The word "awesome" is an understatement to describe Lenovo's Yoga Book, announced Wednesday at IFA 2016.
The Yoga Book is about the size of a children's book and serves as a mini tablet, laptop, and digital notebook. It's thin, light, and rugged. Lenovo is launching two versions — one Android ($499) and one Windows 10 ($599) — later this year.
The device features a 10.1-inch full HD glossy display on one half and a matte surface on the other half. A hinge allows the display to fold 360 degrees backwards into a mini tablet.
At the press of a button, the half-matte surface transforms into a “Halo” keyboard and trackpad. Typing on it feels like typing on an iPad, with absolutely no tactile feedback or actual actuation key.
There are a lot of new features on the Yoga Book. The best one is the digitizer. With the keyboard off, you can place a piece of paper on top and use a stylus with a real pen tip to write or draw, and the Yoga Book will make an exact digital copy on the screen for you to save or share.
If this sounds like Smart's Wacom Bamboo, that's because the technology is from Wacom. The digitizer is so sensitive it can detect scribbles on a stack of paper.
The laptop is powered by a 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Atom processor, has 5.4GB of RAM, and has 64GB of storage (expandable via microSD card). Lenovo says there will be both Wi-Fi and LTE models. There's also an 8-megapixel camera on the front. Lenovo claims up to 15 hours of battery life for the Android model and up to 13 hours for the Windows 10 version.
It's an interesting idea that's clearly aimed at students, notebook enthusiasts, and scrapbookers, but it's hard to say whether it will catch on.
