First Look: Lenovo's 2021 ThinkBook Plus Has a Big E Ink Screen on the Lid By PCMag

Hi this is john jerk, with PC mag. Before CES 2021 began, we met with Lenovo, who showed us a bunch of its new products that it would be showing at the show now one of the families that Lenovo's giving a major update to is its think book line of laptops. Now most users are familiar with the ThinkPad. The ThinkPad line is a sort of staple of corporations everywhere, but the think book line, which was introduced a few years ago, is more geared towards small and medium businesses. SMBs. The idea behind the think books is that their productivity machines with solids or productivity and connectivity chops without having to spend for the full sort of manageability and sort of durability of the ThinkPad family um.

So what's um coming in uh 2021, are updates to three of think books. One is called the think book, 14 and 16p, which are coming in the second generation there's the think book 13xi, which is a new model which is their Lenovo's, thinnest and lightest think book. So far, it's got a cool wireless charging, dock, a nice metal design and quad mics and then finally, um, probably the most out there think book is called the think book plus gen2, the think book plus debuted earlier, and it's known for its e-ink screen, which is a second screen on the laptop which is on the lid on sort of the outside of the laptop which you would use for checking, email and doing uh sort of quick check tasks. Um eating screens tend to use very little power, so they're good for times when you don't need to boot up the machine and now with the gen 2 version of the think book plus there's a bigger e-ink screen, which is 12 inches on the diagonal, and it has a sort of more tablet-like experience, and it can also run Windows 10 directly on the screen. So with that, I'm going to turn this over to lee high smith from Lenovo who's going to demonstrate the new think book lines.

So we're going to take you through a few of the new announcements we have in our think book small business line, and we're going to start with the think book 14p 2 and 16 p, gen 2, so they're pretty similar, so I'm going to focus on just the 14 p for the purposes of this morning. This is a look at our 16-inch offering before we move to the think book 14p, so the new design is really uh intended to be very sleek and premium. So we have this signature. Dual tone top cover all metal top cover. That really gives you a really nice premium look, and we have what we call a hinge up design, so we're trying to preserve the nice sleek profile, but also offer the ability to rear vent, the heating fans, the cooling fans I should say- and it also offers us the ability to have HDMI and a couple USB a port on the back, which is great connectivity and convenience.

You'll also notice. On the side. We have dual USB c ports as well. So when you open the devices, the first thing you're going to notice- and this is pretty common to all of them- is this beautiful 16 by 10 frameless display. So that gives you a nice big work area, and it's obviously a beautiful display.

The other thing you'll see is that our webcams have privacy shutters as well again very important in this new working world. We have today the other thing that steps out is this diamond cut edge on our large glass trackpad. So that really gives you again that premium feel, and it's a nice great feeling trackpad that diamond edge cut is also replicated here on the power button and that power button doubles actually as a fingerprint reader. So you can have great login security as well. So that's a quick look at the 14p and the 16p gen 2 think book.

Now the next thing I'd like to show you is the thinnest and lightest think book. We've ever made it's our think book 13xi. So this all metal design also features that dual tone cup top cover and is offered in storm gray and cloud gray and for an outstanding voice over IP experience, as we all begin to use our PCs as the way that we face the world, our co-workers, our customers, our family and friends. We have quad microphones on the 13 xi that really give you a great surround experience. It helps minimize the background noise things like that, so a great touch for the big book, 13 xi and again as you open it, you'll notice the privacy shutter over the 16 by 10 screen beautiful screen.

This one has Harman Kardon sound so again, as we depend on our PC technology for more than just documents and web browsing and doing work. Things like that that Harman Kardon sound gives you great, not only entertainment experience, but you know again your voice over IP calls as well. So one thing that is very new in the portfolio today is actually an option that we call the wireless charging mat, so it actually works with the thinkted ThinkPad 13xi, as well as the product we'll talk about next. Here. It's really simple: you plug it into the USB charger.

You can put it anywhere on your desk, obviously, and when you lay it on the mat and there's no, you know particular spot. You have to think about hitting it'll actually charge at almost full power of the ac adapter. So that means for great convenience as you're working, you don't have to plug a bunch of things in to get charging just put it on the mat, and you're ready to go. So that's the wireless charging mat for the think book 13xi, as well as our new think book thinkbookplus generation, two uh. If that we'll talk about next, so we announced the think book plus last year at CES, and we got a lot of feedback right away that our customers really liked the ability to not just consume documents like an e-reader with this e-ink screening, that's on the top, but they could take notes.

They get their important notifications. They could do a lot of things that were immediately productive, but they really wanted one thing which was to make the screen larger, and so we did. This is now at 12 inches the largest e-ink screen on a laptop, and that features an updated experience. As Kevin mentioned, a more tablet-like experience. You know home button to go back to the home experience, but it also now supports full Windows 10.

So you can not only run your Windows apps uh here in the end screen on the top cover, you can run full Windows 10, which is fantastic productivity. So when you're in eating mode, you can have up to 24 hours of battery life uh, which is nine hours more than the 15 hours, that the think book plus gen 2 is rated for with the LCD, so not only convenience but great battery life and great usability and speaking of great usability. It has the garage, pin, so you're always ready to ink a note edit, a document things like that here with the think book plus gen2i and the pen charges inside the system. So you have the ability to always be ready. It's always going to be charged and ready to go for hours and hours of inking, taking notes with things like OneNote, etc.

So that's a quick look at some think book products that we have coming in for our small business customers. You.

Source : PCMag