Today, we’re going to take a look at the Lenovo Yoga S940. As part of their premium lineup of ultrabooks, the Yoga S940 comes with all the bells and whistles of a flagship such as an Intel Core i7-8565U processor and a 14.0-inch UHD display as well as a massive asking price.
| CPU | Intel Core i7-8565U |
| GPU | Intel HD Graphics 620 |
| OS | Windows 10 Home |
| RAM | 16GB LPDDR4 2133MHz |
| Display | 14.0-inch IPS, 3840 x 2160, 500nits, HDR 400 |
| Storage | 512GB PCIe x4 NVMe SSD |
| I/O Ports | 1x USB Type-C (DC-in + USB 3.1 Gen1), 2x USB Type-C Thunderbolt |
| Connection | WiFi 802.11ac 1×1 and 2×2, Bluetooth 5.0 |
| Weight | Starts at 1.2kg |
| Dimensions | 319.3 x 197.4 x 12.2mm |
| Battery | 52Whr, Up to 16 hours, USB PD Compatible |
| Audio | Front-facing Dolby Atmos Speaker System |
| Others | 720p IR Camera with Glance Privacy Software |
| Colors | Iron Grey |
Like most of their Yoga series notebooks, the Lenovo Yoga S940 is encased in a solid aluminum chassis. The aluminum chassis has a matte finish that can attract some fingerprints, but it still adds to the notebook’s rather premium feel.
Like with most of their notebooks, the Lenovo Yoga S940 prefers a minimalist feel. Its monolithic design is only broken by the Yoga logo near the top-left corner at the back panel of the screen.
Design-wise, the Lenovo Yoga S940 oozes a premium ultrabook. Measuring at just 319.3 x 197.4 x 12.2mm, the Yoga S940 is one of the thinnest notebooks in the market to sport a UHD HDR panel. It’s also lightweight only weighing in at 1.2kg.
Aside from its form factor, one of the most attractive features of the Lenovo Yoga S940 is its display. It comes with a 14.0-inch UHD HDR 400 IPS panel and is rated at 500nits. Although it doesn’t have any anti-glare coating on it, the screen is bright enough to warrant usage outdoors.
Color reproduction and contrast of the Yoga S940 are top-notch. Blacks are deep and there’s no significant backlight bleed found on its screen. It seems that Lenovo is vying for the attention of professionals and creatives with this notebook.
Unfortunately, the hinge on the notebook doesn’t share the design of other notebooks in Lenovo’s Yoga range. Instead of being able to completely lay flat, the screen will only go as far as around 110 degrees give or take. Viewing shouldn’t be much of an issue since the IPS panel has great viewing angles.
There’s minimal bezel footprint on the display of the Yoga S940. Although there’s little in the way of bezels, Lenovo is able to fit a 720p IR webcam at the top. In addition to the traditional webcam placement, the notebook comes with Glance Privacy Software as well as support for Windows Hello.
The Lenovo Yoga S940 comes equipped with a Chiclet-style keyboard. Layout is a 70% standard with the navigation keys being an additional function in the arrow keys. The keyboard provides good feedback although the key travel is a bit short.
Keys on the edges of the notebook have their length shaved a bit to fit the keyboard in such a small space. This is especially evident on the Up and Down buttons at the lower right corner as they have been squished to half a key height each.
The keyboard also comes with White backlight. There are three levels of brightness: Off, Low, and High. The levels of the backlight can be controlled by pressing Fn + Space together. Lenovo is probably using a diffuser underneath the keyboard to let light pass through evenly throughout.
The touchpad on the Lenovo Yoga S940 is as smooth as it can be. It does largely share the same finish as the chassis so some fingerprint marks will be noticeable after extended use. The touchpad is surprisingly precise while the left- and right-click offer decent tactility.
It seems that Lenovo is following Apple’s lead when it comes to ports. Like the recent Apple MacBooks, the Lenovo Yoga S940 has removed all the traditional ports we’ve known and loved in lieu of the three USB Type-C ports.
At the left-hand side of the notebook is a single USB Type-C port, which also acts as a DC-in thanks to USB Power Delivery. Alongside it is a 3.5mm combo jack for both headphones and microphone.
Populating the right-hand side are two USB Type-C ports. Thankfully, both these ports are Thunderbolt 3 compatible. This will allow you to use an external GPU to supplement its rather anemic Intel UHD 620 Graphics.
While USB Type-C is indeed the future for USB devices, Lenovo’s choice to implement an all USB Type-C configuration will force those who will get this notebook to probably buy a dongle to support existing peripherals.
Inside the thin chassis of the Lenovo Yoga S940 is an Intel Core i7-8565U processor with 16GB of DDR4 RAM running at 2133MHz and 512GB of PCIe x4 NVMe storage. It’s a shame that the notebook wasn’t released in time for Intel’s 10th generation refresh, but its processor should still suffice for most people.
To see how the notebook will perform, we ran it through our usual battery of tests, which include benchmarks for CPU and GPU:
“CPU-Z is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system such as processor name and number, codename, process package, cache levels, mainboard and chipset, as well as memory type, size, timings, and module specifications. It also offers real time measurement of each core’s internal frequency and memory frequency.”
“Cinebench R15 CPU test scenario uses all of your system’s processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene. This scene makes use of various algorithms to stress all available processor cores. In fact, CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 256 processor threads.This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.”
“7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio for ZIP and GZIP formats, which is between 2 to 10% better than its peers, depending on the exact data tested. And 7-Zip boosts its very own 7z archive format that also offers a significantly higher compression ratio than its peers—up to 40% higher.”
“wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton’s method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we’re searching, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum.”
“Designed to showcase the DirectX 11 API, the Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike became a standard in benchmarking as it not only tests the capabilities of the GPU, but also the capabilities of the whole system for a complete stress test.”
The Lenovo Yoga S940 can get a bit toasty. The processor can reach 95°C under heavy load. It seems that its thin chassis is preventing fresh air from circulating properly inside. The notebook is forced to vent heat to its bottom since there are no vents at the sides. Better not do anything heavy if the device is on your lap.
The Lenovo Yoga S940 vents heat towards the bottom.
The notebook is powered by a 52Whr battery. It’s not the biggest battery but it’s good enough considering that it is a thin device. Realistically, you’ll get around 10 hours with the Yoga S940 with under light load and low brightness settings. Under more reasonable loads such as binge watching movies and other media content over WiFi, the device lasted around 6 hours.
In terms of charging, the notebook will take around 2 hours with the supplied power brick. It is handy that the Yoga S940 is USB Power Delivery compatible so long as you have the power bank to support for some extra hours on the road.
Although the Lenovo Yoga S940 has quite the asking price – PhP 115,995 – to be exact, it is a quintessential ultrabook. Compact, beautiful, and fast, the Yoga S940 is one of the best entries from Lenovo this year.
Positives on the Lenovo Yoga S940 are its exemplary 14.0-inch UHD display. With a max brightness of 500nits and gorgeous color reproduction, it aims to satisfy those who focus on creative and professional work.
Performance-wise, the notebook scores on par with its contemporaries. It might not be the top-performer in our benchmarks, but it does everything in its power to put out capable processing power despite the lack of space in its gorgeous minimalist chassis.
The only real downside that we can see with the Yoga S940 is the brand’s choice of applying all USB Type-C ports. Again, we understand that the future holds more USB Type-C notebooks but it could have been better if Lenovo included at least one USB Type-C port to ease the transition.
All-in-all, the Lenovo Yoga S940 is one hell of an ultrabook. With its performance and portability, we’re comfortable with giving the device our 100% Approved badge. If you’re looking for a powerful, small, and lightweight device to do all your creative work, then the Lenovo Yoga S940 will be a decent choice.
