Lenovo took over one of the restaurants in the Venetian again, as it has done for the last several years. There was a lot to see and we had a whistlestop tour of the new products which strongly focused on the consumer side of the business, with little sign of the new Kaby Lake business Thinkpads, although the latest X1 was there.
We started by looking at the Miix 720 which is a 2 in 1 convertible tablet that has a 12″ Gorilla Glass display with 400 cd/m² of brightness and 2880 x 1920 (3:2 or 18:9 aspect) display. There are different variations of processor in the latest Intel Core range including the high end Core i7 and up to 1 TB of SSD storage, with 16GB of DDR4 memory. Graphics is from Intel’s 620 series. An active pen is shipped with the PC and a neat feature is that it supports ThunderBolt 3 Alt mode via its USB Type-C which means it could even be joined up to an external GPU box, such as the one from Razer. That makes it incredibly versatile and a competitor for Microsoft’s Surface. Battery life is claimed at 8 hours.
Lenovo’s Miix 720 is a very versatile convertible tablet/PC. Image:Meko
We saw the Yoga 910 at IFA (Lenovo Innovates All Over) but we heard at CES that the company has now got Paypal payment approval for the fingerprint sensor in that unit, which makes the PC and online transactions very secure.
The Thinkpad X1 Carbon and X1 Tablet have been upgraded to the latest Kaby Lake processors and the X1 Carbon now has a 14″ display but is in a ‘13.3″ form factor’. The X1 has now acquired ThunderBolt 3 to add to its HDMI port and the unit has been fitted with an infrared camera for Windows Hello. The ThunderBolt 3 connector can be used for docking and, like the Yoga, has ‘Fido-enabled’ security to allow Paypal payment without passwords. Battery life is claimed at 15 hours.
There is an OLED display in the X1 Yoga that supports 100% of Adobe RGB and the unit is available in silver as well as the trademark black. It includes a new keyboard that fully retracts into the body when the display is folded over for tablet mode. The X1 Carbon and Yoga will be available in February starting at $1,349 and $1,499 respectively.
The X1 tablet has been tested to Mil Specs and has a number of options including the projector and a 5 hour battery extension. The X1 Tablet will be available in March with prices from $949.
Turning back to displays, Lenovo has been developing the C200, a ‘Google Glass’ type of A/R headset that was on show. The headset is designed to be used with a smartphone and uses a Kopin display. The unit includes an 8 megapixel camera and the glasses are said to be able to recognise around 20 objects such as graphics or schematics within a photograph. Lenovo said it is building a software platform called NBD Titan. There’s a pocket battery that is intended to provide around 8 hours of use and the device is intended for professional applications.
Lenovo’s Glass C200. Images:Meko
The P27h monitor is an IPS-based monitor with 2560 x 1440 resolution and a USB Type-C port with notebook charging. Features include 99% of sRGB colour and 6ms resonse time. (Lenovo tends to stick to more commodity displays than some competitors such as Dell and HP – Man. Ed.). Lenovo will also launch a 23.8″ version, the P24h. As well as the DisplayPort 1.2 connection through Type-C, there are dual HDMI ports and USB ports. Pricing is TBA.
At an evening event, Lenovo showed us a new range of gaming notebooks that will be sold under the Legion sub-brand. Both products, the Y520 and Y720 feature 15.6″ displays but better graphics (GTX 1060 vs 1050) are supplied on the Y720. An unusual feature is support for Dolby Atmos audio. Display options are from FullHD up to UltraHD. The PCs will be available from February to April.
At the same event, there was a non-working design for the Microsoft Holograhic VR headset that Lenovo is currently developing. We couldn’t get many details but the displays are expected to be 1440 x 1440. (We got a photo, but our autofocus got confused and we didn’t spot that until too late! If you want to see our slightly out of focus image, ask [email protected])
Lenovo has developed a competitor to the Amazon Echo which it is calling the Smart Assistant.
