Lenovo Yoga C740 review: par for the course

I get out right away and say it: Lenovo Yogas are boring. I recently asked on Twitter if there were real Lenovo Yoga fans. I received a few comments from members of the large and active ThinkPad fandom who also don’t like Yogas, and a few other people who admitted that they liked certain aspects of Yogas that they tried. But there was a clear lack of excitement around them.

I think this is partly because in the seven-year history of the line there has never been a striking feature that distinguishes Yogas from the package. HP’s recent Envy x360s are known for their screens, the portability of the Surface Pro line cannot be surpassed, Acer’s Swift models are impossible light, the Asus’ ZenBook Flip 14 has a discreet GPU and Dell’s XPS 13 is, well yes, excellent everywhere.

There is nothing terrible about the recent yoga models, but there is also nothing special to stand for. I was hoping that this would be the year in which we saw a yoga that offered something innovative or different to fall behind. Lenovo did this with its $ 999 Yoga C940 and put an excellent soundbar in the one-piece hinge of the laptop. But the C740, the cheaper brother or sister of the C940, is an incremental upgrade from its predecessor, the 13.3-inch Yoga 730. That doesn’t make it a bad laptop. It is a good one. But as competing 2-in-1s keep getting better, the C740 has fallen behind.

Apart from the new processor inside, the most striking upgrade of the C740 comes in design. It has a wider screen than the 730 and there are now speaker grills on each side of the keyboard. At 14 inches and weighing three pounds, it is still on the portable side, although a bit too heavy to use extensively as a tablet; I was tired after holding a few minutes in one arm while drawing. I think the build is what most “Ultrabook” feels about this laptop: there is a bit of flex in the screen and keyboard, but not nearly as much as I generally experience on “budget” devices. The C740 feels sturdy and although both color options are a bit dull (gray or silver), the chassis looks good.

It looks somewhat like the Yoga C940, although it lacks some of the functions of the flagship. It mainly loses the 4K screen, does not come with a stylus and misses the soundbar in the hinge.

There are two USB-C 3.1 ports on the sides, as well as a USB 3.1 Type-A and a headphone jack. That is not very much connectivity and it is exacerbated by a lack of Thunderbolt 3, although the omission can be forgiven on a machine of less than $ 1,000. It would at least be nice to have an HDMI port or SD slot.

In the model I reviewed is a 10th generation Intel Core i5-10210U processor with 8 GB RAM and a 512 GB SSD. This is the basic configuration, which is listed by Lenovo at $ 899.99, but can be regularly purchased for less than $ 800 (it currently goes for $ 749.99 at Best Buy). You can take maximum advantage of a Core i7-10510U, 16 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD for $ 1,219.99. You can also purchase the Active Pen 2 from Lenovo for $ 59.99 extra. However, there is no lock to keep it in, so don’t lose it.

The C740 with an i5 delivers sufficient performance for business use or daily browsing. I had no problem with my normal workload, where I had to switch between 20-tabs Chrome tabs, execute Slack, write in Google Docs and occasionally stream Spotify or Netflix. I got up to 45 Chrome tabs, seven of which were running 1080p YouTube videos, before I noticed a delay. However, the lack of a GPU excludes demanding games.

The C740 never became particularly hot; about 15 minutes in a 1080p YouTube video, it was a bit too nice at the bottom, but not uncomfortable on my lap, and the keyboard, touchpad and palm rests remained cool. The single fan produced a consistent whine that was audible but never distracted.

The 1080p touchscreen reached 298 nits of brightness in my tests and covers 97 percent of sRGB and 75 percent of the Adobe color spaces. Those are enough statistics for a computer for this price, but they are insufficient for creative work. Colors generally looked good, with deep black for a high-contrast image. Unfortunately, the screen is very glossy. When I was watching a video in a bright office space, I had trouble distinguishing details in interior and dark scenes because I could see my own mirror image so clearly. I did not want to use the C740 outside.

Lenovo also uses a 16: 9 aspect ratio which – as I have said in other reviews – is simply cramped. Using two windows side by side was very difficult, even on the 14-inch screen. It is not nearly as comfortable for productivity work as smaller 3: 2 screens, such as the 13-inch Surface Book 2. This is not so much a problem with a connected monitor, but the lack of Thunderbolt or HDMI makes that a problem.

The battery life is another aspect that is acceptable but not exceptional. With a balanced profile I got just over six hours of business browsing, Slack and Spotify with a brightness of 50 percent. That’s fine for a 2-in-1 in the price range of the C740, but other machines do better. We took Surface Pro 7 between seven and eight o’clock, starting at just $ 749. Expect to charge the C740 during the day if you use it heavily, but it can perform typical tasks.

USB-C makes charging less hassle. If you already have a USB-C cable for a switch or a MacBook or something, you don’t have to wear your own brick. It took the Lenovo charger about two hours to get the C740 to work fully – again, acceptable, but not surprising.

That is actually the theme of this laptop. The audio was surprisingly pleasant, with a nice surround sound quality for a laptop speaker. The keyboard was comfortable and fast, but a bit superficial for my taste. The touchpad is a decent size and easy to click. Even the webcam is fine and produces a usable image with grainy lines. There is some annoying bloatware, mostly from McAfee and the security center from Lenovo, but that is unfortunately just a bit of a course for these machines. All in all there is not much to complain about and also not much to praise enthusiastically.

If the 2-in-1 market was full of laptops that did some things really well and some things badly, I would recommend the C740 as a secure budget option. It does everything fine. But that is not the world we live in. The reality is that most non-XPS competitors of the C740 – HP’s Envys and Specters, Surface’s and Surface Laptops from Microsoft, even Lenovo’s C940 – do most things well and some do very well.

The C740 is a good machine. You won’t do much better for less than $ 800. But before you buy, I recommend that you look at its competitors and see what you miss if you choose a laptop for this price. You specify things such as a striking screen, special images and a bundled stylus. If you can do without it, you’ll love the C740. But while other competitors of less than $ 1,000 continue to innovate, I hope the budget Yoga line finds a way to keep up.

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