Valentina Palladino Valentina Palladino Valentina Palladino The 2018 Lenovo Yoga Book, open to show its e-ink keyboard, sitting on a wooden tablet. The 2018 Lenovo Yoga Book, open to show its e-ink keyboard, sitting on a wooden tablet. The 2018 Lenovo Yoga Book, open to show its e-ink keyboard, sitting on a wooden tablet. Lenovo didn't forget about its quirky, keyboard-less Yoga Book. The netbook-like device that came out in 2016 was an acquired taste, to say the least, but it was also a chance for Lenovo to experiment with the traditional two-in-one form. The company returns in 2018 with a new version still named the Yoga Book (officially it's the Yoga Book C930), but it now has an E-ink panel attached to the main touchscreen slab and powerful internals that kicked its price up by quite a bit. Lenovo abandoned the "halo" keyboard found on the last Yoga Book and replaced it with an E-ink slab that transforms from keyboard to sketch pad to e-reader. The E-ink keyboard fills the entire screen when activated, and a small, square area at the bottom, directly underneath the space bar, brings up an E-ink trackpad when tapped. Considering the overall size of the device, the trackpad is still small like it was on the old Yoga Book. However, its collapsible nature gives the rest of the keyboard more room to breathe when you're not using it. Also, you have two input options since you can use the trackpad or the Yoga Book's touchscreen. In my short time demoing the Yoga Book, I can already say I like the E-ink keyboard better than the old halo keyboard. Lenovo programmed haptic and audio feedback into the board, so you'll feel and hear each key being "pressed." It's still not a device that I'd want to use to type out long-form work, but it would be fine for typing up emails and notes. Advertisement The Yoga Book also has potential as an e-reader, but two things may hold it back: size and support. The device's FHD E-ink panel matches the size of its 10.8-inch QHD touchscreen, making it much larger than that of a standard e-reader. It has the potential to replace such a device for those who want to carry around just one thing, but it's also currently unclear if apps like Amazon Kindle will support it. The new Yoga Book comes with a stylus that can stick magnetically to the side of the device, so it'll be harder to lose. Both the touchscreen and the E-ink display are handwriting-ready, and you can transfer notes, drawings, and formulas drawn on the E-ink display to some Windows 10 programs. Lenovo briefly showed this off by writing a sentence on the E-ink panel and transferring it over to OneNote, where it was quickly converted to typed text. The same can be done for mathematical equations that include numbers, symbols, and formulas. The QHD touchscreen attaches to the E-ink panel with Lenovo's signature watchband hinge. This setup lets you rotate the device into laptop, tablet, and other modes. Instead of being just a design upgrade from the original, Lenovo turned the Yoga Book into a much more powerful machine. It runs on either an Intel m3-7Y30 or Core i5-7Y54 processor, 4GB RAM, and up to 256GB storage, and it includes a fingerprint reader and a USB-C charging port. That's a major improvement from 2016's version that ran on an Intel Atom processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage—making it more of a tablet than a two-in-one in terms of productivity power. But all those upgrades bring a higher price. The new Yoga Book C930 starts at $999, twice as much as the original device did when it debuted. Both Wi-Fi and LTE models will be available this October. Listing image by Valentina Palladino<doc-sep>The second time might be the charm. Lenovo is releasing the second version of the Yoga Book, the C930, starting at $999 in October. When the first Yoga Book launched back in 2016, it was both innovative and polarizing and it looks like the latest iteration of the Windows 10 convertible is bringing more of the same. At a passing glance, the C930 looks pretty similar to the first Yoga Book, and it's still remarkably light and thin at 1.7 pounds and 10.3 x 7.1 x 0.4 inches. But look closer and you'll see that Lenovo replaced the original Yoga Book's static Wacom digitizer with a legitimate E Ink screen that can transform depending on the mode. When using the C930 in laptop mode, the E Ink display acts as a keyboard complete with haptic feedback. In the interest of space, you can minimize the touchpad, allowing room for the Space Bar. As a touch typist, it's still a bit awkward to type on, but I can definitely see myself shooting off an email or two with the hunt-and-peck method. The E Ink display also has a sketch mode, handy for artists or note takers like myself. Using the Bluetooth Wacom Active Pen to draw a picture of a flower was seamless. I didn't notice any lag as I sketched, and the 4,096 pressure level adjusted accordingly, creating thick or thin pen strokes depending on how hard I pressed. MORE: Best 2-in-1s The panel can also be used as an e reader for the bookworms out there. Oh, and if you were wondering where the pen goes when you're not using it, you can just stick it on the front of the C930 and its magnetic cover will hold it firmly in place. Those interested in the C930 will have a couple of configs to choose from. The base model will feature the low-power 7th gen Core m3-7Y30 processor. But if you want more oomph, you can get the convertible with a 7th gen Core i5-7Y54 CPU. No matter what processor you choose, the system will have 4GB of RAM with up to a 256GB PCIe SSD of storage and an Intel HD Graphics 615 GPU. As far as battery life, Lenovo is estimating that the C930 will last up to 8.6 hours. That's shorter than the original Yoga Book, which lasted 9 hours and 35 minutes on our battery test. Lenovo outfitted the C930's primary display with a 10.8-inch, 2560 x 1600 LCD, which looked equal parts bright and vivid during my demo. It's a step up from the previous model's 1920 x 1200 panel that we felt was on a bit on the dark side. However, we're going to have to wait until we get the C930 in the lab to get accurate measurements. When the original Lenovo Yoga Book debuted, I was smitten with the idea of it. The ability to transfer all my fevered scribblings from a notepad to a 10-inch screen was heady stuff. Plus, the haptic keyboard was a first, and I'm a sucker for innovation. But when I actually began to use the Yoga Book, it wasn't the versatile productivity machine that I imagined, mainly because of the typing aspect. That's not to say the Yoga Book isn't useful, I saw a few people using it in the wild, I'm just saying the last iteration wasn't for me. We'll have to see whether this sequel is a significant step forward.<doc-sep>It’s hard to explain just what the Yoga Book C930 is. It’s a laptop, but half of it has an E Ink display in place of a physical keyboard with haptic feedback when you type. But “laptop” doesn’t quite fit because this is a very thin, small device that’s more akin to a folio than a full computer. But it’s a full computer, too: it’s a Windows 10 device with 7th-Gen Intel processors that should be able to keep up with light computing needs. It has a 360 “watch band” hinge that allows you to flip it all the way around into a tablet mode, so it’s also a tablet. You can use it like any Windows tablet with support for a pen. You can jot notes on the E Ink side or read and mark up PDF documents. Once you get all the different things the Yoga Book C930 is trying to do, you can’t help but be intrigued. It’s a svelte, elegant device that seems like it belongs in a gauzy tech concept video — only it’s actually going on sale this October, starting at $999.99. We’re still awaiting pricing information for the upgraded model with a faster processor, as well as pricing and a release date for a model that will integrate LTE. Processor: 7th-Gen Intel m3-7Y30 or 7th-Gen Intel i5-7Y54 OS: Windows 10 Dimensions: 10.25 x 7.06 x 0.38 inches (260.4 x 179.44 x 9.9 mm) Weight: 1.71 pounds (775g) Displays: 10.8-inch (2560 x 1600) LCD IPS touchscreen and 10.8-inch (1920 x 1080) E Ink Memory: 4GB RAM, up to 256GB SSD Battery: 35.8Wh, up to 8.6 hours Other features: Wacom Active Pen with 4096 pressure levels, two USB 3.1 Type-C ports, fingerprint sensor But before you get too excited, there are some hard realities to contend with. This isn’t the first go-round Lenovo has had with this form-factor. Last year’s Yoga Book had many of the same ideas, but its execution was lacking. Instead of an E Ink deck, it had a weird pressure-sensitive thing you were supposed to put a pad of paper on. It had an atrociously outdated processor and was available in both Windows and Android variants. Lenovo is fixing a bunch of those problems this year. The big improvements are the improved processor, a couple of USB-C ports, a fingerprint sensor, and, of course, that E Ink display. Essentially, Lenovo decided to focus on making the Yoga Book a high-end Windows 10 tablet device instead of the weird mix of midrange Android and Windows models it had last year. (It was even considering Chrome OS.) But that doesn’t mean the new Yoga Book is fixing all of them or that it won’t introduce some new compromises. Here’s a simple example: typing on a screen — even with haptic feedback — is still not as ergonomic as typing on a physical keyboard. But if you can get beyond that, you’ll find Lenovo has done some interesting work. The keyboard is expanded out to fill the entire 10.8-inch E Ink screen with a little oval at the bottom. Tap that, and it expands out over a portion of the keyboard to become a larger trackpad; tap outside it, and it goes back into keyboard mode. That’s in addition to easy wins that a touchscreen makes possible, like offering keyboards in multiple languages. Sadly, there’s no emoji-specific keyboard option available. Lenovo just hates fun, I guess. If you use the pen, you can do some other neat tricks with the E Ink screen. Doodles and drawings can be copied and pasted directly into any Windows app. You can also use optical character recognition to translate your handwritten notes into straight text. But for all those neat tricks, there are potential downsides. The display can’t show any arbitrary app, unfortunately. You can read and mark up PDFs with it, but that’s pretty much the extent of what you can put on the display. An e-reader this is not. Switching between modes on the E Ink display took a few seconds on the prototypes Lenovo showed, but it’s possible that could be sped up on the final shipping product. Simply as a piece of hardware, and especially as a concept, the Lenovo Yoga Book C930 feels futuristic. Lenovo added a clever knock-knock feature: rap twice on the lid when it’s closed, and it will pop open. Is it necessary? Nope. Is it neat? Sort of! But whether the execution can live up to the ideas is another question entirely. The prototypes I saw were elegantly designed but had weird preproduction hardware quirks: some were too hard to open, had off-kilter vibrations, or experienced noticeable delays when copying E Ink scribbles into Windows. The burden of proof is on Lenovo to show that those issues won’t appear in the final product. And starting at a thousand bucks, the execution had better be pretty great because that’s more expensive than a decked-out Surface Go. Grid View Correction August 30th, 5:08PM ET: The first version of this article referred to E Ink as “E-Ink.” The E Ink Corporation is super particular about how its technology is identified. We have fixed the error.<doc-sep>
Photo : Sam Rutherford ( Gizmodo ) You wanted to love the original Lenovo Yoga Book. It had a pretty display, and its keyboard doubled as a pad for pen input, which besides just being neat also allowed it to be one of the thinnest laptops available at .38 inches. Plus, it cost just $500. But the original Yoga Book was profoundly flawed and not a good buy for anyone beyond gadget nerds with extra cash. The new .39-inch Yoga Book C930, with a second e-ink display, is so outrageously neat that you could find yourself rooting for it despite its higher $1,000 price tag. There is a wide range of excellent laptops for $1,000. Laptops that are more powerful and can do a lot more than this little guy. But it’s been a while since I’ve seen a device as festooned with neat quirks as the Lenovo Yoga Book C930. Like how you open the Yoga Book. The original was super thin, but kind of a hassle to open because it was so thin. You always had to use two hands—a bummer if you had it on your desk and were trying to use it as a laptop. The new Yoga Book has a knock knock feature. Just knock twice on the top and it pops open. A tap works too. Gif : Alex Cranz; Andrew Liszewski ( Gizmodo ) Once you open the device you’re presented with a very attractive 10.8-inch screen that Lenovo bills as a retina display due to its resolution of 2560 x 1600. Its a good looking display and exactly the kind of quality you’d expect from a $1,000 device. The touchscreen keyboard, on the other hand, defies expectations of $1,000 laptops, especially ones from Lenovo. Lenovo usually has really, really good keyboards on its laptops. The kind that give you a visceral feeling of pleasure as you type. But the new Yoga Book, as with the old one, expects you to type on a completely flat surface, this time a 10.8-inch 1080p e-ink screen. It’s not a real keyboard, and I’ll be curious to see what typing on it for more than a quick session is like, but in my brief time with the unit, I found myself reminded of the iPad’s built-in keyboard—only with way less screen space taken up by the keys. It could end up being seriously uncomfortable for long typing sessions, but was fine in this quick demo. Gif : Sam Rutherford; Andrew Liszewski ( Gizmodo ) Lenovo claims that because it is e-ink, it will also be easier to customize the keyboard. On the current model that customization is limited to changing the language on the keyboard, but enterprising people could theoretically do their own customizations if they so chose. When the keyboard isn’t in keyboard mode it can be used as a pad for drawing with the included Wacom pen. In the demonstration we saw. it worked with the Microsoft OneNote app so you can doodle notes on the e-ink display and watch them pop up on the more colorful display above. But it should work with additional apps at launch, and if you prefer writing instead of typing notes, you can make use of the 360-degree hinge and just use the e-ink display as a note pad, with notes directly stored in OneNote. I didn’t do that here. Gif : Sam Rutherford; Andrew Liszewski ( Gizmodo ) If jotting down notes with a keyboard or pen isn’t appealing there’s the third use of the e-ink display and one we’re all familiar with—reading. It actually works as a second display for consuming PDFs and ebooks. With the fat bezels and its light weight, it isn’t a terrible e-reader—think a larger version of the Kindle DX. Again, I don’t know how often I’d flip it around to read a book or mark up a PDF, but I’ll admit that I absolutely love the option of having an e-ink display on a Windows 10 laptop. I just...love to read? Gif : Sam Rutherford; Andrew Liszewski ( Gizmodo ) Though a possibly underpowered one. The Yoga Book C930 will ship with 7th-gen Y-series processors and max out at 256GB. Those are far better guts than the original Yoga Book with its much slower Atom processor, but this will not be a productivity machine unless you’re trying to record all your notes via the e-ink display or penning emails.