Personally, I’ve been waiting for a laptop which just folds right over hinges and turns into a full-blown touchscreen tablet for a while. Like, why did Apple not do this with the Mac Air? Ah – because it wants us to wait for the next iteration no doubt. No matter, it looks like Lenovo might have cracked the first version of this form factor with its Windows 8 powered IdeaPad Yoga.
Since Windows 8 is supposed to work on both PCs and tablets, the Yoga’s 17mm thick Ultrabook could be an ideal showcase for this OS. The 13.3-inch laptop feels heavier than the average tablet, but the laptop+tablet combination could find enthusiastic buyers amongst professionals and home users.
Similar to the IdeaPad U300s (the Lenovo “Ultrabook”) the Yoga has a capacitive touchscreen with 10-point multitouch, GPS, gyroscope, and accelerometer.
Likely to ship around the launch of Microsoft’s new OS in the second half of this year, the Yoga has no official specs or pricing as yet (although an “estimated” $1,199 tag), but will employ Intel’s next-gen (Ivy Bridge) processors.
However, the main concerns are likely to be: can the keyboard deal with being exposed while you use it as a tablet and will it get as hot as a laptop? Heat is not something people are used to in a tablet. Is this too much of a half-way house for the average person?
Lenovo also announced a new all-in-one touch-screen desktop computer called the IdeaCentre A720, with a 27-inch screen that can convert to lie flat on a table, retailing around $1,299.