The Lenovo Yoga Book is a portable, clever 2-in-1 tablet

[Scorpus]

Ahead of IFA 2016, Lenovo has announced the Yoga Book: a unique thin and light tablet-laptop hybrid that includes compelling functionality for both productivity-focused and creative tasks.

The Yoga Book looks like a tablet split into two halves, connected by a signature watchband-style hinge. One half includes a 10.1-inch 1920 x 1200 IPS touchscreen display packing 400 nits of brightness, while the other half is an interesting touch-enabled slate that acts as both a keyboard and as a large stylus input.

The idea behind the touch-enabled slate is clever. When you want to use the Yoga Book as a laptop, the keyboard and trackpad appears to provide typical text entry. But when you want to use the device as a tablet, you can close the Yoga Book and hold it just like any other tablet, without the annoyance of physical keys on the opposite side to the display.

The slate has more uses than just a simple laptop or tablet, though. With 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity, the slate effectively becomes a graphics tablet when combined with the included 'Real Pen'. Draw on the slate with precision and your artistry will appear on the display.

The final cool feature included with the Yoga Book is the ability to write real notes with ink that are simultaneously digitized by the touchscreen slate. Place a piece of paper over the slate, use the included Real Pen (which packs ink inside) to write notes on the paper, and these notes are captured by the tablet in digital form.

The hardware inside the Yoga Book is standard for a device this thin. It's powered by an Intel Atom x5-Z8550 'Cherry Trail' SoC, so it won't be dominating any performance benchmarks. There's also 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage plus microSD expansion, an 8-megapixel rear and 2-megapixel front camera, plus internal LTE radios. The battery, an 8,500 mAh cell, is rated for up to 15 hours of usage.

The Yoga Book will be available in both Android and Windows 10 variants in October. Prices start at an impressive $499 for the Android variant, or $549 for the Windows 10 model, with both including the stylus and notepad accessories in the box.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/66160-lenovo-yoga-book-announcement.html

 

[Uncle Al]

This might be one of the more universal approaches to a notebook yet. What would make it fantastic would be if it were possible to run older windows applications like Office 2010 rather than having to pay for that rediculess subscription service that Microsoft is shoving down everyone throat!

 

[treeski]

This might be one of the more universal approaches to a notebook yet. What would make it fantastic would be if it were possible to run older windows applications like Office 2010 rather than having to pay for that rediculess subscription service that Microsoft is shoving down everyone throat!

You know you can still buy Office 2016 outright? You don't have to get a subscription.

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

Meh... I don't like the idea of taking away a physical keyboard. And when I fold the physical keyboard on my Surface Pro 3 around back and use it as a tablet, it doesn't bother me at all. The paper note taking is cool but only a few people are going to use that, for most of us it is much faster to type on a physical keyboard than to hand write notes.

 

[Uncle Al]

You know you can still buy Office 2016 outright? You don't have to get a subscription.

Yes, but will it run on these type units? I'm told no, but I haven't tried it myself .....

 

[treeski]

Yes, but will it run on these type units? I'm told no, but I haven't tried it myself .....

I believe it can. It's running a normal, full version of Windows, so I don't see why not.

 

[treeski]

Meh... I don't like the idea of taking away a physical keyboard. And when I fold the physical keyboard on my Surface Pro 3 around back and use it as a tablet, it doesn't bother me at all. The paper note taking is cool but only a few people are going to use that, for most of us it is much faster to type on a physical keyboard than to hand write notes.

I agree. I would be more intrigued by something like Microsoft's Surface, with different types of attachable input boards (keyboard, paper thingy, etc.).

 

[koblongata]

The music is so wrong I got angry.

 

[Technosense]

As I get older and my eyes "mature" it's harder and harder to see. Seems screens keep getting smaller on laptops while getting bigger on phones...which makes me a little less frustrated making calls and much more so doing actual work.

Makes me miss my 17lb HP HDX 20" laptop...a little.

 

[petert]

Microsoft Courier Tablet anyone? Makes you scream how many good ideas were lost and delayed inside Microsoft in the first half of the 2000's.

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

Microsoft Courier Tablet anyone? Makes you scream how many good ideas were lost and delayed inside Microsoft in the first half of the 2000's.

Good memory... one could say Microsoft envisioned the smart phone era first as well. Remember the Windows Mobile PocketPC's that were phones as well? It was brilliant, just too soon. The cellular networks didn't have the high speed data capabilities they have now so the phones were a flop.