BERLIN - Chinese tech firm Lenovo went all-out with a slew of new product launches ahead of the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, including an updated version of its laptop-tablet hybrid Yoga Book, a new ThinkPad business laptop and new smart home devices.
The company announced 15 new products covering the gamut of laptops, PCs and smart home devices, at its own Lenovo Tech Life event on Thursday (Aug 30), a day before IFA 2018 officially opens.
The Yoga Book C930 is the first upgrade to the original Yoga Book first launched in 2016. It is a dual-screen device, connected by a hinge, where the top screen is a regular tablet while the bottom screen acts as a capacitive touch keyboard or drawing surface.
The updated Yoga Book C930, which will cost €999 ($1,590), now uses an e-ink display on the bottom screen, allowing the device to double as an e-book reader. It also comes with artificial intelligence capabilities that adapt to a user's typing patterns on the bottom screen, making it easier for them to type.
Business users get an updated ThinkPad laptop, the €1,695 ThinkPad X1 Extreme. The 15-inch, 1.7kg laptop packs a 4K HDR screen and up to 15 hours of battery life, along with Lenovo's touch fingerprint reader for security. It also comes with a dedicated Nvidia GeForce 1050Ti graphics card for users to run graphics-intensive programs like games.
Lenovo also released a new consumer-centric convertible laptop, the Yoga C930, with a €1,499 price tag. The flagship laptop doubles as a tablet by flipping the screen behind the keyboard. It comes with features for consumer use such as a Dolby Atmos speaker system for better audio output and far-field microphones for users to activate voice smart assistants like Amazon's Alexa and Microsoft's Cortana.
There is also a traditional clamshell-design Yoga S730 laptop, which will cost €999 and comes with rapid charging that gets the laptop back to 80 per cent battery life in an hour.
Lenovo is also looking to break into the smart home market with three new connected devices - a smart plug, smart bulb and smart camera - that can connect to the company's Lenovo Link app for users to control using their smartphones.
The company is also bridging the gap between smartphones and laptops with the Yoga C630 WOS (Windows on Snapdragon), which will be the first device in the world to run on the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 mobile compute platform. This chipset, which is closer to the computing chips in mobile phones than computers, will allow users to keep their laptops constantly connected to the Internet through 4G networks, much like smartphones.
Weighing 1.2kg, the C630 WOS - to be released in November this year with a starting price of €999 - comes with a 13.3-inch display and battery life of up to 25 hours, according to its maker.
The Chinese company also released three new Chromebooks, designed for users who need to run only Android apps found in the Google Play Store. The premium Yoga Chromebook will set buyers back €799 but comes with 4K touchscreen display, while the budget Chromebook C330 and S330 will cost €349 and €279 respectively.
At the same time, Lenovo is also boosting its Legion gaming lineup with a new Legion Y530 laptop that comes with an upgraded Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card. There are also new Legion T730 and C730 gaming desktops that are equipped with Nvidia's newly-announced GeForce RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 graphics cards.
No word on local pricing and availability of these new Lenovo products yet.
