The Thinnest Laptop in the World Needs a Touchscreen Keyboard

Lenovo has taken the Apple’s iPad Pro and Microsoft’s Surface and Surface Book and merged them all into a new Yoga Book two-in-one, announced today at IFA.

Last but certainly not least is the new Miix 510, the only computer or tablet on this list that doesn’t fall under the Yoga brand. There’s also a skinned version of Android with Lenovo’s “Book UI” which offers multitasking utilities like the ability to run apps within floating windows that are resizable and use Windows-like shortcuts in conjunction with the Halo Keyboard.

Are you interested in one of these new devices? It will be especially useful to people who prefer to write on paper but benefit from the convenience of digital notes. In this note-taking mode you can rest things on the fold out area such as a ruled notebook or sketch. The company is calling the Yoga 910 the world’s thinnest Intel i7 Core convertible, it comes in with a thickness of just 14.3mm. It’s running Android 6.0 on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor, with a 2,560-by-1,600 screen, 13-megapixel and 5-megapixel cameras, and 32GB of storage with a MicroSD card slot for expansion. Lenovo says it won’t officially support anyone switching OSes, but there’s no difference in the hardware between the Android and Windows models, so it should be possible to do.

Regular paper can be placed on the input panel to take notes, which will be entered into the device. The display on this device is a Full-HD 12.2-inch panel with Gorilla Glass up front and full touch capabilities. Storage wise, you can get up to 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. This makes for a very unique experience and adds to the ultra-portability factor of this laptop/tablet as the entire device, when closed, measures in at just 9.6mm thin and weighs just 1.5 pounds (680 grams).

The Yoga Tab 3 Plus will be available this October for $299. It’s also got haptic feedback, which in the case of a touchscreen keyboard is sort of like sticking lipstick on the pig. It also has USB Type-C port for fast data transfers.

Oh, and the Yoga Book will be available in both Windows and Android flavours, so you can make that versatile 2-in-1 laptop work for you regardless of your choice in operating system.

The Yoga Tab 3 Plus is Lenovo’s cheap 10-inch Android tablet, featuring a 2560 x 1600 display and a unique stand that props up the tablet for media consumption. Lenovo has built this device into a metal chassis with a textured, leather-like finished back. The second screen isn’t quite the full-on touchscreen promised by the Courier (the Verge reports that Lenovo tried, but the second screen degraded battery life too much), but the core concept of a dedicated sketchpad has clearly endured.

Other specs of this tablet include an 13MP/5MP camera pair, and a quad-speaker JBL soundbar.