Want a solar-powered laptop that never runs out of battery? Lenovo's concept has you covered
It just wouldn’t be a tech show without some concepts from Lenovo. For MWC, there are three, and they’re all pretty cool in their own right. Specifically, the company’s got the Yoga Solar PC, ThinkBook Flip, and a new Dual Display attachment for ThinkBooks.
The Lenovo Yoga Solar PC Concept
A PC you don’t have to plug in, but probably will
With this solar-powered PC, 20 minutes of direct sunlight gets you an hour of local video playback. It might be enough to keep you charged on the most conservative settings, and at the least, it’ll keep you going for longer.
When Lenovo demoed this for me, I tried all sorts of things, looking at the power readings. I put it under lamps, toward the window, away from the window, and as seen in that first image, it even powered up from the display on my Surface Pro.
The Yoga Solar PC uses Back Contact Cell technology to achieve a 24% solar energy conversion rate. Apparently, that’s very good.
The Lenovo ThinkBook Flip AI PC Concept
Because foldable screens are cool
At CES this year, Lenovo had a laptop with a rollable display, so naturally, the company took that same display and thought, what if it folded? That’s where the ThinkBook Flip comes in. And yes, this is under the Think brand, making it a business product, unlike Yoga, which is a consumer product. But no, you can’t buy any of these, so those distinctions don’t make any sense.
The screen on this laptop folds backward, so you can use it as a regular laptop, or as a very tall one. You can choose whether the back of the lid is in use or not, and you can treat it as a second monitor, so if you want, it can mirror the front and you can present to someone in front of you. When it’s expanded, it has an 18.1-inch 2000x2664 screen, and that shrinks down to 13.1 inches 16:10 when using it as a regular clamshell laptop.
More Magic Bay concepts
Ever wanted a triple-display laptop? Of course you have
Some of Lenovo’s ThinkBooks, which you can buy, have pins on the lids that allow you to connect Magic Bay accessories. While the company does sell such accessories, it tends to show off some extra ones as concepts. First up is the Magic Bay Dual Display Concept.
It’s exactly what it looks like. It adds two 13.5-inch 2880x1920 displays to your laptop. There’s only one problem; it weighs 2.62 pounds, so it needs to have its own kickstand so the display doesn’t fall over.
And then there’s the Magic Bay 2nd Display Concept. This one adds a small 8-inch screen to the side of a laptop, and it’s not as crazy as the previous ones. This is something that Lenovo already did with a separate Magic Bay concept, where it attached the screen to the top of the laptop. This one is just redesigned to go on the side, which is a bit more practical.
When Lenovo announced its rollable-screen ThinkBook CES, the coolest thing about it is that you can buy it. That’s not the case here, I’m afraid. These will remain concepts, at least until Lenovo decides to incorporate these features into real products.