Lenovo Made a Windows Laptop With a Rotating E Ink Display

E ink has been massive currently. BMW’s lined automobiles with it, and Lenovo’s put it on laptop computer lids, so you may have a doc pulled up even together with your laptop computer closed. There have even been E Ink typewriters, which promise writers a cushty and distraction-free writing expertise by pairing a keyboard with an E Ink show. Perhaps inspired by how stylish E Ink’s been as of late, Lenovo’s now increasing on its E Ink lid pc by taking a notice from these typewriters, letting us use E Ink as our essential laptop computer show within the new ThinkBook Plus Twist.

A ‘twist’ on the ThinkBook Plus Gen 1 and a pair of design, the ThinkBook Plus Twist is, at first blush, your typical skinny and light-weight productiveness laptop computer. It’s obtained as much as an Intel Core i7 CPU, as much as 16GB LPDDR5X RAM, and an admittedly snazzy 2.8K OLED panel with contact and pen assist and 400 nits of brightness.

But look in the back of the laptop computer and also you’ll see a 12-inch, front-lit colour E Ink contact show. Aside from the addition of colour and a bump as much as a 12 Hz refresh fee, that’s not too totally different from what you might need seen on the ThinkBook Plus Gen 1 and a pair of. Until you discover the swivel on the backside of the display screen.

Rotate the display screen to the best, and also you’ll discover that the E Ink show will transfer to the entrance of the gadget, whereas the OLED show will all of a sudden develop into the lid. That’s proper—now you can use Windows on a laptop computer with an E Ink display screen as its major show.

It’s a weird, understandably sluggish expertise, given the 12 Hz refresh fee. Doubly so for the reason that manufacturing mannequin I used to be working with at CES was lagging a bit in a manner that Lenovo assured me wouldn’t occur on retail fashions. But on condition that units just like the Freewrite Traveler, which sells itself on having an E Paper show, go for $500, there’s definitely a marketplace for Lenovo to seek out right here. Remote work has undoubtedly left me bored with looking at my vivid LED laptop computer display screen on a regular basis.

That stated, you gained’t lose performance over prior ThinkBook Plus fashions. The OLED display screen can rapidly come again to the entrance of the gadget, and any apps you have got open in your essential show will transition to the identical spot on the opposite show whenever you swivel it round to swap it in. There’s even a full-fledged pill mode that mechanically prompts in case you shut the lid, letting you employ the rear show with simply your finger, in both a horizontal or vertical place.

You will discover what appears to be like like a webcam on both aspect of the show, though the E Ink aspect’s “webcam” is definitely a light-weight sensor for adjusting brightness and colour temperature.

The ThinkBook Plus Twist will begin at $1,649 and will probably be accessible beginning in June.

Forget notches, simply use this magnetic webcam attachment

Speaking of webcams, Lenovo’s additionally saying one other new ThinkBook, this time with a novel accent system. Mirroring the ThinkBook Plus Twist, the ThinkBook 16p Gen 4 looks as if a reasonably commonplace high-power productiveness laptop computer at first. It’s obtained Intel H-Series processors and discrete Nvidia graphics choices, plus as much as 32GB of DDR5 RAM and a 16-inch IPS display screen with a number of resolutions and even body fee choices (3.2K @ 60 Hz or 2.5K @ 120 Hz). But it’s the highest of that show that helps it stand out.

When Apple’s M2 MacBook Air got here out final 12 months, lastly exhibiting us that Apple has resorted to placing a notch on its laptops, I questioned why not simply put a magnet for a detachable webcam on the again of the laptop computer. That’s precisely what Lenovo’s carried out right here.

The ThinkBook 16p Gen 4 is the primary laptop computer to introduce Lenovo’s Magic Bay accent system. On the highest of the gadget’s lid is a magnetic Pogo pin connector, permitting you to connect certainly one of three equipment to the gadget.

The first is a light-weight bar, to be used with the laptop computer’s built-in 1080p webcam. The second is a 4G LTE module, which you can even join by way of USB-C. The third is my favourite—it’s a full 4K webcam that may swivel 180 levels to the again of the laptop computer.

This means you may get higher-quality webcam footage in your laptop computer with out sacrificing display screen actual property, and I hope to see comparable options discover their legs with different manufacturers sooner or later.

For now, it’s an experiment. The ThinkBook 16p Gen 4 is the one Lenovo system that’s at the moment set to assist Magic Bay, and the one approach to get Magic Bay modules is to organize them together with your laptop computer when configuring it.

That’s a bit unlucky since we at the moment solely have pricing for the laptop computer itself. The ThinkBook 16p Gen 4 will launch in May for a beginning value of $1,349.