Lenovo’s Yoga PC might not be the absolute fastest or thinnest new portable to come out of this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show, but as its name implies, it is certainly flexible.
The 17 mm thin laptop (about the thickness of Apple’s MacBook Air) is also a tablet.
It achieves its duality from a tricky patented hinge that lets the keyboard flip flush to the back of its 13-inch screen. With the keyboard folded back, the screen is controlled through touch as with any tablet.
In fact, the Yoga includes a 10-point capacitive touchscreen, meaning it can read where all of your fingers contact the screen at the same time. How this is useful escapes me, but it’s a feature Lenovo was careful to point out.
The computer-slash-tablet features are enabled by the Windows 8 operating system that will ship with the Yoga, which is expected in the second half of the year at a price of $1,200.
Also under the hood is an Intel Chief River processor, 8GB RAM and 256GB solid state drive, with a claimed battery life of eight hours.
One clever feature of the Yoga’s hinge is that it can hold the gadget partway open, so it can be set on a table as a display for watching videos.
Like the famous dessert topping that was also a floor wax, it’s hard to guess if the buying public will receive the Yoga as a clever double threat or a confused schizophrenic.