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With Experimental Hybrid Laptop/Tablet Form Factors, Lenovo Tries Covering All the Bases

By Rain Noe - October 11, 2012

in Tech | Consumer Electronics

You'd think two of these would've been axed at a design meeting, but Lenovo's either taking no chances, holding off on making tough calls, or using an appeasement strategy to deal with internal design department beefs. In their experimentation to develop a hybrid laptop/tablet that people will want to use, they've developed no less than three different form factors that will hit store shelves in just a few weeks.

The ultra-lightweight Lynx is the most simple design of the three, as it's basically a laptop where the screen pops off—or a tablet that plugs into a keyboard accessory, depending on how you look at it:

The ThinkPad Twist keeps the screen and keyboard together, but connected by a central hinge that rotates in two directions, enabling you to flip and fold the screen over the keys:

Then we've got the IdeaPad Yoga, featuring two double-hinges that allow you to send the screen on a little 360-degree voyage:

I'd call it unlikely that all three of these designs will succeed; then again I also thought no one would buy the original iPod Mini, which ended up being wildly successful. But let's play Design Director for a moment: If you were in charge of Lenovo's design group; were presented all three of these concepts; yet only had the resources to produce one, which would you choose, and what would your rationale be?

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awa64

12 years ago

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I think the three products make sense, when you start factoring in some of the other factors Lenovo has to deal with.

The Lynx is a tablet first, whereas the other two are laptops first with tablet interface modes. The Lynx is cheaper, smaller, and waaaaaaaay less powerful as a result. It's a solid (if not unique--Asus has an Android tablet with a virtually identical design for years now) concept.

The Yoga is their consumer-focused idea. It's an original take on how to approach doing a convertible laptop, and I quite like it--it works by simply challenging a not-often-reexamined assumption like "we can't have the keyboard on the bottom or we'll accidentally hit keys all the time!" As an end-user, it's the one of the three that I'm most drawn toward. It's the one that seems most like a cohesive design, rather than an applied solution.

The ThinkPad Twist is part of their ThinkPad line. That means design considerations for fleet purposes, like ease and cost of repairs. It's the one they expect to sell by the hundreds to corporations, rather than to consumers one-at-a-time. And I suspect they've chosen a swivel mechanism more in line with what they were already using in their X-series convertible ThinkPad to help with that "repair" consideration.

If I was the design director at Lenovo, presented these three products and told we only had the money to do one? Design wouldn't factor into the decision, sadly. It'd be a decision of sales projections--"will we sell more Windows 8 notebooks to businesses or to individual consumers, and do either of those compare favorably to projected tablet sales?" And then I'd greenlight the ThinkPad Twist and leave the Yoga concept up on the wall for the rest of the year, glancing wistfully at it from time to time.
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Dan

12 years ago

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I would definitely go for the first option, the Lynx. Not only is it a good name that I could see catching on, I think it is the least convoluted of the three solutions and likely the most robust. The whole point of having a tablet is to lose all the other crap you don't need for most tasks, so why not embrace it's tablet-ness? In the case of the Lynx, you can ditch the keyboard while you're on a flight or just on the couch. From a consumer standpoint I like the idea of being able to replace one of the two major components if necessary. If I crack the screen I won't have to pony up the cost of a new base as well and vice versa if I break the keyboard. The Lynx is simple. NO swivel/hinge combos. Even if there are proven mechanisms out there, that solution just screams PROBLEMS to me whether they may be mechanical or electrical. There is a certain beauty in a simple single hingedly attached base.
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