By Brady Betzel

While more and more creators are looking for alternatives to the iMac, iMac Pro and Mac Pro, there are few options with high-quality, built-in monitors: Microsoft Surface Studio, HP Envy, and Dell 7000 are a few. There are even fewer choices if you want touch and pen capabilities. It’s with that need in mind that I decided to review the Lenovo Yoga A940, a 27-inch, UHD, pen- and touch-capable Intel Core i7 computer with an AMD Radeon RX 560 GPU.

While I haven’t done a lot of all-in-one system reviews like the Yoga A940, I have had my eyes on the Microsoft Surface Studio 2 for a long time. The only problem is the hefty price tag of around $3,500. The Lenovo’s most appealing feature — in addition to the tech specs I will go over — is its price point: It’s available from $2,200 and up. (I saw Best Buy selling a similar system to the one I reviewed for around $2,299. The insides of the Yoga and the Surface Studio 2 aren’t that far off from each other either, at least not enough to make up for the $1,300 disparity.)

Here are the parts inside the Lenovo Yoga A940: Intel Core i7-8700 3.2GHz processor (up to 4.6GHz with Turbo Boost), six cores (12 threads) and 12MB cache; 27-inch 4K UHD IPS multitouch 100% Adobe RGB display; 16GB DDR4 2666MHz (SODIMM) memory; 1TB 5400 RPM drive plus 256GB PCIe SSD; AMD Radeon RX 560 4GB graphics processor; 25-degree monitor tilt angle; Dolby Atmos speakers; Dimensions: 25 inches by 18.3 inches by 9.6 inches; Weight: 32.2 pounds; 802.11AC and Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity; side panel inputs: Intel Thunderbolt, USB 3.1, 3-in-1 card reader and audio jack; rear panel inputs: AC-in, RJ45, HDMI and four USB 3.0; Bluetooth active pen (appears to be the Lenovo Active Pen 2); and QI wireless charging technology platform.

Digging In
Right off the bat, I just happened to put my Android Galaxy phone on the odd little flat platform located on the right side of the all-in-one workstation, just under the monitor, and I saw my phone begin to charge wirelessly. QI wireless charging is an amazing little addition to the Yoga; it really comes through in a pinch when I need my phone charged and don’t have the cable or charging dock around.

Other than that nifty feature, why would you choose a Lenovo Yoga A940 over any other all-in-one system? Well, as mentioned, the price point is very attractive, but you are also getting a near-professional-level system in a very tiny footprint — including Thunderbolt 3 and USB connections, HDMI port, network port and SD card reader. While it would be incredible to have an Intel i9 processor inside of the Yoga, the i7 clocks in at 3.2GHz with six cores. Not a beast, but enough to get the job done inside of Adobe Premiere and Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve, but maybe with transcoded files instead of Red raw or the like.

The Lenovo Yoga A940 is outfitted with a front-facing Dolby Atmos audio speaker as well as Dolby Vision technology in the IPS display. The audio could use a little more low end, but it is good. The monitor is surprisingly great — the whites are white and the blacks are black; something not everyone can get right. It has 100% Adobe RGB color coverage and is Pantone-validated. The HDR is technically Dolby Vision and looks great at about 350 nits (not the brightest, but it won’t burn your eyes out either). The Lenovo BT active pen works well. I use Wacom tablets and laptop tablets daily, so this pen had a lot to live up to. While I still prefer the Wacom pen, the Lenovo pen, with 4,096 levels of sensitivity, will do just fine. I actually found myself using the touchscreen with my fingers way more than the pen.

One feature that sets the A940 apart from the other all-in-one machines is the USB Content Creation dial. With the little time I had with the system, I only used it to adjust speaker volume when playing Spotify, but in time I can see myself customizing the dials to work in Premiere and Resolve. The dial has good action and resistance. To customize the dial, you can jump into the Lenovo Dial Customization Assistant.

Besides the Intel i7, there is an AMD Radeon RX 560 with 4GB of memory, two 3W and two 5W speakers, 32 GB of DDR4 2666 MHz memory, a 1 TB 5400 RPM hard drive for storage, and a 256GB PCIe SSD. I wish the 1TB drive was also an SSD, but obviously Lenovo has to keep that price point somehow.

Real-World Testing
I use Premiere Pro, After Effects and Resolve all the time and can understand the horsepower of a machine through these apps. Whether editing and/or color correcting, the Lenovo A940 is a good medium ground — it won’t be running much more than 4K Red raw footage in real time without cutting the debayering quality down to half if not one-eighth. This system would make a good “offline” edit system, where you transcode your high-res media to a mezzanine codec like DNxHR or ProRes for your editing and then up-res your footage back to the highest resolution you have. Or, if you are in Resolve, maybe you could use optimized media for 80% of the workflow until you color. You will really want a system with a higher-end GPU if you want to fluidly cut and color in Premiere and Resolve. That being said, you can make it work with some debayer tweaking and/or transcoding.

In my testing I downloaded some footage from Red’s sample library, which you can find here. I also used some BRAW clips to test inside of Resolve, which can be downloaded here. I grabbed 4K, 6K, and 8K Red raw R3D files and the UHD-sized Blackmagic raw (BRAW) files to test with.

Adobe Premiere
Using the same Red clips as above, I created two one-minute-long UHD (3840×2160) sequences. I also clicked “Set to Frame Size” for all the clips. Sequence 1 contained these clips with a simple contrast, brightness and color cast applied. Sequence 2 contained these same clips with the same color correction applied, but also a 110% resize, 100 sharpen and 20 Gaussian Blur. I then exported them to various codecs via Adobe Media Encoder using the OpenCL for processing. Here are my results:

QuickTime (.mov) H.264, No Audio, UHD, 23.98 Maximum Render Quality, 10 Mb/s:
Color Correction Only: 24:07
Color Correction w/ 110% Resize, 100 Sharpen, 20 Gaussian Blur: 26:11
DNxHR HQX 10 bit UHD
Color Correction Only: 25:42
Color Correction w/ 110% Resize, 100 Sharpen, 20 Gaussian Blur: 27:03

ProRes HQ
Color Correction Only: 24:48
Color Correction w/ 110% Resize, 100 Sharpen, 20 Gaussian Blur: 25:34

As you can see, the export time is pretty long. And let me tell you, once the sequence with the Gaussian Blur and Resize kicked in, so did the fans. While it wasn’t like a jet was taking off, the sound of the fans definitely made me and my wife take a glance at the system. It was also throwing some heat out the back. Because of the way Premiere works, it relies heavily on the CPU over GPU. Not that it doesn’t embrace the GPU, but, as you will see later, Resolve takes more advantage of the GPUs. Either way, Premiere really taxed the Lenovo A940 when using 4K, 6K and 8K Red raw files. Playback in real time wasn’t possible except for the 4K files. I probably wouldn’t recommend this system for someone working with lots of higher-than-4K raw files; it seems to be simply too much for it to handle. But if you transcode the files down to ProRes, you will be in business.

Blackmagic Resolve 16 Studio
Resolve seemed to take better advantage of the AMD Radeon RX 560 GPU in combination with the CPU, as well as the onboard Intel GPU. In this test I added in Resolve’s amazing built-in spatial noise reduction, so other than the Red R3D footage, this test and the Premiere test weren’t exactly comparing apples to apples. Overall the export times will be significantly higher (or, in theory, they should be). I also added in some BRAW footage to test for fun, and that footage was way easier to work and color with. Both sequences were UHD (3840×2160) 23.98. I will definitely be looking into working with more BRAW footage. Here are my results:

Playback: 4K realtime playback at half-premium, 6K no realtime playback, 8K no realtime playback

H.264 no audio, UHD, 23.98fps, force sizing and debayering to highest quality
Export 1 (Native Renderer)
Export 2 (AMD Renderer)
Export 3 (Intel QuickSync)

Color Only
Export 1: 3:46
Export 2: 4:35
Export 3: 4:01

Color, 110% Resize, Spatial NR: Enhanced, Medium, 25; Sharpening, Gaussian Blur
Export 1: 36:51
Export 2: 37:21
Export 3: 37:13

BRAW 4K (4608×2592) Playback and Export Tests

Playback: Full-res would play at about 22fps; half-res plays at realtime

H.264 No Audio, UHD, 23.98 fps, Force Sizing and Debayering to highest quality
Color Only
Export 1: 1:26
Export 2: 1:31
Export 3: 1:29
Color, 110% Resize, Spatial NR: Enhanced, Medium, 25; Sharpening, Gaussian Blur
Export 1: 36:30
Export 2: 36:24
Export 3: 36:22

DNxHR 10 bit:
Color Correction Only: 3:42
Color, 110% Resize, Spatial NR: Enhanced, Medium, 25; Sharpening, Gaussian Blur: 39:03

One takeaway from the Resolve exports is that the color-only export was much more efficient than in Premiere, taking just over three or four times realtime for the intensive Red R3D files, and just over one and a half times real time for BRAW.

Summing UpIn the end, the Lenovo A940 is a sleek looking all-in-one touchscreen- and pen-compatible system. While it isn’t jam-packed with the latest high-end AMD GPUs or Intel i9 processors, the A940 is a mid-level system with an incredibly good-looking IPS Dolby Vision monitor with Dolby Atmos speakers. It has some other features — like IR camera, QI wireless charger and USB Dial — that you might not necessarily be looking for but love to find.

The power adapter is like a large laptop power brick, so you will need somewhere to stash that, but overall the monitor has a really nice 25-degree tilt that is comfortable when using just the touchscreen or pen, or when using the wireless keyboard and mouse.

Because the Lenovo A940 starts at just around $2,299 I think it really deserves a look when searching for a new system. If you are working in primarily HD video and/or graphics this is the all-in-one system for you. Check out more at their website.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and The Shop. He is also a member of the Producer’s Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.