Lenovo has just announced the Yoga Book C930, an ultra-slim, ultra-light and ultra-flexible dual display laptop with E Ink technology, and the first successor to the ground-breaking 2016 Yoga Book. As the world’s first dual display laptop with E Ink, the Yoga Book’s 10.8-inch high-resolution IPS display interacts with an E Ink display that functions as a notepad, sketchbook, eReader and a self-learning keyboard. And with the 7th Generation Intel Core processor which was purpose built to deliver incredible processing power for a fanless laptop, the Yoga Book C930 is designed to produce no thermal noise. It’s got a 10.8-inch QHD 2K IPS display, two speakers, and features Dolby Atmos immersive audio.
The Yoga comes with an optional Precision Pen5 and was designed for users to annotate on reports, jot down notes or sketch out ideas on either the LCD or E Ink display. It’s the latest Bluetooth active pen with Wacom technology, so users can now apply up to 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, along with pen tilt support to achieve natural shading effects.
A Lenovo engineer told me that “On its own merits, the Yoga Book C930’s E Ink display is anti-glare, high-resolution and paper-like—making it one of the most versatile devices on the market. We designed for it to be held in one hand, and it allows for users to read, highlight and annotate on it like digital paper. The E Ink display transforms your laptop into an e-reader for browsing long reports, research papers or other book-length files while decreasing eye strain and consuming less power over all—when you read with the LCD display turned off.”
The E Ink keyboard is ten inches in size and it’ll show black-and-white keys that “depress” when touched, it vibrates to provide haptic feedback. Tap the function button on the top right, and the E Ink screen switches over to a notepad mode. You can write on the screen with an included stylus, and the system will not only save your sketches, but also translate them into text that you can copy and paste over into the primary display. You will also be able to read ebooks on the E Ink display with yet another function. Currently it only works for PDF documents, but Lenovo has claimed that they are adding support for MOBI and EPUB before it actually is released.
The Yoga has Windows 10 support and you can install native apps from the Microsoft Store. It also has the Edge Browser, so customers in the US can buy ebooks and read them on the color screen. You also can install legacy apps such as Kindle for PC or download and play a myriad of games such as Angry Birds, Slots, or import in your Steam collection.
If you don’t feel like interacting with the color display or the E Ink one, you can use your voice. The Yoga C930 has built in far-range mics to enable Cortana and Alexa to recognize voice commands from up to four meters away.
The new Yoga Book C930 starts at $999, twice as much as the original device did when it debuted. The WIFI and LTE versions will be available sometime in October. Will you buy the C930? This is a very innovative piece of hardware and has many similarities as the Intel Tiger Rapid concept that was shown off a few months ago.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
