Lenovo’s 15.6-inch top-end premium Chrome OS convertible offering, the Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630, is now available for purchase direct from the company with a 4K display panel and keyboard backlighting, sources report.
Sold in the standard, almost black midnight blue color, the 2-in-1 is listed on the website with a price of $899.99, up $180 from the variant that doesn’t include the new features. For that price increase, more avid fans of Lenovo and Chrome OS get a touchscreen that’s been boosted from an FHD resolution of 1920 x 1080 to the UHD resolution 3840 x 2160. The display panel is an IPS anti-glare screen regardless of which variant is bought.
A powerhouse gets even better
Internally, the new additions are implemented over an already high-performance machine built around an 8th-gen quad-core Intel Core i5-8250U clocked at 1.6GHz. That jumps all the way up to 3.4GHz with Intel’s Turbo Boost technology as needed and is backed up by a respectable 6MB cache. For memory, Lenovo’s premium convertible ships with 8GB DDR4 2400MHz RAM and storage is set at 128GB.
A 56Whr battery powers the hardware, offering up to 10-hours of estimated battery life. The Android Headlines test of a slightly less powerful variant showed around 7.75-hours of battery on a single charge with moderately heavy usage. Charging only takes around an hour and a half. Those figures will drop slightly with a more powerful processor and higher-resolution display but most users won’t be working this machine quite as hard as our test did.
All of that means that the Yoga-branded gadget sits well ahead of most of its competition. It will also continue to be adequately powerful — at a minimum — over the entire 5-6 year standard timeframe during which Chrome OS devices remain officially supported with regular updates.
The quality of Lenovo’s all-metal build is nothing to scoff at either. The multi-touch display panel is set on a solid 360-degree hinge that will likely outlast the usefulness of the machine and its island-style keyboard is accented by a Gorilla Glass coated touchpad as an added luxury.
Above the screen, users get a 720p HD webcam. The frame houses two USB 3.1 Type-C ports, one of which is ‘always-on’, as well as a single USB 3.1 standard USB port, Kensington lock slot, micro SD card reader, and 3.5mm headphone jack. Two relatively brilliant tuned stereo speakers can be found on the bottom.
Are 4K and a backlit keyboard really worth it?
The improvements included on the newest listing stack on top of a device that, as far as Chrome OS is concerned, really couldn’t get much better. Even at the lower end of the Yoga Chromebook C630 family, Lenovo had already gone above and beyond what most users will ever need.
The current wait time on shipping for the upgraded convertible Chromebook, around 5 weeks, is probably not going to be worth it for those who are looking for a great Chromebook right now. It will almost certainly be worth it for tech enthusiasts or those who absolutely need a backlit keyboard for typing up code or business reports in darker environments.
Chrome OS has consistently gotten more capable and more useful over the past year, with good reason to believe that will only get better moving through 2019. The larger-than-average display included on Lenovo’s top-tier Chromebook means users will be able to take full advantage of the improvements. So Lenovo’s Yoga Chromebook C630 is a great option for those who need to get real work done and prefer the platform.
Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630 2-in-1
