whether or not this is 14nm Rocket Lake with a backported core, 10nm Tiger Lake for desktop, or something totally different, like Ice Lake for server.