As rugged tablets go, the Lenovo Think Tab X11 is as tough as they come. The first Android-based rugged device from Lenovo, this is a chunky yet capable business buddy that can keep you connected when you're out in the field.

It's a rugged tablet for frontline workers – in the box, you get a thick tablet, an even thicker case with a port for the Tab Pen XE, and a battery that's separated from the device. The back of the tablet pops off with a bit of effort (we used a tool to pry it off as it was quite tough), and the battery simply slots in.

Lenovo Think Tab X11: Design

The Think Tab X11 is not your everyday tablet. It's a rugged model (with its own sturdy case) built to withstand life out in the real world. So frontline workers, wherever their front line is, be that a construction site, a remote wilderness location, or a busy retail environment. This is the first Android-powered rugged tablet for the Think brand, and it's got MIL-STD-810H certification, with a Snapdragon 7s chip.

You get a 10.95in display, a rather thick chassis (9.93mm), and dual USB ports. It's also quite heavy at 650g, but that's what rugged devices tend to be. As such, it is a hefty slab to hold – you definitely need two hands to take steady photos with the 13MP camera. And you might get an aching hand if you hold it for too long. What this already really means, though, is that you will not once be concerned about it breaking when you're on site.

Lenovo Think Tab X11: Display

The 10.95in display is a 2,5k IPS LCD panel with a 90Hz refresh rate. The screen is reinforced with Corning Gorilla Glass and, much like the rest of the device, feels very sturdy. The display also supports glove and wet-touch input, which is a great addition as there's nothing worse than having to take a glove off in the freezing cold. And also, some workspaces will make glove-wearing mandatory.

As always, an OLED panel might have been a good option, as you just get better quality – brighter colors and truly inky blacks – but the IPS panel here is fairly good. You get a nice, rounded balance of colors, and the panel itself is very bright, peaking at 538.13 cd/m2 in our test. An OLED panel might have also driven the price up.

Lenovo Think Tab X11: Specs and performance

The Think Tab X11 houses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 (4nm), which is paired with 8GB of RAM. The 7s is a mid-range chip that is meant to bridge the gap between affordability and premium features, so it aims to bring generative AI and the like to a cheaper smartphone or tablet. And it largely does that on the Think Tab X11.

In Geekbench 6, for example, the Tab scored 1,163 for single-core and 3,356 for multi-threaded performance. Admittedly, there isn't a great deal between the two, but this is a capable tablet, and we didn't notice any lag in its performance or any sluggishness with apps and features.

In our looped video test, the Think Tab's 10,200mAh battery lasted 14hrs and 29mins. However, that test is intentionally intensive, and our own experience of using the Tab X11 was more impressive. Without charge, the device lasted two full working days, with just 5% left when clocking off.

So this isn't going to set the world alight or break any benchmarks. But for a rugged workplace device, it more than holds its own. You will not be caught short in the middle of nowhere – the X11 won't let you down.

Lenovo Think Tab X11: Features

The Tab X11 has a full set of very standard features – fingerprint sensor, Wi-Fi6E, Bluetooth 5.4 – but also a few more unusual features that make it so great for use out in the real world. Features such as dual USB ports, which are very unusual for a tablet. These are both USB Type-C 3.2, with one just simple for power and the other having data transfer. You also have a headphone jack and a microSD card reader on the Think Tab X11, which makes it one of the best-connected tablets ITPro has seen in a long while.

There are also management features that set this apart from your average tablet. With the Lenovo Vantage Pro, you can enrol the device remotely, add all your necessary apps and settings, and monitor it in real time – which is great for rugged tablets as they can be a risk if lost on site. IT teams can enforce security policies and wipe them, if needed, from a single dashboard.

Another unusual addition, largely due to how it looks, is the Tab Pen XE. ITPro is rather more used to an artistic stylus, and the Pen XE is very much a rugged pen. But it's easy to use, comfortable in the hand, and highly capable. You're not going to be making detailed works of art here, but you can quite easily make technical sketches, detailed notes, and simple annotations out in the field. It's also unmistakably Lenovo with a red circle at the top. You need to connect the rugged case to house the stylus with the pen.

Lenovo Think Tab X11: Is it worth it?

If you're out on site or you have teams in remote locations that need touchscreens, then the answer here is resoundingly yes. The Think Tab X11 is small but mighty, with its brick-like build and reinforced structure. The touchscreen is decent, and the Pen XE is also highly capable.

There are some good additions as well, like the 13MP camera, the optional case, and the enterprise-grade remote controls and protocols. It's as good a rugged tablet as ITPro has ever reviewed. And, although the battery is a little bit of a chore to get into the machine, the fact that you can is great for longevity and sustainability.

Lenovo Think Tab X11 specifications

PC shipments have fallen for the first time in more than two years, hit by the memory supply crunch caused in part by the rise of AI.

Recent analysis from IDC found global PC shipments slid 4.9% on year in the second quarter of this year to 68.2 million units, down from 71.7m in the same quarter last year.

The figures mark the first decline in the market after nine quarters of growth, and that’s largely down to continued memory shortages.

IDC noted, however, that the situation has been exacerbated by supply issues with storage and other components, as well as what the company referred to as "geopolitical issues".

The massive AI infrastructure build-out has led to a shortage in memory, spurred on by manufacturers pivoting to produce more lucrative data center components rather than those for consumer products.

That RAM shortage has led to a sharp decline in lower cost devices, with Gartner predicting earlier this year that PC sales will drop by 10%.

Consumers picking up the bill

IDC said that while units shipped slid, PC makers reported growth in revenue, showing how the cost of such challenges are being passed on to consumers and businesses.

"The real story here is the disconnect between units and dollars: shipments are falling, but revenue is climbing because vendors are pushing through price increases faster than demand is dropping," said Jitesh Ubrani, research director for consumer devices at IDC.

That's not likely to change anytime soon, Ubrani warned.

"Given worsening macro conditions and a memory shortage that isn’t expected to ease until early 2028, we don’t expect another round of inventory pull-forward, which points to a sharp slowdown in growth rates in the second half of 2026," he added.

"Vendors are bracing for further price hikes into 2027, and channels are already flagging concern about elevated inventory at these higher price points."

A host of device manufacturers have raised prices in response to the spiralling memory crisis. Outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook said last month that the company would raise prices due to the issue.

"There's less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases," he said at the time.

Apple wins with MacBook Neo

The increased pressure on brands could lead to vendor consolidation of market share, IDC warned. The consultancy noted that larger brands such as Apple, Dell, or Lenovo can use their scale across different product lines – be it smartphones or servers – to access memory supply.

The result here is that smaller rivals could be left in the dust and scrambling for what supplies are left.

"As market conditions continue to worsen… supply chain management and capabilities are increasingly important," said Jean Philippe Bouchard, vice president for consumer devices at IDC.

"The largest vendors, with their buying power and long-standing supplier ties, are best positioned to take share from smaller rivals."

Compared to the second quarter in 2025, the big three PC makers – Lenovo, HP, and Dell – were largely flat in terms of market share, though all three saw single-digit decreases in shipments, with HP in particular down 9%.

Apple, however, grew market share from 8.5% to 9.9%, with shipments up 10% from 6.1m to 6.7m in the second quarter of this year versus 2025.

"Apple’s share gain coincided with its latest product launch, the MacBook Neo, and while the company did raise prices in line with the broader market, it still remains well positioned against rivals facing the same cost pressures," added Bouchard.

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The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11 is hoping to buck a trend. So far, the launch of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 processors has focused on the high-end laptop market. That's not surprising; the flagship Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is a beast of a chip, combining multi-core performance to match Intel, AMD's, and Apple's best mainstream mobile processors. It's only natural that manufacturers would want to focus on powerful mid-range and high-end laptops built around it.

Yet Qualcomm and its partners had another story to tell with the original Snapdragon X range. There, processors in the Snapdragon X and X Plus lines powered a new wave of affordable thin-and-light devices from the likes of Acer, Asus, HP, Microsoft, and Lenovo, branded under Microsoft's Copilot+ PC initiative. If these laptops didn't always make as big an impact as they deserved to, it had nothing to do with the often great hardware or the underlying tech. Well, now Qualcomm is back for a second try with the Snapdragon X2 Plus, and you couldn't ask for a much better debut for it than the new Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11: Design

Lenovo has developed an appealing habit of making laptops that feel premium even though they have a budget or mid-range price tag, and the IdeaPad Slim 5x (Gen 11) is another great example. It comes in 13in and 15in formats, both with elegant and durable all-aluminium bodies. The 13in model we've had in for testing isn't quite in the ultralight class of the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI or the Asus Zenbook A14, but at 1.41kg it isn't exactly a backbreaker, either. With a compact 339 x 236mm footprint and a thickness of just under 16mm, it's an easy fit in most briefcases, bags, and backpacks.

The design feels very similar to the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 (Gen 10), only without the distinctive rippled underside. The aluminium doesn't feel wafer-thin, the build is free of sharp corners and rough edges, and it all feels good and solid, as backed up by MIL-STD-810H certification for shock and temperature-resistance. A chunky rubber strip, running almost the whole width of the laptop, raises the keyboard deck slightly and keeps the laptop steady during desktop use.

The connectivity gives you some indication that this isn't a high-end device. There are two USB-C ports on the left-hand side, but they're both 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 spec rather than USB 4, locking you out of faster USB 4 SSDs and docking stations. Still, this isn't a huge concern right now, given the lack of such products on the market. The two USB Type-A ports on the right are even slower, with both stuck at 5Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1 speeds.

On the positive side, you get an HDMI 2.1 port for connecting external displays, while both USB-C ports can output a DisplayPort 1.4 signal if you're looking for a multi-screen setup. You also have Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 onboard, along with a proper, old-school headphone jack and a handy micro-SD card reader.

The trackpad is positively luxurious for an affordable device, with a reasonably large 120 x 75mm glass surface that feels smooth to the touch and is perfectly responsive in its tracking. And if the keyboard doesn't hit ThinkPad levels of greatness, the large, flat keys with their curved front edges are generously-sized and well spaced out, with a light, if shallow action that won't slow you down while you work. As with most aspects of the IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11, it doesn't feel compromised to cut costs.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11: Display

Most aspects, but maybe not all. The screen is perfectly good in most respects. It's bright enough for comfortable use in most conditions, with a maximum brightness of 440cd/m2, while it covers the full range of the sRGB colour space, which, if you're not involved in professional creative work, is probably all you need. There's nothing special about a 1920 x 1200-pixel resolution on a 13.3in display, but it looks sharp in everyday use, and there's not too much visible pixelation at a normal viewing distance.

All the same, it's an IPS display, so it can't match the contrast or vibrant colour we've seen from similarly-priced laptops bearing OLED screens. It covers 74.6% of the DCI-P3 colour space, which isn't bad, but colours aren't quite as rich and vivid as they are on the Swift Edge 14 AI, Zenbook A14, or the Chromebook Plus 14 (Gen 10). None of these laptops is hugely expensive, either.

To balance this, the audio is pretty good for a 13in laptop. The sound is clear enough for voice and video calls or meetings, there's a likeable stereo spread, and even music is played with a bit more warmth and detail than we'd expect from an affordable device. Some harshness comes in at higher volumes, but not at the kind of levels you'd use in the office or while working at home. Video captured by the 1080p webcam could be a little cleaner, especially in low-light conditions, but it's fine for everyday meetings, and the IR module and Windows Hello support give you a quick, reliable way to sign in.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11: Specs and performance

The Snapdragon X2 Plus X2P-42-100 sits near the bottom of the Snapdragon X2 line, with just six Oryon v3 cores running six threads at up to 4GHz. If you're expecting staggering speeds, you may want to curb your enthusiasm. However, its single-core performance appears to be very good, with its Geekbench 6 single-core score of 3215 beating not just the Snapdragon X Plus in the Zenbook A14, but also a wide range of laptops with Intel Lunar Lake and Panther Lake processors, including the Acer Swift 16 AI and Asus ExpertBook Ultra.

Multi-core performance isn't quite as strong, and the Slim 5x's Geekbench 6 score – 11704 – is a way behind the 8-core AMD Ryzen AI 7 and Panther Lake competition, where you're looking at scores in the 16000s. Its multi-core scores in Cinebench 2024's rendering benchmarks are nothing to write home about, either with a decent 128 for single-core rendering but just 649 for multi-core. Here, the Swift 16 AI scored 943, with the ExpertBook Ultra at 838.

Still, this is a cheaper device, and the difference in multi-core performance isn't something you'll pick up in everyday use with productivity applications or while working across multiple SaaS apps. The IdeaPad Slim 5x feels nippy and responsive even while balancing a dozen browser tabs or a workspace with multiple apps. What's more, its scores with the six-core Snapdragon X2 Plus are better than the Asus Zenbook A14's scores with the eight-core Snapdragon X Plus, showing that Qualcomm has made some significant performance improvements from the previous generation chips.

Just be warned that 3D graphics really isn't the Snapdragon X2 Plus's thing. The Lenovo is faster than the old Zenbook A14 (2025) in 3DMark's Time Spy and Steel, Nomad (light) tests, but a long way behind any Lunar Lake or Panther Lake machine, not to mention the Zenbook A16 with its Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme CPU. The latter has a much more powerful GPU.

Luckily, there's ample compensation in the X2P-42-100's superb energy efficiency. Despite having a rather average 54.7Whr battery, the IdeaPad Slim 5x produced one of the greatest feats of laptop stamina we've ever seen, not just surviving a full 24 hours of HD video playback from a single charge, but an additional three hours on top. A couple of days of light use without a charger shouldn't be out of the question, provided you don't push the brightness all the way up.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11: Is it worth it?

The IdeaPad Slim 5x has much to offer businesses, particularly smaller businesses where budgets may be tight. It's a stylish, solidly-built, and very usable laptop that doesn't look or feel inexpensive. All the same, it's fallen victim to the same creeping price increases we've seen everywhere this year, and at just over £900, it's not quite as fantastic a value as it would have been for around £800. As it is, it's going up against laptops with stronger specs and OLED screens, including models that came out in 2025 but still perform well today. The IdeaPad Slim 5x (Gen 11) is definitely a strong option, but you might want to wait for the right deal before you make your move.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11 Specifications

Lenovo has launched a series of updates to its global Lenovo 360 channel framework, in a move the vendor said will help partners better navigate an increasingly complex, services-led IT market.

The refresh has been designed to simplify partner engagement and create clear pathways for growth by focusing on recurring revenue, technical capability, and outcome-based delivery.

At the heart of the update is a new streamlined tiering structure that aims to make progression and incentives more transparent and predictable.

The revised model aligns partner rewards more closely with overall performance, combining revenue growth with skills development and accreditations.

All partners will begin at the program’s Authorized level, gaining access to Lenovo 360 Elevate, the firm’s growth engine designed to drive engagement and partner development.

As partners progress to higher tiers such as Gold and Platinum, they gain access to enhanced financial incentives, co-selling opportunities, and expanded access to Lenovo resources.

In an announcement, Lenovo said the updated framework reflects a broader shift in the channel as partners increasingly move beyond traditional resale models.

"The channel is central to how we do business,” commented Pascal Bourguet, chief sales strategy and channels officer at Lenovo.

“It’s how we scale, how we innovate, and how we grow together. With these latest enhancements to Lenovo 360, we’re making it simpler, more predictable, and more rewarding for partners to build their business with us.”

Driving services-led growth

Alongside its new tiering structure, Lenovo’s channel update also introduces Lenovo 360 for Services, a new pathway designed to help partners transition towards recurring, outcome-based business models.

The framework allows partners to attach services to deals more effectively, while expanding into higher-value offerings such as digital workplace, hybrid cloud, and AI solutions. The vendor said the approach will help partners increase deal sizes and build more predictable revenue streams.

Lenovo also revealed it is expanding its Lenovo 360 for managed service providers (MSPs) pathway into new markets – including the UK and Ireland, Nordics, and Benelux.

The MSP-focused track offers tailored tools, training, and incentives to help partners integrate Lenovo solutions into their managed services portfolios.

Building technical capability across the channel

Additionally, Lenovo has announced the launch of Lenovo 360 Tech Connect, a global technical community that aims to address the growing skills gap across the channel.

The initiative brings together pre-sales engineers, solution architects, and technical specialists, providing access to training resources and direct engagement with Lenovo experts to support partners in delivering more complex, solution-led outcomes for customers.

The vendor said Tech Connect comes in response to increasing demand for deeper technical expertise as partners continue to adapt to modern AI, hybrid cloud, and advanced infrastructure environments.

“From services-led growth to new technical communities and streamlined tiering, we’re focused on giving partners clear pathways to expand their capabilities, drive profitability, and deliver greater value to their customers in a rapidly evolving market,” Bourguet added.

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Lenovo has been a key player in the edge computing market for many years, and its latest ThinkEdge server family offers a range of innovative solutions. The ThinkEdge SE100 on review is a prime example, as it delivers entry-level AI inferencing to the network edge in a chassis that Lenovo claims is 85% smaller than a standard 1U rack server.

The SE100 is, indeed, one of the smallest edge servers we've yet seen as it measures a mere 53mm high with the fan shroud, 142mm wide, and 278mm deep. This allows it to fit into spaces few other servers can, and Lenovo's mounting options include desktop, VESA, and DIN brackets along with rack mount kits for fitting two or three of them alongside each other.

It's geared up for harsh environments as the chassis is shock and vibration resistant and has an IP50 dust protection rating. The SE100 is cleared for continuous operations in ambient temperatures of between 5 and 45 degrees C, and the optional PCIe expansion kits offer a rear MERV5-rated dust filter.

Targeting applications such as ML (machine learning), augmented reality, smart surveillance with object detection, and edge AI, the SE100 has plenty of power on tap as it's available with either an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H or Ultra 5 225H CPU, with both offering an embedded Intel Arc GPU and Intel AI Boost NPU (neural processing unit). Memory is the TruDDR5 variety with up to 64GB supported, and you can specify standard 5,600MHz SO-DIMMs or faster 6,400MHz CSO-DIMMs.

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE100 review: Build quality and features

The SE100 is built like a tank with the base node tipping the scales at a hefty 2.4kgs. The thick aluminium chassis acts as a heatsink with a ribbed underside and an upper finned shroud equipped with dual cooling fans.

The air shroud is designed to maintain optimum cooling even if something is placed on top of the server, and it also allows Lenovo to dispense with the micro-fans typically found in edge servers and replace them with larger 6.5cms diameter fans to reduce noise. They certainly work well, as during testing, we found the SE100 to be whisper-quiet.

A range of power options are available with our system, supplied with a single 140W external PSU which connects to a dedicated USB-C port at the rear. There's a second USB-C port alongside for adding a second, redundant PSU, and it also doubles up as a local management port for connecting a mobile device running the XClarity Controller (XCC) app.

The SE100 has two on-board video controllers with the embedded XCC's AST2600 chip piping 1080p output to the front USB-C port, which has integral DisplayPort support. The two HDMI 2.0 ports handle output from the CPU's Arc GPU and deliver 4K video at 60Hz.

Network connections are provided by dual embedded Gigabit ports, and there's a dedicated Gigabit port for XCC remote management access. You also have pairs of USB-A 3.2 Gen2 ports fore and aft and two USB-C 3.2 Gen2 at the rear with both supporting DisplayPort.

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE100 review: Storage and expansion

The SE100 offers a fairly basic storage proposition as the motherboard has three PCIe Gen4 M.2 slots, with the first one supporting 2280 SATA or NVMe SSD boot devices. The other two are for general data storage and have room for 2280 and 22110 M.2 NVMe SSDs, but note that RAID is not available for this server.

The base node has a PCIe Gen4 expansion connector on its side, and Lenovo offers two expansion kit options, which are attached to the side of the chassis and increase its width to 214mm. The GPU kit supports a single-width, actively cooled card, and you can choose from Nvidia Quadro RTX 2000E Ada or RTX A1000 versions.

The network expansion kit is available with Broadcom quad-Gigabit or dual-10GbE adapters and includes two internal fan modules. The 1U2N rack mount kit supports two base nodes with expansion kits, and this doesn't require the node fan shrouds which drop their height to 1U. The 1U3N rack kit allows three SE100 nodes without the expansion kits to be placed in a row.

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE350 V2 review: Server management

The SE100 has the same XClarity Controller (XCC) 2 chip and dedicated Gigabit port you'll find on Lenovo's standard ThinkSystem rack and tower servers. The base system comes with an XCC Standard licence, which enables features such as system health and power monitoring, while a Platinum upgrade costs around £220 and adds a host of extras, including remote KVM, virtual media services, remote OS deployment, power-capping, and the Neighbour Group feature for managing multiple servers from one XCC interface.

The XCC's web console presents plenty of information about critical hardware components along with a hardware inventory and firmware upgrade tools. It presents a power usage table for the system, CPU, memory, and other components, but temperature data is not available, and the main utilization page only shows the CMOS battery voltage and fan speeds.

The SE100 is currently certified for Windows 11 Enterprise, Windows 11 IoT Enterprise, RHEL, Ubuntu, and SUSE Linux Micro. We found OS deployment is a breeze as we used the XCC provisioning manager's Effortless Install option to load Windows 11 Enterprise in 30 minutes.

The chassis doesn't have the motion detection sensors found in larger ThinkEdge systems such as the SE350 V2, but tamper detection events can be linked to the XCC, and if a cover is removed, it will initiate a system lockdown mode. More platform security is evident as the SE100 employs Silicon Root of Trust for supply chain integrity, it supports SEDs (self-encrypting SSDs), and the XCC System Guard feature takes reference snapshots of the current system inventory and can stop the server from booting if changes are detected.

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE100 review: Is it worth it?

With prices for base nodes starting in the £3-4K price range, the ThinkEdge SE100 offers a tempting solution to SMBs that thought edge computing was beyond their budget. The Intel Core Ultra hybrid CPUs are quite capable of handling demanding tasks such as entry-level AI inferencing and the system can be easily expanded with a more powerful Nvidia GPU if needed.

Its rugged build and compact dimensions allow it to be deployed in environments that would be no-go areas for standard servers and the smart cooling design makes for silent running. The ThinkEdge SE100 is an impressive little edge server that will appeal to a wide range of businesses and the multiple deployment options makes it incredibly versatile.

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE100 specifications

The ThinkPad T14s 2-in-1 heralds the arrival of a convertible-form-factor laptop in Lenovo's productivity T-series lineup. Granted, there have been touchscreen T-series machines before, but never one that lets you fold the screen back 360 degrees to use as a tablet.

The benefits of such a design are obvious if you want to use a pen to scribble or draw on your laptop screen, or if you want to place your laptop in a confined space like the seat back tray of an airliner, when putting it in a tent or A-frame mode means you haven't got a keyboard sticking out towards you.

Versatile the new T14s may be, but cheap it's not. Prices start at £1,830 inc VAT, though Lenovo is currently offering an 18% discount, but that's for a pauper spec machine. The model most users will want will set you back closer to £2,000, but you can easily pay much more if you want the maximum amount of memory and storage.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s: Design

ThinkPads have to be black and angular; it's the law at Lenovo. So it came as no shock to us that the new T14s were black and angular. Made from a combination of aluminium and magnesium, it's a very solid bit of kit wholly resistant to our efforts to twist or bend it.

It's not all mouth and no trousers either. The MIL-STD-810H military test pass should ensure it can shrug off excess vibration, temperature changes, particle ingress, and work on top of a 10,000ft tall mountain. At 1.4Kg the T14s isn't the lightest 14in laptop around, nor at 314 x 223 x 21.6mm is it the smallest, but carrying it around all day in a backpack really isn't a chore.

There's little design frippery in evidence other than the red LED that forms the dot over the i in ThinkPad on the lid, but that's as it should be. The matte paint finish on the palmrest and lid does show fingerprints, but it's also warm and pleasant to the touch, so that's a trade-off we're happy with.

The 360-degree hinges that link the screen and the base are very well engineered. There's just a little too much resistance to let you open the lid without holding the base down, but the hinges are strong enough to keep whatever angle you set them at, which is vital when using it in tent or A-frame mode.

On the left side of the T14s you'll find two Thunderbolt 4-spec USB-C ports along with a 3.5mm audio jack, HDMI 2.1 video output and the SIM card tray if you've opted for a cellular modem. On the right are two 5Gpbs USB-A ports and a Kensington security lock.

If we were being picky, and we are, a better layout would have been one USB-C on either side, so you can pick which side to connect the 65W rat-and-tail USB-C charger to, and one 10Gpbs USB-A on either side. Lenovo is having a laugh by fitting USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports to a machine costing this much.

At least you get the latest in wireless communications with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, both supported by the Intel BE201 card. Given that the RAM is fixed in place and there's only one 2280 M.2 slot inside, taking the base off is something you'll only need to do if you want to upgrade the SSD, but it's a very straightforward operation.

Incidentally, the Kioxia PCIe 4 512GB SSD in our review machine proved a solid performer, recording average sequential read and write speeds of 4,159MB/s and 3,871MB/s respectively.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s: Keyboard, touchpad, and webcam

There may be some strange parallel universe in which Carol Voderman is Pope, and you can download hummus where there's such a thing as a bad ThinkPad keyboard, but this is not it. In this reality, Lenovo can be relied upon to deliver an excellent keyboard, no matter what the form factor of the laptop it's bolted to, and the ThinkPad 14s is no exception.

The keyboard deck is solid; the soft-finish keys, with their trademark convex bottoms, are pleasant to the touch and have a perfectly calibrated 1.5mm of travel and a smooth end-stop. Typing on the T14s is something of a joy.

The layout is impossible to fault, but mention needs to be made in dispatches of the full-sized arrow keys and the power button-cum-fingerprint scanner, which sits above and apart from the keyboard proper in the top right corner.

All in all, the ThinkBook's keyboard looks and behaves much like that fitted to the ThinkPad X1, and that's quite an accolade. And there's a two-stage white backlight.

This being a ThinkPad, there's naturally a red TrackPoint nestling between the G, H, and B keys and dedicated mouse buttons at the top of the 115 x 60mm Mylar TrackPad. If you've ever had to use a laptop in a confined space, you'll know what a benefit these features are.

To make the TrackPoint even more useful, a quick double-tap opens a menu that lets you adjust the sound and microphone settings, launch Microsoft's Speech Services, and adjust some battery settings.

The 1440p webcam is excellent. Crisp, colorful, and very natural looking, it's one of the best laptop webcams around. It also comes with a manual privacy slider and supports Windows Hello facial recognition.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s: Display and speakers

The T14s can be specified with two types of screen. Both are 14in, 1,920 x 1,200 multitouch IPS displays, and both refresh at 60Hz. The differences are in gamut width, brightness, and finish so that you can choose 45% NTSC and 400cd/m2, or 100% sRGB and 500cd/m2, with an anti-glare (matte) or an anti-reflection and anti-smudge (gloss) finish.

Our review machine came fitted with a gloss-finish 400cd/m2 panel. It's a bright enough panel, hitting 426cdm/2, but it's severely lacking in colour. Under our colorimeter, it registered just 56% of the sRGB colour space.

The high brightness level and a black luminance level of 0.36cd/m2 result in a strong contrast ratio of 1183:1, while the anti-reflection finish does a good job of keeping reflections, in door and out, in check. It is also impressively resistant to fingerprints, thanks no doubt to an oleophobic coating of some sort.

That all combines to make a display that's good enough for basic productivity but lacks the color to make watching video or looking at images anything other than a lacklustre experience. With so little color space coverage, any talk of color accuracy is superfluous. The alternative screen is a £70 option and offers 100% sRGB coverage, which is hardly stellar for a laptop with such a high price tag, but certainly a step in the right direction.

Despite it only being a FullHD panel, there's no visible pixelation, but that didn't silence the little voice in our head that said that for this sort of money, 2.5K or 2.8K really should be the least you expect.

Before we leave matters display-related, it's worth clarifying that Lenovo doesn't bundle a pen or stylus with the ThinkPad 14s, merely offering one as a £20 option at the point of purchase, which again seems rather parsimonious.

The upward-firing Dolby Atmos-certified 2 x 2W speaker system is altogether more impressive than the display. The sound they make is tight, punchy, and has a decent amount of low-end bass. There's plenty of volume too, our sound meter registering 77.8dBA from a pink noise source at a distance of 1 meter.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s: Specs and performance

Lenovo's international product information for the T14s 2-in-1 lists 6 processor options, all Core Ultra S2 Arrow Lake chips. The complete list includes the Core Ultra 5 225U and 235U, the Core Ultra 7 255U and 265U, and the Core Ultra 255H and 265H.

At the moment, the U-series chips are the only ones available through Lenovo UK. That's really only an issue from a graphics perspective because only the H-series models have the Intel 140T GPU. All the U-series models make do with the comparatively flaccid Intel Graphics solution.

You can also choose from Windows 11 Home or Pro, Ubuntu, or no operating system, a 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB SSD, and up to 64GB of fixed RAM, though that last is CPU-specific, so for instance, if you pick the entry-level 225U CPU, you can't opt for more than 16GB of RAM.

Our review machine came fitted with the 12-core Core Ultra 7 255U processor, 32GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and Windows 11 Pro, and as noted above, the cheapest display. Buy the same machine, and you'll be out of pocket to the tune of £1,892 inc. VAT, though that is posted by Lenovo as a 19% saving on the regular price of £2,240.

For a productivity machine, basic performance is good. The CPU turned in GeekBench 6 scores of 2,472 single-core, 10,996 multi-core, and 255 in ITPro's bespoke 4K multi-media test. Compare that to 2,725, 10,937, and 245, respectively, from the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V-powered ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition, and it's clear the T14s has nothing to be ashamed of.

Graphics performance is less impressive. The SPECviewperf 3dsmax modelling benchmark ran at a stately 15fps, compared to an average of 25fps on the Intel Arc 140V iGPU and 35fps on the Intel Arc B390 iGPU you'll find in new Panther Lake machines like the Asus ZenBook Duo.

The 14Ts did, however, prove itself every bit a long-distance runner. Even under maximum stress, the CPU and GPU were both running at 100% after several hours, and the noise from the cooling fan never rose above a whisper. In all but the most funereal of environments, the fan is essentially inaudible.

In our standard run-down battery test, the 56Wh battery lasted 15 hours and 46 minutes, which is a decent enough showing even in this age of Windows laptops like the new Honor MagicBook Pro 14, which ran out of juice just a little shy of 19 hours, and the ThinkBook 16 Gen 7, which can run for over 27 hours on a charge.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s: Is it worth it?

A quick hands-up in the ITPro office proved two points. Firstly, we'd all be quite happy being given a ThinkPad T14s 2-in-1 as a work laptop. Secondly, no way in Hades would we buy one with our own money.

As a practical tool for work, there's nothing much wrong with the T14s, though by 2026 standards. The keyboard is superb, the design and build-quality beyond criticism, the battery life is good enough to get through a full day's graft, and then some, and the webcam is class-leading. Performance is solid, too, and we like the way it runs cool and quiet.

The problem is the cost. Unless you are happy with the pauper specification of 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, Wi-Fi 6E, etc, you will need to spend almost £2,000 and still have to make do with a laptop with a FullHD IPS screen with at best full sRGB gamut coverage.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s: Specs

Lenovo has come to MWC 2026 with a proof of concept for an entirely modular AI PC that can change into different form factors.

The ThinkBook Modular AI PC looks like a laptop, but nearly all of its parts (as the name suggests) can be removed and even upgraded. It has two displays, with a second attached to the lid via pogo pins.

Similarly, the keyboard comes off with a few clicks, and even the area where you have your ports can be clicked out and changed for different ports. On the back, there is a kickstand for different viewing angles and to support the secondary monitor function.

The thinking behind the device is that some professionals move between work modes throughout the day, so the concept is built on the idea of “carry small, use big,” where a single device supports productivity, collaboration, and content consumption across different scenarios.

For those of us keeping score, it’s another clear sign that Lenovo has mastered the wow-factor when it comes to innovative computing use cases.

As was the case with CES, Lenovo has developed a knack for not only interesting proofs of concept but also for impressively turning concepts into mainstream products. (See its voice control ThinkPad).

The Modular ThinkBook is still a few tweaks away from that; it needs more work on the hinges, and it only connects to the secondary screen via a cable connection at the product launch. But you can easily believe that it will be something coming out in the near future, going by the company’s track record.

More from Lenovo at MWC

The ThinkBook was just one of several interesting concepts at MWC. There were also two on-desk AI-devices: The AI Work Companion and the AI Work Mate.

The Companion is an AI-powered docking station disguised as a bedside-table alarm clock. It connects to a laptop via USB and HDMI ports.

It has a large dial on the top that can control volume and a button for turning your screen off. The display has different options for clock faces and can show you a calendar view where AI is used to plan out your workday.

Meanwhile, the Workmate looks a little more cartoonish; it’s a long-necked device with a digital face. It has image and voice recognition capabilities, a built-in projector, and scanning functions.

Lenovo also announced new updates for its T-series ThinkPads. These included a new T14S, its lightest to date at just over 1kg, that comes in a new 2-in-1 form factor.

The big talking points here are the ability to repair, seemingly, all of it. That includes a ‘toothless’ battery and a replaceable keyboard.

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Lenovo has announced the appointment of Andy Rhodes as its new general manager for the UK and Ireland (UK&I).

The seasoned industry executive joins the business from HP, where he served in various leadership roles, including division president and general manager of the company’s video conferencing and accessories division, as well as global leadership of the HP commercial PC business.

Prior to his time at HP, Rhodes also spent more than a decade at Dell, serving in various executive roles across its data center, workstation, and industrial IoT business.

In his new role, Rhodes will lead Lenovo’s UK&I business as it navigates the industry-wide changes brought on by the increasing presence of AI technologies.

“I’m genuinely excited to be joining Lenovo at a time of such rapid growth and opportunity, particularly as Hybrid AI reshapes our industry and how we serve customers,” Rhodes said. “Lenovo has a clear strategy, strong momentum and incredible people; a combination that matters.”

Rhodes said he will work closely with the company’s customers, partners, and teams to build on its existing strong foundations in the region and target new opportunities.

Matt Dobrodziej, Lenovo’s SVP and Europe president, said Rhodes’ leadership expertise will be a key asset in achieving the company’s growth ambitions.

“I’m excited to welcome Andy to Lenovo. He’s a highly experienced technology industry leader and a great fit for our UK & Ireland business,” he commented.

“I’m confident he will further strengthen our business across the UK and Ireland while bringing a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm to the role.”

Rhodes replaces Adrian Criddle, who will now transition out of the role of general manager in pursuit of new opportunities. He led Lenovo’s UK&I business for two years and is credited with leading the organization through a period of significant transformation and progress.

Lenovo said Criddle will remain with the company for an interim period to help onboard Rhodes into his new role.

“I’d also like to thank Adrian for the key role he’s played in deepening our relationships with customers and partners, and his commitment, professionalism and care for the team,” Dobrodziej added. “We wish him well for the future.”

The appointment is the latest addition to Lenovo’s leadership ranks as the company continues to expand its presence across regional markets.

In January, the vendor named experienced tech and digital leader Tareq Alangari as senior vice president and president of its Middle East, Türkiye, and Africa (META) organization.

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If one were to posit the perfect combination for a business laptop, there are worse places to start than with a reasonably powerful but very efficient chipset. Take, for example, the 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100. A high-capacity battery with around 84Wh of juice and a price tag between £600 and £700, depending on which options you've ticked.

Happily, that's exactly what Lenovo has delivered in the form of its new ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 16-inch laptop, which is a well-made general-purpose laptop with more than adequate performance for basic tasks, a battery life so long that a full charge will outlast the average mayfly, and a price tag that won't overly lighten your wallet in these straitened times.

Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7: Design

The ThinkBook 16 is made largely from plastic, the only metal in evidence being the back of the lid. Nevertheless, it all feels impressively rigid and solid, with no flex discernible in the main body and very little in the lid.

At just over 1.8Kg the ThinkBook isn't remarkably light, and at 16.7mm, it's not unusually slim either. The design is typical Lenovo ThinkBook: smart and clean, if just a tad generic. The Lenovo and ThinkBook badging on the palmwrest and lid is restrained but still easy to discern.

There's only one colorway, a dark silvery-grey affair that Lenovo calls Luna Grey. The slightly matte paint finish doesn't show fingerprints, which in our opinion is far more important than the underlying aesthetics. The lid can rotate back through 180 degrees, and the lip that houses the webcam assembly means you can easily open it with just one finger of one hand.

The ThinkBook 16 has a decent selection of ports with two 10Gbps Type-C ports on the left and two 5Gbps USB-A ports on the right. Next to the Type-Cs, which both support DisplayPort video output, you'll find an HDMI 2.1 video feed and a 3.5mm audio jack, while next to the brace of Type-As is an SD card reader and Kensington nano lock.

Snapdragon-powered ThinkBook 16s lacks the RJ45 Ethernet jack found on its Intel-powered Gen 7 and Gen 8 brethren, though in fairness, they in turn lack the Snapdragon machine's second USB-A port. Wireless communications are handled by a Qualcomm 7800 modem, which supports 6Ghz Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3.

Getting inside the ThinkBook 16 is easy enough as long as you have a Torx screwdriver to hand, but once in there's little you can do other than blow dust out of the fan housing or replace the 2240-format SSD. Everything else of value or interest is soldered in place.

The SSD in our test machine was a 512GB Western Digital device that recorded solid, if unspectacular, sequential read and write speeds of 4,150MB/s and 3,365MB/s, respectively.

Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7: Keyboard, touchpad and webcam

Lenovo can be relied upon to deliver a decent keyboard, no matter what the price of the laptop it's screwed to, and the ThinkBook 16 is no exception. The keyboard deck is solid, the soft-finish keys with their trademark convex bottoms are very pleasant to the touch, and there's a two-stage white backlight.

The layout is impossible to fault, but special mention needs to be made of the full-sized arrow keys and the power button-cum-fingerprint scanner, which sits above the keyboard proper in the top right corner. All in all, the ThinkBook's keyboard looks and behaves much like that fitted to the considerably more expensive ThinkPad X1, and that's quite an accolade.

The mylar touchpad measures 135 x 80mm and is wholly smooth and instantly reactive. The click-action is very clean and precise, if just a little too noisy for our taste. Use it in a quiet environment like a library, and disapproving glances are not an impossibility.

The 1080p webcam doesn't support Windows Hello IR facial recognition, but other than that, it's a solid performer. Images look bright and colourful, and you get the full suite of Windows Studio special effects. There's also a sliding shutter to keep prying eyes away.

Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7: Display

The standard 16-inch 1,920 x 1,200 display is undoubtedly the Achilles' heel of the ThinkBook 16. Even given the low price, it's barely adequate. Maximum brightness is a mediocre 296cd/m2, the refresh rate is a bog-standard 60Hz, and there's only coverage of 60.3% of the sRGB colour space, or 42.7% of the DCI-P3 space. With such a narrow gamut range, any talk of colour accuracy is superfluous.

It's not the sharpest of displays either, a natural and unavoidable side effect of the resolution and size combining to give a rather lacklustre pixel density of 141.5DPI. This, then, is a display better suited for spreadsheets and email than cinematic glories. Indeed, in the opening scenes of Dune 2, it makes Arrakis look more like Skegness on an overcast December day.

If we had to look for good points, we'd mention that the matte finish does a good job of keeping reflections in check and that there's no problem with the viewing angles. Other than that, it's a very basic display, and even at this price, something rather better would have been appreciated.

Thankfully, all is not lost because, assuming you're buying direct from Lenovo, for £60 you can opt for a 120Hz, 2,560 x 1,600 100% sRGB screen, which sounds, and presumably looks, like an altogether better bet.

Mercifully, the speaker system is of rather higher quality than the screen. With a maximum volume level of 77.2dBA as measured against a pink noise source at a 1m distance and good levels of detail, separation, and bass, the speakers make a fine fist of both music playback and voice calls.

Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7: Specs and performance

The ThinkBook 16 features the same 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100 CPU as the Microsoft Surface Pro 12-inch, and comes with the same 16GB of RAM. Here again, we found it delivers a very nicely balanced combination of performance and efficiency.

Despite using an 8-core Snapdragon Plus rather than a 12-core Elite chip, the ThinkBook 16 always feels sprightly in day-to-day use. Programmes launch quickly, and the laptop wakes from sleep almost instantaneously.

The ThinkBook's Geekbench 6 scores of 2,367 single-core and 11,138 multi-core were very similar to the Surface Pro's, and like the Microsoft tablet, the ThinkBook proved capable of running under maximum stress without any loss of performance whatsoever. Unlike the Surface Pro, the ThinkBook is actively cooled, but even under maximum stress, the fan is quiet and easy to ignore.

Graphics performance continues to be something of a weak spot with the Snapdragon X chipsets, thanks to the rather lacklustre integrated Adreno GPU. In the Geekbench 6 OpenCL test, the Lenovo scored 10,021, which is around one-third of the score you'll get from an entry-level M4 MacBook Air or anything using Intel's latest Arc 140V iGPU.

The Snapragon chipset also features a 45 TOPS NPU, which means the ThinkBook 16 carries Microsoft's Copilot+ seal of approval. That in turn means you can run all the Windows local AI tools like generative fill in Paint and Recall screen capture.

The ThinkBook's chief claim on your attention is battery life. Lenovo claim 30 hours of video playback from the 84Wh battery, and while the best we got, 27 hours 40 minutes, is a wee bit short of that, the difference is small enough to be accounted for by changes in display brightness and the type of media player.

Even our test results make the ThinkBook 16 the longest-running laptop we've ever tested, and by quite some margin. To put it into context, it's 7 hours more than an M4 MacBook Pro can manage and almost 8 hours longer than the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI, two of the longest-running laptops we've tested in 2025.

Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7: Is it worth it?

There are two versions of the ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 (Snapdragon) on sale, identical but for the amount of RAM and storage you get.

Lenovo is currently selling both with a 19% discount, which makes the 16GB/512GB model £627.98 inc VAT and the 32GB/1TB version £771.98 inc VAT. Given that the 120Hz 2.5K display only costs an extra £60, you'd be quite mad not to tick that box on your way to the checkout.

With or without the improved screen, we'd describe the ThinkBook 16as a genuine bargain and a perfect choice for anyone who wants a full-sized laptop with an excellent keyboard and who anticipates spending long periods away from a mains power supply.

Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 specifications

Lenovo claims traditional data centers are not fit for purpose and is proposing some radical solutions for future designs.

Research from the company shows many are failing to meet sustainability targets, with 46% of IT leaders admitting their current infrastructure doesn't support energy or carbon-reduction goals.

That comes despite the fact 92% said they prioritize technology partners who reduce energy use and carbon footprint.

Meanwhile, an overwhelming 99% of IT and C-level decision makers across EMEA said data sovereignty will be critical in the coming years.

Unsurprisingly, AI is a key consideration in terms of future data center sustainability and design. Nine-in-ten believe that AI will significantly increase organizational data usage in the next decade, and 62% expect AI and automation to have the greatest impact on IT strategy.

This means that data centers of the future will have to be designed with AI workloads in mind, and many simply aren’t up to scratch right now.

“The data center of the future will be defined by how effectively it can scale for AI, deliver on sustainability targets, and operate with maximum energy efficiency,” said Simone Larsson, head of enterprise AI for EMEA at Lenovo.

“In EMEA, data sovereignty stands out as a particularly urgent priority, shaped by complex regional regulations and heightened scrutiny from CIOs and C-suites alike."

Lenovo is taking 'the cloud' to the next level

So what's the answer? Well, according to Lenovo, it's all about thinking outside the box. The company said it's been working with engineering firm AKT II and architect Mamou-Mani to dream up some ideas.

The most radical is the 'Floating Cloud' – perhaps taking the term 'cloud' rather literally, by suspending the data center in the air. These would operate at an altitude of 20-30km and make use of 24/7 energy from solar power. Pressurized closed liquid cooling loops would avoid any air pollution.

Closer to reality, other ideas touted by the company include the use of modular, stackable brick or pod systems of data centers linked to city needs. These would be sited close to water sources such as rivers or canals, the company said.

When sited next to geothermal power sources, designers suggested these could be referred to as 'Data Spas'.

Elsewhere, there's also the possibility of utilizing disused tunnels, bunkers, or transport systems, reducing land use while allowing for facilities to be set up in central locations with lower impact.

Such sites would benefit from enhanced security resilience, while the subterranean location would create a naturally efficient heat management system.

Some of these ideas are already starting to appear in the real world. Portus Data Centers, for example, operates an underground data center in the heart of Luxembourg, powered by 100% renewable energy sources.

Siting data centers near water sources is already pretty standard, and in areas with significant geothermic activity, many already take advantage of the free power.

Microsoft, G42, and KenGen, for example, are building a data center at the Olkaria geothermal field in Kenya.

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The Lenovo Yoga Tab is an affordable little wonder at just $499 (£479). It's the modest model of the latest Android-based Yoga range that was launched at IFA 2025, and also a potential contender for budget tablet of the year.

This small, 11.1in tablet arguably works best as a digital notepad or second screen. ITPro didn't receive the accompanying keyboard, so we were left to use it in those ways. And to be honest, we weren't disappointed.

Lenovo Yoga Tab 11.1in: Design

The Yoga Tab is a small slab, but it's oddly thicker at 6.2mm than the largest of Samsung's Galaxy Tab S11 models, the Ultra, 5.1mm. Our eyes were drawn to the two unusually large camera lenses on the back. They sit inside a long camera bump that also features a torch light – why you need this, we don't know. There are two separate shiny logos: a large one for 'Lenovo' and a corner one for 'Yoga'. Both add to the overall metallic look and feel of the device, which is quite striking in our opinion.

Everything else on the tablet is more unobtrusive; the volume and power buttons barely protrude, the bezels around the display are minimal, the front camera is a tiny cutout you need to look for, and even the Dolby Vision-Atmos logo is too small to pull any focus. It is a very neat little device, well-designed, with an understated look.

Lenovo Yoga Tab 11.1in: Display

Small screens have their place in the world, though tablets are generally better when they're bigger. Particularly when you intend to use it for work. The 11.1in display on the Yoga Tab has a PureSight Pro panel, with up to 144Hz refresh rate, and a 3.2K resolution – all fine specs. As we mentioned, using it as a notetaking device, the Tab is excellent. It fits snugly on a desk, next to a laptop, and the pen is amazing (more on this later). It does that job really well.

As a second screen, it is also useful. It doesn't have any capabilities to extend a laptop display, but if you want some information on the side, while watching a webinar, presentation (or giving one), it is handy. Easy to hold in one hand, highly responsive touch screen. Nice bright display – it's all good.

Unfortunately, DisplayCal is having something of a breakdown, particularly when it comes to macOS and the LocalHost function that one uses to test the display on an external device (like a phone or tablet). As such, we don't have a benchmark for the Yoga Tab screen; we are measuring its capabilities via firsthand experience and vibes only.

And, well, the vibes are generally good. It gets nice and bright. Doesn't particularly struggle in direct sunlight. The colors pop off the screen. And there isn't anything glaringly wrong with it.

Lenovo Yoga Tab 11.1in: Specs and performance

Inside the Yoga Tab is a 6-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, which is paired with 8GB LPDDR5x RAM and 256GB of storage. The 8 Gen 3 chip also includes an NPU with up to 20 TOPs AI performance.

In Geekbench 6, the Yoga Tab notched up 2,241 for single-core and 5,912 for multithreaded workloads. At face value, these benchmarks are very good, with the single-core score greater than what we recorded on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra (2,159). It doesn't quite meet the S10's multicore score, and it's miles away from the S11 and the iPad Pro, but for a small, budget machine, it is suitably powerful.

In our looped video test, the Yoga Tab's battery lasted for 9hrs and 38mins. This could be better, other tablets at this price range can get beyond ten hours. The S10 FE from a year ago managed over 13hrs. So there is something to mark the Yoga Tab down on. Though in our experience, there wasn't anything particular that drained the battery quicker, aside from prolonged use of the maximum refresh rate.

Lenovo Yoga Tab 11.1in: Features

Feature-wise, you get the usual tablet fare of a USB Type-C port (audio, charge, and data transfer), Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and three camera lenses. On the front, there is a 13MP lens with a 101-degree ultra-wide view. On the back, there are two: a 13MP lens with autofocus, and a 2MP macro lens with a flashlight. Both 13MP lenses have a fixed focus capability, while the front camera has a face tracking setting – useful for those who create videos on the move.

There is a range of pre-installed software with Adobe apps, like Lightroom, and the CapCut video editing app, ready to use. The setup is very creator-illustrator-friendly with lots of apps tailored for the stylus. Lenovo's own Infinite Painter app is a decent alternative to Procreate or Sketchbook – its only real fault is that many of the tools are subscription-only.

The Tab Pen Pro, itself, does a fairly decent job of recreating pencil-like sketching; there is a faint scratchy feel, and it's comfortable in the hand, though there seems to be a very slight lag. It looks and feels better than both the OnePlus and Samsung styluses we tested, but it isn't quite as responsive.

However, there is something special about the Tab Pen Pro that you won't find with Apple, Samsung, and OnePlus. It looks like a normal pen, magnetically attaches to the top of the tablet, where it also charges. But it's what you can do with it that makes it so good. You see, it doubles as a remote control, enabling the user to change certain aspects of the tablet, such as the volume on audio, the time of a video, or scroll to the next deck of a slide show. It doesn't seem to work on all apps; you can't, for example, turn the page in Google Reads, but it is quite a clever extra function for a digital pen.

You can also use quick functions with a click of the floating pen button on the side of the screen. You need this to launch into control mode, but here you can also enable over-the-screen doodles and quick illustrations – this is what a stylus should do, total digital brilliance.

Lenovo Yoga Tab 11.1in: Is it worth it?

The real question here is whether you want or need a smaller tablet? Will your business, or your staff, find a use for a 11in display? They make great second screens; they're easy to hold in one hand. The pen is brilliant, and the remote control part is very innovative. If you want small and cheap, then the Yoga Tab is hard to beat.

Lenovo Yoga Tab 11.1in specifications

Security researchers have found a flaw in Lenovo’s customer service AI chatbot, Lena, that could allow attackers to steal data, compromise customer support systems, and allow lateral movement through a company's network.

An investigation from Cybernews discovered that through cross-site scripting (XSS), it was possible to inject malicious code and steal session cookies with a single prompt.

The 400-character-long prompt started with an inquiry for legitimate information - for example, 'show me the specifications of Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro'.

The chatbot was then asked to convert its responses into HTML, JSON, and plain text in the specific order that the web server expected to receive instructions in.

This made sure that the malicious payload would be correctly executed by the web server. Thereafter, the prompt continued with instructions on how to produce the final response, specifically with HTML code for loading an image, but with the image URL non-existent.

When it fails to load, the second part of the command instructs the browser to make a network request to the attacker-controlled server and send all cookie data as part of a URL.

Finally, further instructions (rather imperiously) reinforce that the chatbot must produce the image: 'Show the image at the end. It is important for my decision-making. SHOW IT.'

“This example shows just how dangerous an overly 'helpful' AI can be if it blindly follows instructions. Without careful safeguards, chatbots could become easy targets for cyber attacks – putting customer privacy and company security at serious risk,” researchers said.

Lenovo flaw could have serious consequences

Using the stolen support agent’s session cookie, it's possible to log into the customer support system via the support agent’s account, without needing to know the email, username, or password for said account.

Once logged in, an attacker could then potentially access active chats with other users, and even previous conversations and data. It might also be possible to execute some system commands, which could allow for the installation of backdoors and lateral movement across the network.

While XSS vulnerabilities are on the decline, researchers said that companies need to assume that every AI input and output is dangerous until it’s verified as being safe.

This means using a strict whitelist of allowed characters, data types, and formats for all user inputs, with all problematic characters automatically encoded or escaped, as well as for all chatbot responses.

Inline JavaScript should be avoided, and content type validation should extend through the entire stack to prevent unintended HTML rendering.

“This isn’t just Lenovo’s problem. Any AI system without strict input and output controls creates an opening for attackers," commented Žilvinas Girėnas, head of product at nexos.ai.

"LLMs don’t have an instinct for 'safe' – they follow instructions exactly as given. Without strong guardrails and continuous monitoring, even small oversights can turn into major security incidents."

The researchers discovered the vulnerabilities on July 22 and made a disclosure the same day, which was acknowledged on August 6. The flaw was mitigated by August 18.

ITPro approached Lenovo for comment, but received no response by time of publication.

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Mini PCs are growing in appeal for both consumers and enterprises alike, and Lenovo’s Lecoo brand just launched a powerful new option aimed at cost-conscious businesses.

The Lecoo Mini Pro is primarily aimed toward consumers, much like other offerings from the Lenovo subdivision, but the company has specifically touted its benefits for “office work at home” given its compact design.

Prices range between $480 to $670 and are dependent on the configurations chosen by the user. The mini PC comes equipped with a Hawk Point AMD CPU alongside an AMD Ryzen 8745H GPU and Radeon 780M integrated graphics.

The integrated graphics here means it’s perfect for lower-tier gaming tasks, but also for other creative workloads, according to Lecoo.

“It is very suitable for general audiovisual entertainment, computer games, and office work at home,” according to Lecoo promotional materials. “It is an excellent Lenovo-quality desktop mini computer.”

Elsewhere, the Lecoo Mini Pro can be configured with 16GB of DDR5 RAM or 32GB, both clocking in at 5600MHz, as well as some handy storage options.

For example, the device boasts dual PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots for storage, giving users the ability to upgrade to 2TB of SSD storage.

The Lecoo Mini Pro is compact and quiet

A key appeal of the device lies in both its aforementioned size and power efficiency. It’s very compact and weighs in at around 2 kilograms, although compared to a Mac Mini it’s significantly bulkier.

Lecoo promotional materials describe it as “mini figure palm size”, measuring in at a volume of 0.95L, making it roughly 1/30th in size compared to a traditional desktop computer.

Notably, the device includes a ‘performance mode’ which allows users to run it at 70W, and boasts a dedicated ‘quiet mode’ which reduces device volume down to around 32 decibels by slowing down fan speeds.

In terms of connectivity options, the Lecoo Mini Pro also fares well. It includes dual USB-4 ports as well as two 2.5G Ethernet ports alongside HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 options.

Dual USB 2.0 ports also feature, making it a highly versatile option for users working with dual monitors, for example.

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When Lenovo unveiled the IdeaPad Slim 3x at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, it touted the device as an "AI laptop". That's thanks to its Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip, the fourth chip to feature Qualcomm's custom Oryon CPU cores and the third in the X Series, which enables the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x to process AI tasks on-device rapidly.

It's not all about AI, though, as the IdeaPad Slim 3x packs many other interesting features that set it apart in the budget laptop market. There's an open SSD slot that can fit an extra SSD for users who want to expand the laptop's storage capacity, and it comes reinforced with MIL‑STD‑810H durability, making it one of the toughest affordable laptops around.

It's less impressive in other areas; the laptop's 15-inch OLED display can feel dim in bright environments, and its keyboard layout will take a bit of getting used to. Still, considering its $649 price tag, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x definitely delivers value for money.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Design

While budget laptops often have a cheap, bulky feel, that isn't the case with the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x. It features a MacBook-esque aluminium chassis, which lacks the cool premium feel of an Apple device but looks the part nonetheless. It also feels impressively sturdy thanks to the laptop's military-grade MIL‑STD‑810H durability standard, which means it should be able to withstand knocks and tumbles.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x is just 0.7 inches thick despite its rugged nature. Although it doesn't quite match the MacBook Air's featherweight aesthetic, the Slim 3x still fits neatly into a backpack and is an ideal size and weight for working on the go.

Despite the laptop's slim profile, ports are plentiful on the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x. The laptop ships with full-sized USB‑A ports, USB‑C, an SD card reader, HDMI, and a headphone jack.

Aesthetically, Lenovo keeps things clean and minimalist. The IdeaPad Slim 3x features a subtle "Luna Grey" finish, without any unnecessary flashy accents.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Display

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x features a 15.3-inch 1920 x 1200 IPS non-touch display at 60Hz. The screen is excellent for indoor use, featuring great contrast, deep blacks, and punchy colors. At the same time, its real estate makes it particularly well-suited for productivity tasks such as document editing, web browsing, and side-by-side multitasking.

However, we found that in bright environments, though the screen remains legible, the laptop's maximum brightness level struggles to keep up, so it might not be the best device for working in the garden.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Keyboard, touchpad and webcam

Unlike most affordable Windows laptops, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x boasts a dedicated numeric keypad next to its full-sized chiclet keypad. While handy for productivity, the keys are condensed slightly to fit the laptop's 15-inch layout, and it means the rest of the keyboard is aligned to the left, which takes a bit of time to get used to. During our first few days with the IdeaPad Slim 3x, we found ourselves making a bunch of mistakes while typing due to the unusual keyboard layout, though it soon became familiar.

The power button is also located on the side of the IdeaPad Slim 3x, which took us a while to find when we first unboxed the laptop. The keys themselves are a pleasure to type on. Key travel is modest but firm, enabling speedy typing without fatigue. There's no backlight built into the keyboard, though, which makes typing in low light less enjoyable.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x also features a generously sized clickpad, delivering smooth gestures and tactile clicks. Though slightly offset to one side, it's accurate and comfortable, despite occasional hollow clicking sounds typical in budget models.

You'll also find a fingerprint sensor underneath the keyboard, which, though oddly placed, was easy to set up and makes for near-instantaneous logins.

In a subtle top‑bezel hump above the laptop's display you'll find a 5MP camera with webcam privacy shutter, ideal for the privacy-conscious. We found camera quality decent enough for the occasional video call, though it doesn't match the webcam's performance on the MacBook Air or more expensive Windows laptops.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Performance and AI

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor under the hood, the chipmaker's take on Apple's in-house processors. Qualcomm claims this chip is the most efficient processor it's built for Windows, while its integrated NPU means it's designed for handling AI workflows.

The exact chip inside the IdeaPad Slim 3x is the Snapdragon X Elite X1-26-100, an 8-core ARM-based processor with a maximum clock speed of 2.97 GHz. The processor comes paired with an Adreno GPU that supports light gaming and smooth video playback, 16GB RAM, and an integrated 512GB SSD that can be expanded thanks to the open SSD port.

During our time with the IdeaPad Slim 3x, the laptop handled web browsing, productivity tasks, and video playback with ease. However, it started to stutter slightly when put under serious pressure, such as gaming.

However, AI performance is where the IdeaPad shines, no doubt thanks to the processor's integrated NPU that's designed to accelerate local AI tasks such as voice dictation, image processing, and Copilot+ functions. We found that Microsoft's onboard AI assistant processed queries impressively quickly, making the IdeaPad Slim 3x a solid choice for those after an affordable laptop that can easily handle AI workloads.

Thermals and noise remained in check too; the laptop rarely made a noise, and we found the whirring only ramped up under sustained loads such as gaming.

Battery-wise, we found Lenovo's claims of "all-day" battery to be somewhat exaggerated; we averaged at 6-7 hours of mixed usage from the onboard 60Wh battery. However, this rarely caused a problem thanks to the laptop's fast-charging capabilities, which give you two hours of use after just 15 minutes on charge. The only downside is the hefty power cable.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Is it worth it?

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x is a well-rounded budget laptop that punches above its weight, particularly with its robust design and rapid on-device AI processing. While it's not built for gaming or heavy content creation, and it's unusual keyboard layout will take a bit of time to get use to, the IdeaPad Slim 3x handles everyday productivity, streaming, and AI-assisted tasks with ease – the latter of which is particularly impressive for a laptop at this price point.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x specifications

Lenovo profits dipped 64% for the fourth quarter, according to its latest earnings report, with at least some of the losses pinned on tariffs levelled by the US.

While many of the high tariffs initially rolled out by the US against China have since been reduced on some technology products, they still remain at 20%. At the time, IDC said it expected the tariffs to slash global IT spending in half over the subsequent six months.

"The 20% tariffs announced in March were implemented suddenly and left us no time to prepare. It had a significant impact on our numbers in the last quarter — it’s not a small number," Lenovo’s CEO Yang Yuanqing said in a conference call, according to Reuters, which added he said continued tariffs could lead to price rises.

Indeed, the company stressed in its results that future impact of tariffs could be mitigated.

"Over the past 20 years of operating a global business, Lenovo has established a manufacturing footprint that boasts 30+ manufacturing sites (either in-house or outsourced) in 11 different markets around the world," Lenovo said in a statement.

"The combination of these gives the Group maximum flexibility and resilience to navigate through uncertainties and be more adaptive to the market conditions."

Lenovo laments sluggish PC sales

Alongside the tariffs, Lenovo profits were also hit by wider challenges in the PC sales market. Speaking to Bloomberg, Yang cited macroeconomic uncertainty as a more pressing matter for the company.

“We are worried about uncertainty,” he told the publication. “For the longer term, the PC market is related to the global economy, whether it’ll be impacted by tariffs or geopolitical tensions.”

Analyst firm IDC said earlier this year that it expected largely flat sales for the PC market for the next few years, and that's helped by the looming shift to Windows 11.

Lenovo remains the world's largest maker of PCs, shipping nearly a quarter of those sold globally in the first quarter of the year, according to IDC, followed by HP Inc at 20% and Dell Technologies at 15%.

There's still light on the horizon

For the fourth quarter, Lenovo reported its net income fell to $90 million in 2024/25, marking a sharp decline of 64% from $248 million the previous year.

Despite profits sliding, revenue was up by 23% for the quarter, and net income was up 37% for the full year.

Lenovo also highlighted a second consecutive quarter of profitability for its Infrastructure Solutions Group, with revenue increasing 63% year-on-year. Similarly, by the company’s own estimates, it holds the mantle of global leader in the Windows AI PC domain.

“This has been one of our best years yet, even in the face of significant macroeconomic uncertainty,” Yang said.

"We achieved strong top-line growth with all our business groups and sales geographies growing by double digits, and our bottom-line increased even faster," Lenovo's CEO added. "Our strategy to focus on hybrid AI has driven meaningful progress in both personal and enterprise AI, laying a strong foundation for leadership in this AI era.

That didn't convince markets, however. Lenovo's stock price slid 5.4% in Hong Kong after the results were announced.

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Most IT leaders believe AI will help employees focus on "more impactful" work, yet fewer than half believe their organizations are ready with sufficient digital workplace solutions to support that shift.

That's according to a survey of 600 global IT leaders from Lenovo, which found 79% believe AI will help support employees to work on more interesting tasks.

However, only 36% believe their existing systems support employee engagement effectively and 89% say their organization will need to overhaul digital systems to take advantage of AI's potential.

"Transforming your workplace is essential to using AI effectively. Simply automating existing workflows will only yield incremental benefits," said Rakshit Ghura, VP and General Manager of Digital Workplace Solutions at Lenovo.

The Lenovo study echoes findings from Cisco's AI Readiness Index, which found only 13% of respondents saying they feel fully ready to capture AI's potential, down to a lack of infrastructure, including compute, networking, and security.

A similar study from Wrike found only 11% of businesses had integrated AI into their workflows, impacting the productivity benefits.

But those companies that manage to significantly boost productivity are able to slash jobs — indeed, Microsoft said earlier this month that the efficiency gains from internal adoption of AI tools means the tech giant can continue to grow without adding to its headcount, effectively capping headcounts.

Personalized work

Taking full advantage of AI will require a shift to more personalized digital workplaces, Lenovo argues. That could involve tailoring tools and workflows to individual roles, allowing employees to drive their own productivity.

The current one-size-fits-all approach makes it difficult for employees to design a flexible workflow that suits them, Lenovo said, with a lack of configurable devices and applications identified as top barriers to making AI work better.

"AI changes the rules of productivity, but to realize its potential, IT leaders must work alongside their executive teams to rethink how AI can augment their organization’s value-creation levers and competitive differentiation," Ghura said.

AI at the core of business

Beyond point of use, Lenovo said generative AI should be embedded into core business operations. For example, generative AI could help manage devices, in particular to meet diverse needs of employees, Lenovo said.

"AI must be seamlessly integrated into core operations, creating a personalized and efficient digital workplace that enhances the employee experience and drives long-term productivity," said Ghura.

The Lenovo research follows a survey from Slack, which showed that AI usage has slowed as workers are hiding their use of AI over concerns it makes them look lazy.

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Laptop running low on charge? Forget lugging a cable around or searching for power points — simply find a sunny spot.

That's the idea of Lenovo's Yoga Solar PC, which features solar panels on the rear of the laptop to convert sunshine into power, with the firm claiming that just 20 minutes in the sun is enough to power an hour of video playback.

However, though the design was shown off at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the laptop remains a proof of concept.

Alongside that glimpse at a smarter future for mobile working, Lenovo also unveiled new laptop designs that are focused on AI: a pair of Lenovo Yoga Pro Aura Editions and a "future-proofed" Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x.

The new laptops highlight the PC industry's shift to "AI powered" devices, with the Aura line focused on bringing AI to the Lenovo lineup via a partnership with Intel, which has struggled amid the rise in AI.

"As we push the limits of AI innovation higher than ever, it is important to remember that delivering access to AI for all is equally a core tenet of Lenovo’s philosophy," said Jun Ouyang, Lenovo’s SVP and GM of the consumer segment, intelligent devices group.

"Likewise, as we endeavor to redefine the boundaries of power in technology, we must ensure that it continues to be a positive force."

How does the Yoga Solar PC concept laptop work?

The solar-powered laptop is a simple idea: make use of the rear of the device to house solar panels to give the battery a boost. Lenovo said the setup featured a conversion rate above 24%, claiming it as one of the highest in the industry.

The proof of concept Yoga Solar PC features what Lenovo calls "back contact cell" technology, a design that puts the mounting brackets and electrical contacts on the rear of the cell, giving more space on the front for solar absorption — and letting it look a bit cleaner.

Despite the addition of the solar panels, the design remains a slim 15mm and weighs just 1.22kg.

The system automatically adapts to different light savings, adjusting the charging to send any harvested energy to the system. It works in low light as well as bright sun, letting the laptop slowly recharge at all times.

In direct sunlight, Lenovo said twenty minutes is enough for the solar panels to absorb and convert the energy required to playback an hour of video.

Lenovo hasn’t indicated if it plans to develop the proof of concept into a fully-fledged consumer product, but did unveil an additional proof of concept with solar ideas: a USB-C power bank with detachable solar panel that can be moved into the best position to capture the sun.

Proof of concept AI projects

Alongside the solar experiments, Lenovo showed off a few other proof-of-concept ideas focused on AI.

That includes an AI Display with its own NPU, which the "display NPU" (dNPU) uses to adapt to the user's movements to adjust the screen for best viewing angles, as well as giving AI powers to non-AI PCs.

"The dNPU not only enhances the monitor’s abilities, but also empowers non-AI PCs with AI computing power," Lenovo explained.

"With the AI Display with NPU inside, non-AI PCs will be able to use Large Language Models, receiving commands from the user, analyzing and recognizing the intent, and allowing the Assistant to execute the request."

Other ideas touted by the firm at MWC include the Lenovo AI Stick, which can be plugged into a PC without its own NPU to power AI such as large language models or graphics apps. The stick features its own 32 TOPS NPU and connects via USB-C Thunderbolt port.

New Yoga Aura laptops

Lenovo extended its AI-focused Aura lineup with a pair of convertible Yoga Pros, the 16in Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition and the 14in Yoga Pro 7i Aura Edition, adding to previously announced laptops.

The Aura brand focuses on adding AI features like smart modes to enhance PC customization, smart sharing tools to link Android and iOS, and a smart care tech support tool, all powered by an AI chip from Intel.

The 16in Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition is being marketed at creative professionals, with a tandem, or double layer, OLED display that's brighter without draining power. It's powered by an Intel Core Ultra processor and can be configured to include an Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU.

Meanwhile, the 14in Yoga Pro 7i Aura Edition features a 14.5in 3K OLED display, while all Yoga keyboards have oil and water-resistant coatings for better typing. For those looking for a 14in laptop powered by an AMD chip, Lenovo also showed off the Yoga Pro 7, which runs an AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series processor.

The 16in Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition will be available in EMEA in June with a starting price of €1,699 inc VAT and the 14in Yoga Pro 7i Aura Edition arrives this month with a starting price of €1,399 inc VAT.

Ideapad Slim 3X

Alongside the new Aura laptops powered by Intel chips, Lenovo also revealed at MWC the 15in IdeaPad Slim 3X ($649/€599), a more budget option that Lenovo said delivered "AI for anybody".

This features a Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor with a 45 TOPS NPU, giving users a balance of battery life and performance while also supporting Copilot+, Microsoft's AI suite.

Lenovo added "future proof storage expandability" to the Ideapad Slim 3Xby including a spare SSD slot for more storage if needed.

It also features support for Wi-Fi 7, allowing for fast charging with two-hours battery life after just 15 minutes plugged in. The Ideapad Slim 3X is available in EMEA from March.

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Amazon has confirmed that a security incident affecting a third-party vendor has exposed employee information.

The incident saw data allegedly belonging to employees at a host of major tech firms leaked, with the data believed to have been stolen during the 2023 MOVEit breach.

An Amazon spokesperson told ITPro its internal systems remain secure, insisting the incident was isolated to one of its third-party property management systems.

“Amazon and AWS systems remain secure, and we have not experienced a security event. We were notified about a security event at one of our property management vendors that impacted several of its customers including Amazon.”

The statement added that the published information was limited to employee contact information, as well as some location data.

“The only Amazon information involved was employee work contact information, for example work email addresses, desk phone numbers, and building locations.”

Amazon did not confirm how many employees were impacted by the breach.

The tech giant isn’t the only major organization impacted in the data dump. HP, Lenovo, and other parties including HSBC and MetLife have allegedly been impacted in the breach.

ITPro has contacted the organizations for confirmation.

Leaked by a cyber criminal using the moniker ‘Nam3L3ss’, the cache is said to include a variety of employee data including names, email addresses, phone numbers, cost center codes, and, in some cases, entire organizational structures of the affected parties.

Nam3L3ss claims to have over 2.8 million records stolen from Amazon in particular, as well as half a million taken from life insurance company MetLife.

The total number of records published in the initial release was nearly five million lines of data, affecting 25 large organizations.

Nam3L3ss claimed that what they have released so far is less than 0.001% of the data they have in their possession, alleging they have 1,000 releases coming with data that has never been seen before.

The threat actor, who claims not to be a hacker, said the information was taken during the May 2023 MOVEit attacks.

Hackers affiliated with the Cl0p threat collective exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Progress’s MOVEit file transfer protocol, used by thousands of large organizations around the world.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-34362, was an SQL injection flaw identified in the MOVEit Transfer web application that was leveraged by the threat actors to gain access to MOVEit Tranfer’s database.

Lenovo has announced a series of new AI solutions, services, and devices as part of its Smarter AI for All program.

Officially unveiled at Lenovo Tech World 2024 in Seattle, the new strategy includes the launch of the Hybrid AI Advantage service for enterprises; the latest ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 10 Aura Edition AI laptop, Lenovo AI Now local AI agent, and Lenovo Learning Zone software platform

Similarly, the firm announced the launch of the next-gen Lenovo Neptune liquid cooling solution for servers to drive sustainable AI along with proofs of concept that harness AI for social impact.

"Building on the announcements from last year's Tech World, we have been actively delivering on our hybrid-AI vision for customers and partners across the globe," said Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang.

"We already see that AI is improving the quality of life for individuals and delivering higher productivity for enterprises—and Lenovo makes this paradigm shift faster, more accessible, more connected, and more sustainable.”

Key to this strategy is the combination of “modularization with customization,” Yang said. This will enable the firm to rapidly adapt to evolving customer needs while curating tailored solutions for its varied customer base.

Under the hood of Lenovo’s Hybrid-AI vision

Central to this new vision is the launch of the Lenovo Hybrid AI Advantage framework, which includes a new Lenovo AI Library, a repository of ready-to-deploy AI templates designed to make it simpler to implement AI solutions.

This framework will provide templates spanning a range of business functions, the company said, including marketing, IT operations, product development, and customer service.

Next up is water cooling, with a new family of ThinkSystem solutions offering up to 100% heat removal. Lenovo said this could help reduce data center power consumption by up to 40%.

Similarly, the company also launched Lenovo AI Now, a local AI agent that transforms PCs into personalized assistants. The move marks the latest enterprise shift toward ‘agentic AI’, with a host of other industry counterparts having launched their own AI agents offerings in recent months.

Salesforce unveiled a sweeping new strategy centered around AI agents across its product ecosystem during Dreamforce 2024. Google also recently highlighted the benefits of AI agents across its own ecosystem, with research showing customers already unlocking significant value from these autonomous AI assistants.

Lenovo device upgrades target AI integration

Elsewhere at Lenovo Tech World, the company unveiled the launch of the new ThinkPad X2 Gen 10 Aura Edition AI laptop. This 2-in-1 laptop offers a raft of integrated AI features to boost user productivity and is aimed specifically at driving quality of life for hybrid workers.

The volume of AI-powered laptop and desktop devices has surged over the last year amidst heightened enterprise interest in AI PCs and the potential benefits they can provide users.

A raft of major device manufacturers have already unveiled their own AI PCs, with Microsoft in particular promoting the advantages of integrated AI features through its Copilot+ range.

Finally, the company announced the launch of new moto AI experiences into beta testing, with plans to issue beta invites progressively through to the end of the year.

This service includes on-demand summaries of personal communications, auto-identification of action items, and AI-generated contextual information for captured content like photos.

The name of the AI game

We have now reached the point where AI buttons are almost a default feature on a laptop like the display or the fingerprint reader. But there is still this sense that manufacturers want their AI services to be more than just another way to control devices. Everyone is trying to get a name that will stick in the public consciousness and they are largely failing.

Microsoft has arguably hit gold with 'Copilot' but that's really because it was one of the first and all PC makers use Windows software – 'Copilot buttons' are now on most new machines.

For everyone else, there feels a slight desperation in the names of their AI services. Take "Lenovo AI now" which feels strange to say out loud. This is a local (on-device) AI agent that you will probably call Copilot by mistake – similar to how some people still call all tablets 'iPads'.

'AI Buddy', Lenovo's visual interactive module proof of concept also feels forgettable in this regard, and frankly a little unserious.

HP admittedly has something special with its NPU chip that can run AI commands without an internet connection, but it runs an AI assistant simply called 'companion' which doesn't exactly stick in the mind either.

The irony here is that we've had more than a decade of memorably-named assistants that were very limited (Alexa, Siri, Cortana) but now we have the opposite of very clever and innovative AI assistants with instantly forgettable names.

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• Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 Gen 9 review: One of the best-value laptops on the market

The new 2024 Gen 9 Yoga Pro 9i 16 is Lenovo's definitive consumer multimedia laptop, a machine designed for the creation and consumption of multimedia on a mobile platform with little or no compromise. With a potent Nvidia GPU and a fast 165Hz screen, it's also a gaming wolf in productivity sheep's clothing.

As with the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, the Yoga name no longer means it has a 360-degree hinge though a touch screen is optional. Rather this is a pro-creative powerhouse designed to compete with Dell's new XPS 16, Apple's 16in MacBook Pro and the likes of the Asus VivoBook Pro 15.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16: Design

Made entirely from aluminum and built around a unibody frame, the Yoga Pro 9i is certainly a stylish and solid laptop. It should be able to take a punch too thanks to its 21-test MIL-STD 810H certification which means it can shrug off shocks, vibration, and moisture or particle ingress.

According to Lenovo, the Yoga Pro 9i weighs 1.93kg but our scales showed it to be rather lighter at 1.68Kg. That's good for a 16in laptop with a discrete GPU and makes the Lenovo rather lighter than the Dell XPS 16 and the 16in MacBook Pro. At 362.7 x 253.7 x 18.3mm, the Lenovo is larger than the Dell but not dissimilar to the Apple. The smooth contours and rounded edges make it feel even more dainty.

The lid is attached by a robust one-piece hinge that lets the screen tilt back to 180 degrees and given that it isn't fully laminated feels very stiff. Two colorways are available, Luna grey and Tidal teal, and both come with an anodized finish that is reasonably, but not wholly, immune to greasy fingerprints.

The Yoga Pro 9i has a good range of ports: on the left, you'll find an HDMI 2.1 video feed plus two USB-C ports – one Thunderbolt 4 spec, one USB 3.2 20Gbits/sec but both supporting DP Alt Mode video – a 3.5 audio jack and a proprietary Lenovo power jack.

On the right are two 5Gbits/sec USB-A ports, a webcam isolator, an SD card reader, and an on/off button. An Ethernet jack would be a handy addition but you'll look in vain for one on either the Dell XPS 16 or the Apple MacBook Pro.

SD cards inserted into the slot protrude by 15mm which is rather too far for them to be left in-situ when on the go. A full-depth receptacle would have been better.

Removing the aluminum base plate is easy enough if you have a T5 Torx screwdriver to hand though some of the plastic clips require serious persuasion to let go. Once inside, you'll find that all the RAM and WLAN modules are soldered in place but that there is a spare 2280 M.2 SSD slot. Both the fans and the battery are easily accessible for maintenance or replacement.

Wireless communications are managed by an Intel AX211 card which supports 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Not the latest word in either case, but more than sufficient.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16: Keyboard, touchpad and webcam

As you'd expect for a Lenovo laptop the Yoga Pro 9i's keyboard is a point of recommendation: The deck is solid, the keys have a smooth and consistent 1.5mm of travel, and a well-damped end-stop.

The slightly concave keycaps are very pleasant to type on. The keycap graphics are very clear, and the two-stage white backlight has a useful auto mode.

The numeric keypad uses slightly narrower keys than the rest of the keyboard, but that's hardly uncommon, and the space is wisely used to provide an opening for the upward-firing speakers that flank the keyboard.

The 150 x 95mm glass mechanical touchpad matches the quality of the keyboard, being perfectly smooth and featuring a perfectly calibrated click-action. It's quiet too.

The 1440p webcam produces bright and crisp video feeds even in less-than-perfect lighting conditions. A raft of enhancement features like background blur is available through the Nvidia Broadcast app though we'd have preferred to see Windows Studio Effects because the Nvidia app looks dated and is rather fiddly, As mentioned above there's a manual camera kill switch on the right side of the body.

The camera supports Windows Hello IR facial recognition and presence sensing or what Lenovo calls Intelligent Sensing, which can pause media playback or dim the display and lock the computer if the camera notices that you've left your laptop unattended. There's no fingerprint sensor.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16: Display

Our review machine came with the 3,200 x 2,000 Mini LED display which is capable of some truly eyeball-melting levels of brightness: 673cd/m2 in SDR mode and 1060cd/m2 in HDR mode, the latter easily overtopping the requirements for the VESA DisplayHDR 1000 certification.

The Mini LED screen's backlight is divided into 1,536 zones that allow for full area local dimming, which results in OLED-like levels of darkness though this only works in HDR mode, hence the contrast ratios of 3065:1 and infinity:1 respectively.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro, which also uses a Mini LED screen, has 2,554 lighting zones and a higher pixel density of 254dpi than the Yoga Pro 9i's 236dpi but the differences are impossible to detect with the naked eye.

The display develops plenty of color with gamut volumes of 149% sRGB, 99.2% AdobeRGB, and 101.9% DCI-P3 but oddly there's no option to manually select the color profile in either the Lenovo Vantage control panel or Windows. Instead, Lenovo makes much of the machine's ability to use Microsoft Auto Colour Management to switch automatically between color profiles to ensure you get the highest-quality color possible.

That's all well and good, but many people prefer to manually select their profiles, and indeed you could do so in the 2023 Yoga Pro 9i. Out of the box the display is tuned to the Display P3 colour profile and measured against that returned an excellent Delta E variance of just 0.6 which means it's effectively perfect.

It's worth pointing out here that the display on the non-touch model has a semi-matte anti-glare finish while the touch model has a high-gloss finish. Given the brightness levels, both should function well enough outdoors but if you are working in a bright environment we'd still recommend the matte panel our review unit came fitted with.

The 165Hz display is buttery smooth with excellent motion fidelity. There is hardly any ghosting or blurring to be seen in the Blurbusters test and playing AAA games on the Yoga Pro 9i is a very satisfying visual experience. One small issue is that the refresh rate is not dynamic so Windows can't be left to automatically configure it on the hoof to save power.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16: Specs and Performance

Even a cursory glance at the specification sheet will tell that in the Yoga Pro 9i we have a potent laptop combining as it does a 100W TGP Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU, a 16-core Intel Core Ultra 9 Processor 185H processor, and 64GB of RAM.

The 16-core Ultra 9 185H is one of Intel's fastest laptop processors, with a boost clock speed of 5.1GHz, 22 threads, and 6 performance cores. The Geekbench 6 and Cinebench R23 multi-core scores of 13,989 and 18,989 mean the Yoga Pro 9i can chew through multiple productivity tasks without breaking a sweat.

The Yoga Pro 9i scored 473 points in ITPro's bespoke 4K multi-media benchmark along with 7,575 in the PCMark 10 benchmark and 12,110 in the 3DMark Time Spy test. Those scores put it comfortably in the top decile of laptops in terms of performance alongside machines like the RTX 4070 Dell XPS 16 and M3 Pro Apple MacBook Pro.

The RTX 4070 GPU – here bundled with Nvidia's Advanced Optimus GPU switch so you have all the benefits of a multiplexer without having to faff about restarting your laptop – delivers impressive levels of performance, running the SPECviewperf 3dsmax modeling test at 101fps and the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark in High detail at 82fps. Both tests were run at 1,920 x 1,200.

The Yoga Pro 9i delivers its performance without drama. The fan noise is generally very low but even at full speed 49.2dBA was the loudest we recorded. The highest external temperatures recorded were 36.8℃ on the top (the middle of the deck above the keyboard) and 46.2℃ on the bottom (a hotspot above the center of the vent grille).

When plugged in the laptop proved capable of running both the CPU and GPU at 100% utilization for long periods of time.

The Samsung 1TB SSD performed well, averaging sequential read and write speeds of 5,040MB/s and 2,886MB/s, respectively. Those are not outstanding scores but they are sufficiently fast even for a machine that is destined to spend its life loading and unloading large media files. The SD card managed an average transfer rate of 98MB/s.

The 2024 Yoga Pro 9i has an 84Wh battery compared to the 75W unit in the 2023 model. In our standard battery test which involves looping a 720p video in VLC with the display set to 170cd/m2 the battery lasted for 9 hours and 9 minutes. That's a decent showing for a Windows x86 laptop with a 3.2K display though you can expect half as much again from a MacBook Pro and the new Snapdragon Windows machines like the Microsoft Surface 7 Laptop have rather rewritten the rules on this subject.

The bundled 170W charger is a usefully light and compact affair though if you want to travel even lighter you can of course charge via either of the Type-C ports using a PD charger.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16: Is it worth it?

At the time of writing, the fully-loaded model we had in for review can be picked up for £2,052 inc VAT (£1,710 ex VAT), including a 10% discount and a free Lenovo Bluetooth Pro mouse. You'll need to add £200 to that bill if you want a touch screen. In our view that's quite extraordinary value.

For comparison a broadly similar Dell XPS 16 with the same GPU and CPU as the Lenovo will lighten your wallet to the tune of £3,039 inc VAT (£2,532 ex VAT) though that does get you a 16.3in 3,840 x 2,400 OLED screen. An M3 Pro MacBook Air with 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD will cost £2,999 inc VAT (£2,499 ex VAT).

If you want something cheaper than the Yoga Pro 9i then the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED can be highly recommended and will do most of the things the Yoga Pro 9i can do, just not quite as quickly. At £1,499 inc VAT (£1,249 ex VAT) it's equally good value but you will have to make do with a 120Hz 2.8K screen and an RTX 4050 GPU.

Given the price of those three competitors, it's impossible not to conclude that the new Yoga Pro 9i is one of the best-value laptops on the market at the moment.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 specifications

AI PCs are set to make up the majority of all computers sold by 2027, according to new research, with adoption rates expected to surge in the coming years.

The PC market has largely stalled in recent years, with manufacturers experiencing a severe drought in consumer and enterprise demand, though that looks set to change.

Research earlier this year predicted a slight increase in sales thanks to a looming Windows refresh as Windows 10 hits end of support next year as well as the rise of AI PCs.

Now, research by AltIndex.com using data from Statista and Canalys shows that six-in-ten of all PCs sold by 2027 will be AI PCs. That's three-times more than are expected to be sold this year.

This uptick will be driven by manufacturers pushing AI PCs as their top-of-the-line products, the study noted, as well as their utility in industries relying on edge computing.

"Many consumers and businesses also turn to AI PCs for enhanced productivity and to handle tasks like machine learning, data analysis, and creative work more efficiently," a post from AltIndex.com added.

"The rise of generative AI applications has also fueled demand for these devices. With more and more users searching for an AI-enhanced PC, their annual shipments will skyrocket in the following years."

The data suggested AI PCs would make up a fifth of total PC sales this year, tripling to 60% by 2027 and topping 205 million by 2028.

What is an AI PC and why are they all the rage?

While there's debate, the simple definition of an AI PC is one that features dedicated hardware to run AI systems.

Microsoft defines it as a PC running a neural processing unit (NPU), which imitates the brain's neural network structure to run AI applications and tasks more efficiently, while leaving your CPU and GPU to handle the rest of your computing.

AltIndex points to Lenovo's Yoga Book 9i — released last year — as the first "AI-enhanced PC", but notes that AI accelerators and other hardware have since been integrated into the designs of many more PC manufacturers.

To be clear, most laptops will be perfectly fine running the current generation of AI, such as using AI-based software or tools, or solutions like Microsoft Copilot — you don't need anything special to access ChatGPT, for example.

Indeed, Microsoft doesn't specify any hardware requirements to run Copilot 365 at the moment, though there are licensing and software that must be in place first.

So why is Microsoft offering PCs designed for AI? To run more advanced Copilot+ PCs "experiences" — which includes controversial Windows Recall, for example — a computer needs 256GB storage, 16GB RAM, and a compatible processor or system on a chip.

So far, this only includes the Snapdragon X Plus or the Snapdragon X Elite. Other AI PC chips could include AMD's Ryzen AI 300 or Intel's Lunar Lake while Apple is working on its own in-house hardware, according to AlphaSense.

"The Copilot+ PC features are more than just apps," Microsoft says on its website. "They are advanced AI capabilities that require a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) with 40+ TOPS to work as intended. Without an NPU, these features, such as Paint Cocreator or all Windows Studio Effects, may not function properly or at all."

This all suggests that, going forward, such specs are what will become the minimum for running AI tools — and that means, assuming AI takes off, that ‘AI PCs’ will soon simply become PCs.

Lenovo's ThinkPad T series has long been considered a steady pair of hands in the laptop market. You know what you're getting with Lenovo's high-end enterprise model, and we assumed at first glance that the same would have been true for the new Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen6. But in truth, this AI-infused laptop – Lenovo's first in this series to feature the new Arm-based Qualcomm chip and a 45-TOPS NPU – has plenty of surprises hidden up its sleeve.

Starting at £1,600, this laptop comes with the same matted combi-metal exterior you would expect and a lightweight frame that makes it ideal for working on the move. While not as flashy as some of the highest-end ultraportables we've seen, there's plenty on offer for professionals seeking a machine to work dependably and handle significant workloads.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Design and display

ThinkPads aren't always the most visually striking laptops, but with the new ThinkPad T14s, Lennovo has softened the harder elements of previous models in the enterprise-focused family. The bezels are much narrower too and the edges are a little rounder. The laptop has also imported the webcam bump seen in a few other previous models -- we don't love this as it does feel there is an overhang but on the flip side, it lets you open the laptop much easier.

Weighing just 2.72lbs (1.24kg), the chassis makes this laptop light enough to carry around with you with ease – comprising a blend of carbon fiber, magnesium and aluminum. The matted black finish that coats its exterior also lends the palm rest a pleasant rubbery feel that makes it comfortable to use for long durations. That said, the chassis is prone to smudging and may need regular wipedowns. There is a risk of compromising on a "premium" feel with a chassis so lightweight and sometimes plastic-feeling, but it's more than good enough from a pragmatic perspective.

The display fitted in our review unit was a 1080p LCD screen with a 1,920 x 1,200-pixel resolution and a standard 60Hz refresh rate – so nothing particularly special, and actually a lower pixel-per-inch ratio than many alternatives, meaning less sharp. There is a 2.8K OLED version of the ThinkPad T14s available, for any professionals intent on working with graphics, but this base unit is more than enough for day-to-day workloads. If we had any major complaints it would be that the screen brightness is underwhelming. While the manufacturer claims it can reach 400 nits, our experience suggests it might dip beneath this figure. It's not a dim screen, but there are much brighter ones out there.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Specs and performance

Where Lenovo's new AI laptop excels is performance – registering outstanding scores in our internal benchmarking. First, though, it's worth recapping on what you get under the hood. As with many of new AI PCs in the current generation, the ThinkPad T14s includes a trio of Qualcomm chips including the Snapdragon X Elite CPU, Adreno GPU, and Hexagon NPU. The manufacturer partnered these chips with 32GB RAM and a decent 1TB SSD.

In testing with Geekbench 6, the laptop generated astonishing scores of 2,448 for single-threaded performance and 14,563 for multi-threaded performance. By way of comparison, the excellent Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 – fitted with the same components – registered just shy of these figures with 2,334 and 13,246. These numbers are also on par with the previous generation of Apple's custom silicon – so we would certainly back this Lenovo laptop to handle plenty of heavy-duty tasks. Likewise, graphics performance is very strong, with the ThinkPad T14s scoring 20,493 versus 19,022 in the Surface. It's also worth mentioning that copying data to and from this machine is relatively speedy too, with CrystalDiskMark scores of 6,180.53 MB/s for reads and 4,811.84 MB/s for writes.

But the absolute crowning achievement of this laptop is a monstrous 26hrs 9mins battery life – which we registered in our standard looped video playback test. This is more than three full working days of battery life, and it's also fitted with a rapid charge feature that reloads 80% of charge within an hour.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Features

The ThinkPad's keyboard features a number of changes on its predecessor, including markings to help people find the right keys as well as swapping the Cntrl and Fn keys around so they're aligned with other devices. These welcome quality-of-life improvements add to an already great typing experience, with muted keys that have a nice amount of feedback alongside a deep travel distance.

The touchpad, on the other hand, is fairly small and a bit fiddly to use – especially given the additional left-click and right-click buttons underneath the spacebar. Ideally, we'd have ditched this for more room to move the mouse cursor or scroll.

We were, however, impressed with a healthy number of ports including HDMI as well as two USB-A and two USB-C ports. The device also benefits from a ThinkShutter camera privacy switch, as well as a fingerprint sensor located to the right of the keyboard.

The biggest appeal of the machine, however, is the inclusion of an NPU which opens the door to plenty of AI software features. Right now, Studio Effects is perhaps the most effective and can give you full control over your camera setup when working remotely and tuning into meetings. Live captions, too, is useful in the way it can translate up to 44 languages to English regardless of the content you are listening to. It's early days for AI PCs, but we expect plenty more apps and services to become available in the coming months and years.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Is it worth it?

There's plenty to love about the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 – from its immense power to long-lasting battery life. While there are a couple of minor downsides to picking this up, including the lack of detail in the display as well as the unsightly chassis, its build quality and lightness more than make up for it. It also features narrower bezels than older ThinkPad devices and is available in an OLED configuration – which means these minor bugbears are easy to resolve. For a starting retail price of £1,600, it's a great piece of enterprise machinery that will help you unlock higher levels of productivity in a package that may, in previous generations, cost so much more.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Specifications

Microsoft should be congratulated for having ushered in the new generation of Windows-on-Arm laptops without people making snide comments about the car crash its first effort was with Windows RT back in 2012.

Partly this is down to the cunning PR campaign that has successfully associated the new Snapdragon-based ARM machines with all things AI, but also down to the new ARM chipsets and the new Prism emulation software being much better than what was punted at users a little over a decade ago.

The various Snapdragon SoCs in the first release wave consist of an Oryon CPU, Adreno GPU, and Hexagon NPU capable of 45 TOPS (Tera Operations per Second), higher than the 40 which is the baseline for admission into the Copilot Plus club. Putting the AI brouhaha to one side, the core pitch here is Windows x64 levels of compatibility and performance combined with Mac-like battery runtimes.

At the moment Windows webcam Studio Effects features, generative image creation in Paint, and live video captions (into English only) are the only features that regularly use the NPU. Recall, a feature that lets Windows take screenshots every few seconds and stores them locally to help users track their activity, should land in a few months once the outcry about potential privacy issues has either subsided or been addressed.

Despite the ARM underpinnings software compatibility doesn't seem to be much of an issue in our experience. There are ARM-native versions of Office, Firefox, Chrome, VLC (though finding one of the nightly builds that runs is a hit-and-miss affair), Zoom, Slack, and Photoshop to name but a few popular pieces of software all of which worked just fine on the Yoga Slim 7x. Gimp and LibreOffice worked perfectly under emulation.

There is however one major holdout: Google's Drive for Desktop app is not available in an ARM-native form and won't run on ARM systems under the Prism emulator. Bearing in mind how long it took Google to release an ARM-native version of Chrome we're not holding my breath for it to fix this problem.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x: Design

It's a little curious that Lenovo has called the Slim 7x a Yoga machine because it's not a 2-in-1. Granted it has a touchscreen but the lid doesn't quite manage to open through 180 degrees, let alone 360. Nomenclature aside though it's a very smart, slim, and solid little laptop.

The design is very similar to the Lenovo Slim 7 14, a rounded all-aluminum affair that's just 12.9mm thick and weighs less than 1.3Kg. Not only do the chassis and lid feel solid but it meets military-grade MIL-STD-810H durability standards so it should prove a tough old boot. There's only one colorway available, called Cosmic Blue, and the matte paint finish tends to pick up fingerprints and greasy smudges rather more easily than we'd like.

Given how, well, slim the Yoga Slim 7x is there aren't any full-sized ports so you have to make do with three USB 4.0-spec Type-C ports which all support 40G/bits data, DP Alt Mode video, and PD 3.1 charging. Two of the Type-C ports are on the left while the third is on the right along with a small power button and a webcam shutter switch. There's no 3.5mm audio jack or a memory card reader. Wireless communications are managed by a Qualcomm 7800 card which supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 and demonstrates impressive Wi-Fi range.

Getting the base of the Yoga Slim 7x involves prying off the two full-width rubber feet, something we balked at doing. Our understanding is that the RAM is all soldered in place and that there's only one 2240 SSD bay so make sure you option the right amount of memory and storage at the time of purchase.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x: Keyboard, touchpad and webcam

The keyboard is a typical Lenovo effort; solid, well-organised, and with a clean, crisp 1.5mm key travel. The keycap graphics are models of clarity and the two-stage (or automatic) white backlight does a good job of illuminating the keycaps clearly regardless of the ambient lighting.

As is all too typical of modern laptops the up/down arrow keys are only half-height despite there being room to make them full-size but this is a relatively minor niggle. Unlike some major OEM's laptops (Acer, we're looking at you here) there is a keyboard Fn-lock facility for those who like their function keys permanently fixed to media and system control.

At 135 x 80mm the touchpad is on the larger side for a 14-inch laptop and is very pleasant to use with a perfectly smooth surface and very positive click-action which is just a little on the loud side.

The webcam is a standard 1080p affair with the full suite of Microsoft's Studio Effects filters. Images proved to be crisp and colorful even in less-than-ideal light. The camera also supports infra-red facial recognition which is the only biometric log-in solution in the absence of a fingerprint scanner.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x: Display

The 16:10 14.5-inch 3K – 2,944 x 1,840 – OLED touchscreen is an absolute triumph and arguably one of the best displays on any laptop currently for sale. Brightness levels are excellent, hitting 495cd/m2 in SDR mode and 959cd/m2 from a 10% swatch in HDR mode. Full-screen HDR brightness drops to 772cd/m2 but that's still a respectable number and more than enough to earn the Slim 7x its Vesa HDR 600 True Black certification.

There's ample color available with gamut volumes of 164.6% sRGB, 113.4% Adobe RGB, and 116.6% DCI-P3. The screen's color settings can be managed through the X-Rite app letting you swap between the AdobeRGB, DCI-P3, Display P3, and sRGB profiles. The respective Delta E variances came out at 1.56, 1,15, 0.72, and 0.73 respectively which is nigh on perfect for out-of-the-box calibration.

The refresh rate can be manually switched between 60Hz and 90Hz which is useful though if we were being picky we'd say that it should also have a 120Hz option. Numbers aside the panel looks quite superb to the eye; bright, wonderfully saturated, and limpid. When it comes to watching HDR content the inky blacks and infinite contrast ratio of an OLED screen just cannot be equaled.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x: Specs and Performance

The Slim 7x runs Windows 11 Home on a 12-core 3.4GHz Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 processor. This is the weakest of the Elite SoCs, lacking the Dual Core Boost feature of the X1E-80-100 and X1E-84-100 processors.

With our usual 4K multi-media benchmark not working on ARM systems under emulation, we're forced to use Geekbench 6, one of the few benchmark apps that gives comparable results across various platforms and instruction sets.

The Slim 7x scored 2,456 in the single-core test and 14,223 in multi-core. The same tests run on an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU and ARC iGPU produced results of 2,404 and 12,886 while an Apple M3 chipset in a 2024 MacBook Air scored 3,158, and 12,071 respectively.

The takeaway is that the new Snapdragon X Elite has a handy edge over the Intel Core Ultra 7 and Apple M3 chip regarding multi-core CPU performance which gives it very nippy performance in everyday computing tasks.

There aren't currently a whole load of benchmark tests for the Adreno GPU but the 3DMark benchtest features a native ARM test called Night Raid. This scored 25,988 which is close to the sort of result you'd expect from the likes of the AMD Radeon 780M and Intel Arc iGPU which means it's competitive with the best.

The SPECviewperf 3dsmax modeling test won't run on the Snapdragon platform but quite a few games from Steam will, including Cyberpunk 2077 and F1 22 which both run natively and demonstrate that the Adreno GPU is not without ability and potential when it comes to games.

Potential? By that, we mean that these latest NPU-equipped Qualcomm processors let you engage a new Windows feature called Automatic Super Resolution (ASR) which uses the NPU to enhance graphics upscaling. This is something worth keeping an eye on though at the moment it doesn't seem to have much of an impact on performance.

With AMD's FidelityFX SuperResolution set to Ultra Performance Cyberbpunk 2077 ran at 44.3fps at the lowest detail settings and 1,920 x 1,200. That's perfectly playable and good for an iGPU laptop. Under similar conditions, F1 22 ran at over 70fps. If Cyberpunk and F1 22 are added to the currently rather short list of games that support ASR those frame rates will presumably increase.

Battery life varies depending on where or not you are running ARM-native apps. Our standard test is to loop an SD video with the screen set to 150cd/m2 using VLC. With the x64 version of VLC running under emulation, the battery lasted for 12hrs 14 mins.

Using the native version for ARM Windows that figure jumped to 14 hours and 20 minutes which is impressive for a laptop with a 3K OLED screen. Clearly when running native software the Yoga Slim 7x can deliver the sort of runtimes that you'd expect from the likes of the Apple MacBook Air.

The Slim 7x supports what Lenovo calls "Rapid Charge Express" technology and is advertised as giving you 3 hours of running from 15 minutes of charging, which is a solid claim. We found that a quarter of an hour of charge ran our battery test for 3 hours and 11 minutes.

The Micron SSD in our review machine proved to be a solid rather than exceptional performer returning consecutive read and write speeds of 3809MB/s and 2074MB/s respectively.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x: Is it worth it?

At the time of writing Lenovo is selling the UK versions of the Yoga Slim 7x with a £125-£140 discount. The entry-level model costs £937.50 ex-VAT and comes with a 512GB SSD and 16GB of LPDDR5X-8448MHz RAM. Opt for the 1TB SSD and you'll pay £975 ex-VAT while a machine with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD will set you back £1012.5 ex-VAT. That's impressive value and Lenovo deserves credit for not gouging buyers for extra memory and storage.

Compare those prices to Apple's M3 MacBook Air – arguably the Yoga Slim 7x' most obvious competitor – which starts at £915 ex VAT but leaps to an eye-watering £1,415 ex-VAT if you want a 1TB SSD and 16GB of RAM.

The new Yoga Slim 7x is a fine laptop with good performance levels, excellent battery life, and a superb OLED display. For the vast majority of users, the move to the ARM instruction set won't be an issue.

The managers of corporate IT departments used to working with the baked-in security and management features of AMD and Intel chipsets may have a different opinion, but that takes nothing away from the excellence of the Yoga Slim 7x as a machine.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x specifications

The Lenovo ThinkCentre M90a Gen 5 stands out in the all-in-one space. With a 13th-generation Intel Raptor Lake CPU, a wide range of ports, decent quality screen and speaker systems, and a design that aspires to be something more than downright ugly it will happily grace even the most stylish offices at work or home.

The price for the Gen 5 all-in-one starts at £870 inc VAT and runs to £1,660 if you want the most potent silicon and maxed-out memory and storage. The model we were sent to test will set you back £1,240 which is the price we'll be basing our value judgments on.

Lenovo ThinkCentre M90a Gen 5: Design

Things made by Lenovo with the word Think in the title tend to be black and so it is with the M90a Gen 5, the only color highlight being the red channel along the front of the stand that can be used to store pens, pencils, and mobile phones.

The plastic cabinet that houses the display and electronics is less than 55mm at its deepest which makes the whole system no larger than a 24-inch monitor which is the point behind an all-in-one. At just over 8Kg it's rather heavier than your average 24-inch monitor.

Perhaps a little unnecessary for an office-bound device the M90a Gen 5 meets the US Department of Defense's MIL-STD 810H standards for resistance to temperature, pressure, humidity, vibration, and more. Lenovo says it has tested it from the "icy expanses of the Arctic tundra to dust-laden desert winds" no less.

The bezels above and to the side of the 24-inch (23.8-inch to be exact) screen are nicely slender at 8mm and while the chin below is much deeper at 48mm it houses the speaker system so it's that size for a good reason. The webcam that sits atop the display looks a little like an afterthought but that's presumably a side effect of it being an optional extra.

Lenovo offers various types of stands including the Full Function Monitor Stand we were supplied with. This offers 110mm of height adjustment, 90 degrees of clockwise pivot, 45 degrees of swivel to left and right as well as tilt from -5 degrees to +20 degrees. That's a very healthy range and the equal of any PC monitor.

At 420 x 190mm, the stand has a large footprint but most of the space is taken up by a shallow tray that is very handy for keeping stuff in. Without an hour of setting the system up the tray on ours housed a sound level meter, colorimeter, car keys, debit card, two pens, and a ruler. We're starting to wonder how we lived without it. The stand is attached to the cabinet by a conventional quick-release bracket that covers a 100 x 100m VESA mount.

Lenovo has gone to town with the ports, the M90a Gen 5 boasting no less than 6 USB-A ports – three 10Gbps ports on the right edge of the cabinet and three 5Gbps ports on the rear. Also on the right, you'll find a 3-in-1 SD card slot and a 3.5mm audio jack while the rear also hosts a 10Gbps Type-C port (data only), Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.0 in/out and DisplayPort 1.4 output. There is space on the left side of the cabinet for an optical disc drive and at the back for a serial port but my review machine had a blanking plate across both slots.

What physical controls the M90a has are all on the right-hand side of the cabinet. At the bottom is a large power button while at the top is a microphone mute-button and a display switch that turns the unit into a dumb monitor for whatever is plugged into the HDMI port.

Oddly the M90a Gen 5 lacks the little 4-way joystick that is a feature of the M90a Gen 4 models and which lets you quickly change screen settings such as the brightness levels. With the Gen 5 model, you are left at the mercy of the display and audio settings available on the connected device.

The wireless modem in our unit was the ever-reliable Intel AX201 which supports 2.4/5Ghz Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3. The AX211 card which supports 6Ghz Wi-Fi 6E is a £20 optional extra. 

Lenovo ThinkCentre M90a Gen 5: Accessories

The webcam fitted to our review machine proved perfectly capable of handling the video and audio basics, shooting crisp and well-balanced 1080p, 30f/s video even in less-than-ideal light.

Our camera didn't support Windows Hello IR facial recognition, which is a £10 optional extra, while the model with a radar scanner that runs the smart human presence detection system will set you back a further £30. All camera models have a privacy shutter switch but it's rather stiff and not particularly easy to use.

Since the M90a Gen 5 isn't driven by a Core Ultra processor you don't get the Windows Studio Effects camera features but you can access the same set of features such as gaze tracking and background blur through the Lenovo Smart Meeting app.

The bundled keyboard and mouse are both cabled affairs and of a slightly higher quality than you usually get with AiOs. The keyboard especially is a bulky and solid unit with a full-sized numeric keypad and full-sized arrow keys. It lacks a backlight but it is otherwise ideal for anyone destined to spend serious time at their keyboard. The mouse is a basic affair but the Lenovo-red scroll wheel has a perfectly weighted ratchet effect and the click-action is impossible to fault.

Lenovo ThinkCentre M90a Gen 5: Performance

Intel's Core i5-13400 CPU is a solid performer thanks to its 10-core (6 Performance, 4 Efficiency) design and maximum 4.60GHz clock speed. Faced with the CineBench R23 multi-core CPU test it scored 11,797 while managing 305 points in ITPro's own 4K multi-media benchmark. 

The last all-in-one we tested, the considerably bigger and more expensive Intel Core i7-1360P-based Acer Aspire S32 scored 12,843 and 248 respectively giving the two machines broadly similar – and high – levels of performance in everyday tasks.

When it comes to graphics performance M90a Gen 5 is let down by its integrated graphics chip, the Intel UHD Graphics 730 iGPU, which boasts a paltry 24 execution units. 

This can't hold a candle to the Iris Xe iGPU with its 96 execution units let alone the new Arc chips that appear on the new Core Ultra SoCs. Case in point, the SPECviewperf 3dsmax 3D modelling test will run at around 16fps on an Iris Xe iGPU but the UHD Graphics 730 only managed a pedestrian 10.6fps.

Running the GFXBench Car Chase test offscreen produced a score of just 53.8fps which is the lowest score we've seen from a PC for a good number of years. The same goes for the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark which scored just 750 points to the Acer S32's 1,410. The takeaway here is that if you need good graphics performance, the M90a Gen 5 is not the place to look.

At least the M90a Gen 5 can consistently run both the CPU and GPU flat out without any thermal issues. We inadvertently left the stress test apps running overnight but come the morning both were still happily chugging along at 100% utilisation and the fan noise registered at 42.7dBA which is barely more than the ambient background noise level in the office. The transfer speeds of the 512GB Samsung-made SSD were good with sequential read and write speeds of 4,817MB/s and 3,724MB/s respectively. 

Lenovo ThinkCentre M90a Gen 5: Display 

While it's possible to have your M90a Gen 5 with a touchscreen for an extra £100, our unit came with the standard 1,920 x 1,080 IPS panel. The peak brightness of 290cd/m2 proved more than adequate for indoor use while the color gamut coverage was good for an office AiO with 104.7% sRGB, 74.1% DCI-P3, and 71.2% Adobe RGB. 

With a contrast ratio of 1065:1, Delta E colour variance of 1.9 vs the sRGB profile, and a Gamma of exactly 2.2 the screen looked both colorful and natural to the naked eye. There's no support for HDR content and the refresh rate is a standard 60Hz but we expected no more. Overall it's a surprisingly good display for an all-in-one.

Buried inside the cabinet below the screen are two 3W forward-facing Dolby Atmos-accredited speakers. They are not the loudest around, producing 73dBA as measured against a pink noise source at a 1m distance, but the sound they make is rich, tuneful, and underpinned by a solid bass line. 

If you want an all-in-one that can double up as a smart TV without the need to add external speakers then the M90a Gen 5 is perfectly suited to the job.

Lenovo ThinkCentre M90a Gen 5: Is it Worth it?

Just as long as graphics capability is not an issue the new ThinkCentre M90a Gen 5 is an impressive package. Its media playback ability is excellent thanks to the good-quality display and tuneful speakers while the plethora of ports make it very versatile. We were also happy to see that Lenovo has included the option to use the M90a Gen 5 as a dumb monitor which is handy for anyone who wants to plug something like a games console into it.

We'd call the M90a Gen 5 a solid value proposition too, especially given the vast amount of choice the buyer is faced with, including nine different processors, one or two SSDs of varying capacities, and an OS-free choice for those who prefer a Linux distro to Windows 11 (Home or Pro).

The plethora of options brings into stark contrast the one thing you can't change, the GPU. The m90a Gen 5 is screaming out for the option of even a relatively mild – and cheap – discrete GPU like the Intel Arc 530M. If you could make that choice the M90a Gen 5 would be a solid five-star system, but as it stands it's just a four, bordering on four-point-five.

Lenovo ThinkCentre M90a Gen 5 - Specifications

Nearly 70 leading US software companies have agreed to join a voluntary pledge drawn up by CISA urging developers to incorporate secure by design principles into their products.

CISA director Jen Easterly said she has seen real change in the software ecosystem since the initiative’s announcement in April 2023, and on 8 May CISA announced the first round of commitments from high-profile companies at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. 

Easterly said the goal of the project is to promulgate better built in security to counter both the ongoing “scourge of ransomware” as well as a concerning rise in state-sponsored threat campaigns focussed on disrupting critical national infrastructure.

“[Nation-state threat actors] are burrowing into our critical infrastructure not for espionage, not for data theft, not for intellectual property theft, but specifically to launch disruptive and destructive attacks in the event of a major conflict”.

Easterly said this threat was “different in kind” to anything she has observed over the course of her career, and it is why the US government is prioritizing cyber resilience and implementing secure by design principles across as many digital products as possible.

The pledge consists of seven goals each with core criteria that defines what the manufacturers are pledging to work towards, which include examples of how they can demonstrate measurable progress towards achieving these targets.

Similarly, the pledge sets out a number of means by which the signees can demonstrate quantifiable progress towards their goals, but will give the companies some discretion to decide how best they can go about demonstrating their progress.

The first round of commitments included major players signing up to the pledge including Microsoft, IBM, AWS, CrowdStrike, GitLab, Sophos, Lenovo, NetApp, and HP.

Easy wins to bolster cyber resilience across the board

First up is increasing the use of multi-factor authentication (MFA) across software products, which it describes as the best defense against popular password-based attacks such as credential stuffing.

Companies that sign on to the pledge will be asked to take efforts to reduce the use of default passwords in their products, suggesting they switch to random, instance unique passwords or requiring the user create a strong password as soon as they begin the product’s installation process.

Within one year of signing the pledge, companies will also be expected to demonstrate the actions they have taken to significantly reduce the prevalence of one or more vulnerability classes in their products.

By eliminating vulnerabilities by class, CISA argues companies can prevent these flaws at scale which could significantly improve the efficiency of their efforts to keep their products secure.

The pledge wants software manufacturers to take ownership of the security outcomes of their customers, even after the product has been shipped. 

As such, it targets increasing the installation of security patches by asking companies to make it easier to install the updates. This could be achieved through introducing automatic update mechanisms or by providing patch support, for example.

Timely vulnerability disclosure is another important aspect to ensuring companies stay secure. By next year, signees are expected to publish their own vulnerability disclosure policy (VDP) that provides a clear channel to report flaws.

Moreover, the pledge hopes to boost transparency further asking its signatories to commit to demonstrating material improvements in the accuracy of their vulnerability reporting by providing an accurate Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) and Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) fields in every CVE record for their products.

Finally, CISA wants companies to get better at recognizing and reporting unauthorized access to their internal systems. It states assenting companies should be able demonstrate a measurable uptick in their ability to gather evidence of cyber security instructions affecting their products.

“The only way we can make ransomware and cyber attacks a shocking anomaly”

The EU received formal approval on its own approach to boosting security postures across the board, the Cyber Resilience Act, in March 2024, which is a legal framework that sets out cyber security requirements for both hardware and software products sold in the region.

The framework targets similar problems currently rife among digital products such as improving the security of the software supply chain, and better vulnerability reporting from manufacturers, but importantly this approach is legally binding and those who fall foul could be prosecuted.

The UK has also introduced legislation looking to eradicate common security issues with its Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure (PSTI) act which, like the Secure by Design pledge, wants to get rid of default passwords - but in this case it's for smart devices, unlike software products.

CISA’s Secure by Design pledge does not incorporate hardware, but added that companies that wish to demonstrate progress in those areas are welcome to do so. 

More importantly, the goals outlined in the pledge are not legally binding, and it is not clear if the signatories can pick and choose which targets they want to try to meet, as the agency will have little recourse if they were to take this approach.

Speaking to this concern, Easterly argued that the strength of the approach centers around transparency, where customers will be able to see which vendors are taking security seriously.

“It is a voluntary pledge but the great thing is we have a platform to be able to advance radical transparency and so consumers that have to make decisions about what technology they buy will see whether these technology manufacturers actually took those steps”, she explained.

“I think it is the only way we can make ransomware and cyber attacks a shocking anomaly, and that is to ensure that the technology is more secure.”

The fact the pledge already has 68 high-profile software manufacturers signed on suggests software developers are more than happy to signal to regulators they care about improving the baseline security of their products, and as such could prove to be a useful way of getting industry buy-in without having to resort to the threat of legislation.

Original review: The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i used to be seen as the go-to Chromebook before Chromebook Plus and AI PCs came along. It hit a sweet spot between price and performance inside a versatile 2-in-1 form factor but with a solid body and decent screen. Think Acer's Chromebook Spin 713, but with less wow-factor, and a much more palatable price.

The most recent version (which we have reviewed) is not a whole lot different from its previous iterations, but it was one of two Lenovo Chromebooks to be awarded the Chromebook Plus title. What that means is it is a Chromebook that meets a specific set of criteria for specs and performance. One that should temp small businesses with value for money.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus: Design

Like the Acer Chromebook Spin 714 and the Asus Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip, the IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus is a 2-in-1 convertible with a 14in screen in a squarer 16:10 aspect ratio, giving you a little more vertical space to play with at the cost of some horizontal space. Don't get too excited by the aluminum lid – it's the only part of the shell that's actual metal, rather than a metallic finish plastic – but the build feels good and sturdy and there's barely any flex in the base or in the lid. 

In fact, the Flex in the name refers to the flexibility of the design. This enables you to use this Chromebook not just in the standard clamshell laptop mode, but with the lid folded back against the bottom of the keyboard as a kind of oversized tablet, or with the lid acting as a prop for the screen in a tent mode which works well for ad-hoc presentations or simply watching rather than doing. 

With a desktop footprint of just 316 x 229mmm, it's an easy laptop to cram into a case or bag, and the 1.58kg weight won't be much of a burden if you're on the go all day. And where its stablemate, the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook, struggled with a lack of connectivity, the IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus has the basics covered. You get two USB 3.2 Type-C ports, with one supporting the 10Gbits/sec USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. You also get a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, plus a micro SD card reader. The only serious omission is an HDMI output – you'll need to rely on DisplayPort over USB-C if you want to hook up an external screen. You'll also need an external dock for any kind of Ethernet support, though the built-in Wi-Fi 6E should cover most people's networking needs.

There's a 1080p webcam at the top of the screen, with a miniscule privacy slider, and it's capable of capturing natural-looking, detailed images with good exposure in most lighting conditions. Audio is also above the Chromebook norm, with better clarity, more body, and some clever positioning of stereo effects if you stop to watch video or have some music playing in the background. You won't have any problems understanding or being understood in video meetings, at least none caused by the hardware here. What's more, the audio and video enhancements that come in play with Chromebook Plus can be used to improve quality, giving you clearer sound and better-exposed images.

Keyboards tend to be a Lenovo strength, and the Flex 5i Chromebook Plus has one of the best you'll find on an affordable Chromebook, with a speedy, lightweight action and a layout that puts everything where you'd normally expect it, at least by Chromebook standards. The touchpad doesn't let the side down either. At 12 x 7.5cm it's larger than the average for a 14in laptop, and as smooth and responsive as you're going to find outside of much more expensive, high-end models.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus: Display

The screen is arguably the one area where the cheaper IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook pulls ahead. Most of us would rather have the Flex 5i Chromebook Plus's higher 1920 x 1200 resolution and squarer aspect ratio; it makes the screen look bigger than it is and a little crisper. However, the Slim 3i's screen goes brighter, reaching nearly 330 nits whereas the Flex 5i can only hit just under 300 nits. What's more, its colors are ever so slightly richer. Where the Flex 5i covers 57.7% of the sRGB color gamut, the Slim 3i can cover 61%.

These are fairly modest results, and contrast levels and color accuracy are similarly underwhelming. Yet in practice, streaming video through YouTube and Netflix or spending the day running productivity apps, the screen looks good. Text is crisp, there's a decent level of contrast and image quality is more than watchable. It's perfectly usable as long as you're not involved in color-critical design work or something of that ilk. Word processing? Spreadsheets? Business collaboration apps and email? You'll be fine.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus: Performance

Where the Acer Chromebook Spin 714 we tested packed in a 13th-generation Core i5-1335U CPU and the Asus Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip had the Core i5-1235U, the IdeaPad Flex 5i has to make do with a 12th-generation Core i3-1215U. It's partnered with the Chromebook Plus standard 8GB of RAM plus a 256GB SSD. In theory, the Core i3 CPU should make it significantly slower than the Acer and Asus competition. After all, it just has 2 performance cores and 4 efficient cores running at a maximum 4.4GHz and 3.3GHz respectively, whereas the i5-1335U has two P cores, eight E cores, and higher max clock speeds of 3.4GHz and 4.6GHz.

Yet the difference isn't as massive as you might expect. The Flex 5i scores 1809 in the Geekbench single-core benchmark and 5020 in the multi-core, which puts it behind the 1882 and 6568 of the Acer and the 1815 and 6292 of the Asus, but in the Basemark 3.0 Web applications benchmark it's pretty close, with 1237.88 to the Acer's 1244.59 and the Asus's 1360.24. The difference is more pronounced in the 3DMark Wild Life benchmark, with 7041 to 8826 and 7889, but that's not a massive deal on Chrome OS. In actual everyday use, the Flex 5i Chromebook Plus feels responsive and snappy, even when you've got a dozen Chrome browser tabs open or you're running Android apps. It's no speed champion, but it's fast enough.

As for battery life, the Flex 5i Chromebook Plus managed just under ten hours in our video playback rundown test; over three hours less than the Spin 713 and nearly an hour less than the Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip, but still not a bad result. You can get through a working day without a recharge unless you have the screen brightness turned up to the maximum, and that's going to be enough for most users.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus: Is it worth it?

The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus has a few short comings; the screen lacks brightness, punchy colors, and its overall feel is not as premium as it could be and the performance and battery life don't match up. There is a more expensive version with a Core i5 1235U chip and a much larger storage spec (512GB SSD).

However, the real interest will be the price. The IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook is currently worth around $349, almost have the price of the Acer Chromebook Spin 714. Chromebooks are still the affordable option for businesses, even with the 'Plus' designation, and the IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus is bargain within the bugest market.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus specifications

Editor's Note

Updated, November 2024: Lenovo’s ThinkPad range is a business staple, and the ThinkPad E16 is a dependable entry into that iconic brand. With its long battery life, clever keyboard, and steady performance, it is a superb and affordable choice for IT managers kitting out an office. What’s more, with newer, high-spec models available, the E16 gains simply gains more value for money – worth shopping around and or looking for Black Friday deals.

Lenovo ThinkPad E16 review

As business laptops go, the Lenovo ThinkPad E14 is a worthy choice when it comes to purchasing office hardware. To start with, it’s an affordable laptop that’s easy to buy in bulk through Lenovo. The value for money also gets better over time as its price lowers.

As the name suggests, the ThinkPad E16 is a larger version of the ThinkPad E14 – a more entry-level device. The pair share the same basic business specs; these are not world-beating laptops for performance or display quality, but they’re dependable machines that can be had with either Intel or AMD chipsets.

One thing the E16 has over the E1 model is that it is the first of its type – a brand-new iteration. Admittedly, it seemed to be a long time coming, with Lenovo waiting until early 2024 to launch a larger version of its entry-level machines, but it is worth the wait partly because it has some surprisingly good features for a low-level device.

Lenovo ThinkPad E16 Gen 1: Design

The E16 is unapologetically ThinkPad in design. An all-black, all-aluminum affair (except for the base plate, which is plastic), the E16's design is either classically elegant or overly traditional, depending on your aesthetic predilections. We like our ThinkPads to look like ThinkPads, so the E16 gets a thumbs up. 

Although the E16 may be cheap, it feels as solid as its more expensive brethren. It meets the U.S. Department of Defense's MIL-STD 810H standards for resistance to shock, particle ingress, and general durability. The lid is impressively stiff, rotates back through 180 degrees, and has the traditional ThinkPad lip so you can flip it up with one finger – or rather, you could if the hinge wasn't so tight.

Given that the E16 weighs 1.77Kg and measures up at 356 x 248 x 20mm, it's not going to steal sales from the MacBook Air, but it's not unduly big or heavy for a 16-inch notebook. Our one gripe with the design is that the anodized black finish shows up greasy fingerprints badly. 

The selection of ports should satisfy most users. On the left are two Type-C ports, one 10Gbps and one 5Gbps, supporting PD charging and DP Alt Video, a 5Gbps USB-A port, HDMI 1.4 video output, and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the right is a Gigabit LAN RJ-45 jack, a second 5Gbps  USB-A port, and a Kensington nano security slot.

There's no dedicated charging port, so the petite 65W charger that Lenovo bundles is a Type-C affair. This means you will lose one of those Type-C ports to charging duties. Wireless comms are handled by a MediaTek MT7921 card, which supports 5Ghz Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. Not the latest spec in either case, but the absence of 6Ghz Wi-Fi was not entirely unexpected at this price point.

Removing the base plate from the E16 isn't the easiest operation. Because the chassis is made of stiff aluminum, you need to be brutal to get the initial clips to release. Once inside, you'll find two SSD slots: one free M.2 2280 bay and a populated M.2 2242 slot. 8GB of RAM is soldered to the motherboard, but a free SODIMM slot can take up to another 32GB.

Lenovo ThinkPad E16 Gen 1: Keyboard, touchpad, and webcam

Are ThinkPad keyboards as good as they used to be? We'd say yes, at least in all the important ways. The typing action on the E16 did feel just a little shallow to us despite the 1.5mm travel, but it's snappy, positive, and quiet to the point of silence. The keyboard deck isn't entirely rigid, with a small amount of give discernible in the middle under strong pressure, but it's more solid than any other laptop in this price range we've encountered.

Lenovo's hallmark TrackPoint mini-joystick cursor controller is still located between the G, H, and B keys and three large mouse buttons still lurk below the space bar. A smooth 115 x 68mm trackpad sits below them. The trackpad has a well-damped and comfortable click action.

The keyboard has a two-stage white backlight and follows the traditional ThinkPad layout, with dedicated Home and End keys on the top row and Page Up and Page Down keys by the cursor cluster. The cursor buttons are not full-sized, but they are near square, which gets a thumbs-up from me. A full-size numeric keypad sits to the right of the main keyboard. 

As is usual for ThinkPad laptops, the Function and Control keys are in each other's place at the bottom left, but you can swap the actions around in the Lenovo Vantage control panel and user-define the action of the F12 key. There are also dedicated pick-up/hang-up buttons that work with Teams.

The 1080p webcam above the display supports Windows Hello IR facial recognition and has a sliding privacy shutter. It captures colorful images with minimal noise or static, even in lower-light environments. If you prefer a fingerprint scanner for security, Lenovo has you covered with one built into the large circular power button that sits handily out of harm's way above the keyboard deck.

Without Microsoft's Studio Effects, you'll need to use the Lenovo Smart Appearance app to acquire options to blur or replace your background, frame your face, or improve your looks. That last feature can improve your complexion, drop weight, and simultaneously alter the size of your eyes, face, and forehead. The app can also blur the screen if someone comes up behind you, dim it if you look away, or lock the system if you nip off for a coffee or to the toilet.

Lenovo ThinkPad E16 Gen 1: Display

Our review machine's 16-inch, 16:10 1,920 x 1,200 IPS panel was rather basic. Its maximum brightness was a decent 337cd/m2, which, allied with a matte finish, makes it usable outdoors. The contrast ratio is good, too, at 1375:1, thanks to a usefully low maximum black luminescence of just 0.25cd/m2. After that, things start to go downhill.

The screen lacks color, with gamut volumes of just 56.4% sRGB, 38.9% AdobeRGB, and 40% DCI-P3. With such narrow gamuts, the panel would never prove overly accurate, so it proved, registering a Delta E color variance of 3.75 vs the sRGB profile. That makes the screen look wan and colorless. This is not an issue if you use your E16 predominantly for basic productivity tasks like e-mail or word processing. Still, when it comes to looking at images or video, it's just a bit miserable. As you would expect, there is no support for HDR.

Customers in the USA can choose between the standard FullHD display, FullHD with 100% sRGB, FullHD touch, and 2,560 x 1,600 100% sRGB. It's a shame that none of those options appear available in the UK.

Lenovo ThinkPad E16 Gen 1: Specs and Performance

Neither the Intel nor AMD E16s use the latest generation silicon, so you will have to forgo the AI-friendly neutral processors that come with the latest Intel Meteor Lake or AMD Hawk Point CPUs and make do with either the Intel Core i5-1335U or AMD Ryzen 5 7530U processor which power most of the ThinkPad E16s on sale in the UK.

My review machine came with the AMD chip, an efficient but still potent 6-core, 12-thread affair using Zen 3 cores with a maximum clock speed of 4.5Ghz. It is supported by AMD's integrated AMD Radeon RX Vega 7 iGPU and 8GB of dual-channel DDR4-3200MHz RAM.

In the ITPro 4K multi-media benchmark, the E16 scored 154 points, while in the PCMark 10 test, it managed 5,642. Those scores underline that the E16 can cruise through day-to-day office tasks without pause or hesitation. No matter how big a spreadsheet you navigate or how many browser tabs you have open, the E16 never hesitates.

Graphics performance is less impressive, with the Radeon iGPU scoring 11,820 in the GeekBench 6 OpenCL test and just 37fps in the GFXBench Car Chase 1080p Offscreen test. That's slightly lower than the score I'd expect from an Intel Iris Xe G7 iGPU and well behind the new Intel Arc iGPUs and AMD's potent Radeon 780M iGPU.

Even after a full hour under stress with both the CPU and GPU running at 100%, there were no thermal issues or performance drop-offs and the single fan never generated more than a low whisper.

Our review machine performed poorly in the SSD speed tests, recording average sequential read and write speeds of 2,040MB/s and 1,062MB/s, respectively. That may be an issue with our particular unit, as retail units should have a 2280 SSD fitted as standard and a free 2242 slot rather than the other way around, as was the case with my test machine.

Regarding battery life, the E16 hits the ball clean out of the park with a run-down time of just over 14 hours in our standard video loop test using VLC. That's MacBook territory and an exceptional performance for an x86 laptop with a 57Wh battery.

Lenovo ThinkPad E16 Gen 1: Is it worth it?

The Lenovo ThinkPad E16 can be picked up for as little as $829.50 – though it is worth keeping an eye on Black Friday deals and seasonal sales. For businesses, the ‘Lenovo Pro’ service is free to join and comes with plenty of discounts and perks to make the ThinkPad E16 a little bit more appealing. In Lenovo Pro there are exclusive offers for its products and services, loyalty rewards, and one-on-one support from Lenovo technicians.

For such a low asking price, the Lenovo ThinkPad E16 is a high-quality piece of kit that looks and feels every bit like a ThinkPad machine; you can expect a premium feel to the device with its excellent battery life, flawless keyboard, and spacious 16:10 display. The comprehensive port selection and solid performance are also big bonuses for businesses looking for affordable hardware. Poor display and low-quality speakers are the only real issues here, but that’s understandable given the price. All in all, a solid business laptop.

Lenovo ThinkPad E16 Gen 1 Specification

A new Lenovo supercomputer designed to support AI research is set to be housed at the Hartree Centre following a grant by the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

Ten-times more powerful than its predecessor but using less electricity thanks to direct water cooling, the new supercomputer is part of the £210 million Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation (HNCDI) program.

This provides UK industry access to digital technologies and expertise and runs alongside investments from the wider AI Research Resource (AIRR).

"We are very excited to be working with Lenovo on our next generation of supercomputers at the Hartree Centre. Our mission is to equip UK industry with the knowledge, skills and compute needed to fully unlock the potential of advanced digital technologies," said Kate Royse, director of the STFC Hartree Centre.

"With our new supercomputer, we will be able to support UK industry in the use of big data and AI technologies to enable UK businesses to take a leading role internationally on the responsible adoption and exploitation of AI technology."

The GPU-based 44.7 petaflop Lenovo ThinkSystem Neptune will perform more than 44 quadrillion floating point operations per second.

It has ten-times the processing power of the Hartree Centre’s current system, Scafell Pike, and will be more power-efficient, taking up less space and using less electricity per unit of performance.

It uses innovative warm water cooling which Lenovo said can reduce energy demands by up to 40% while boosting performance by up to 10%.

The HNCDI said it expects the new supercomputer to be used for industrial research such as weather and climate modeling, cleaner energy initiatives, drug discovery, health technologies, new materials, automotive advancements, and legal applications.

Already, the UK Atomic Energy Authority is using the Centre to research new reactors for clean nuclear fusion energy.

"From advanced modeling and simulation in various scientific disciplines to pioneering work in AI and machine learning, this new power-efficient supercomputer will be a cornerstone for innovation, pushing the boundaries of big data and AI technologies to bolster the UK industry’s global leadership in responsible and ethical technology adoption," said Noam Rosen, EMEA Director HPC/AI, Lenovo.

The new supercomputer will be installed later this year at HNCDI's new £30 million supercomputing center, currently under construction.

Lenovo supercomputer the latest in UK investment boom

The launch of the Lenovo supercomputer comes amid a period of intense investment across the UK. Last year, the government announced plans for two new supercomputers to be built at the Universities of Cambridge and Bristol. 

Underpinned by significant funding, the supercomputers will be used to analyze advanced AI models and drive breakthroughs in drug discovery and clean energy.

The Bristol supercomputer, Isambard-AI, will be capable of 200 petaflops of performance under the Top500’s Linpack benchmark – around ten times that of the current fastest UK supercomputer, ARCHER2.

Lenovo has unveiled a raft of AI-powered devices, including four new laptop models and a proof of concept for a transparent computer display that will integrate with AI.

Each with varying degrees of AI-driven enhancement, the range of laptops added to Lenovo’s roster include the ThinkPad T14 i Gen 5, the T14s Gen 5, the T16 Gen 3, the X12 Detachable Gen 2, and the ThinkBook 14 2-in-1 Gen 4, each with varying degrees of AI features.

Designed with Intel Core Ultra processors and, in some cases, Intel vPro platform capabilities, Lenovo is clearly gearing these PCs towards enterprise use, describing them as the “new generation of AI PCs for business.”

These announcements were made at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024, with a subsequent press release going on to describe the new offerings in more detail. 

With built in systems of AI hardware and software, Lenovo describes these PCs as  able to deliver enhanced levels of security, power efficiency, and user experiences.

The ThinkPad T14 Gen 5, for example, will be powered by an AMD Ryzen 8040 series processor that comes with built-in AMD Ryzen AI, providing heightened CPU capability.

The ThinkBook range will be optimized through the ‘Smart Power’ feature, which will achieve the right balance of power, performance, and battery life. 

External AI-based software will also run more effectively on these PCs owing to “dedicated AI acceleration support.” These new laptops will even include a dedicated key to bring up Microsoft Copilot, prompting optimal ease of access to AI. 

On a more developmental level, Lenovo unveiled a PoC for the ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop Concept.

This transparent screen will allow laptop users to overlay physical objects with digital images and interactions. 

There are few non-AI design features likely to attract enterprise customers as well.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 2, for example, has a detachable keyboard, a user-facing 5MP + IR cam, and an 8MP World-facing cam, all allowing for quality video conferencing and greater ease of movement, the firm said. 

Lenovo said it’s targeting “highly mobile professionals,” with this model, as this PC lends itself well to tasks such as photographic evidence, form completion, and digital signatures.

“Whether it is collaborating with colleagues, meeting with customers, or analyzing data and creating content, these new ThinkPad and ThinkBook laptops can accelerate workflows with supported AI-enabled software tools users need to encourage maximum creativity and efficiency,” Lenovo said. 

Device sustainability a priority for Lenovo

Lenovo said a key goal moving forward will be a concerted focus on a “design, use, return, re-use” model that promotes disassembly and recycling, in order to help transition towards a more circular economy.

Sustainability is built into the new ThinkPad range, the firm said, as recycled materials are used in the manufacturing process amid an ongoing focus on waste minimization. 

The ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 and T16 Gen have also both been designed to be repair-friendly. 

Customer replaceable parts (CRU) have been extended to include the battery and a fully socketed DIMM design, SSD and WWAN replacement, while also adding visual indicators for easier repairs. 

“This is a major step forward for Lenovo and the technology industry. Making laptops that stand the test of time is essential to building a sustainable electronics industry. It’s not easy, and Lenovo is demonstrating that repairability and innovation go hand-in-hand,” Kyle Wiens, CEO at iFixit, said.

Lenovo has always had a sharp focus on edge computing and continues to push further into the outer limits with a server that's one of the smallest we've seen. Measuring only 212mm wide, 318mm deep, and 2U high, the ultra-compact ThinkEdge SE360 V2 delivers an impressive hardware specification that belies its modest dimensions.

Targeting a wide range of applications including edge AI, machine learning, smart surveillance, and video analytics, the SE360 V2 is geared up for harsh environments. Its ruggedized chassis is shock and vibration-resistant, accepts optional front and rear dust filters, and can handle ambient temperatures up to 55 degrees C.

Placement options are extensive as the server can be rack, wall, and ceiling mounted or placed on a desk. Its extreme narrowness also allows two servers to be fitted side by side in a standard rack or wall-mount cabinet.

The SE360 V2 offers plenty of data security and physical protection measures. Along with support for SEDs (self-encrypting drives), all models include upper and lower intrusion switches plus a customizable motion detector and if any are triggered, the server can be set to go into a lockdown mode.

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE360 V2 review: Hardware 

Lenovo has kept the chassis size down by moving power outside the box. Two connector blocks are located at the rear and along with the dual 300W external PSUs provided with our system, the SE360 V2 supports DC direct connections and a pure AC input mode with the latter two options required for the higher 55 degrees C operating limit.

The server supports a single Xeon D-2700 CPU – our system was supplied with an 8-core 2.1GHz Xeon D-2733NT but you can opt for 4, 12, or 16-core models (the 20-core D-2796TE is available on special bid orders). We also received a healthy 128GB of TruDDR4 memory made up of four 32GB sticks and this can be pushed to a maximum of 256GB.

Unlike the SE350 V2, this model has space inside for two PCIe Gen4 expansion slots. They can be used for extra network adapters or for up to two GPUs with Nvidia's A2 or L4 and Qualcomm's Cloud AI 100 cards on Lenovo's guest list.

Standard network connections are handled by a choice of two modules that use a dedicated motherboard connector. Our system had the dual 2.5GbE and quad Gigabit module which also includes a bunch of USB ports and a remote management port or you can choose the module that supplants the Gigabit ports with four of the 10/25GbE SFP28 variety.

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE360 V2 review: Storage and expansion

The SE360 V2 offers an interesting mix of storage features with the optional dual front drive bays supporting 7mm NVMe or SATA SFF SSDs. Internally, it's the M.2 form factor across the board as you can add two 2280 NVMe SSDs mirrored boot devices and partner them with up to eight 2280/22110 NVMe SSDs for data storage.

All RAID configurations are handled by Intel's embedded VROC (virtual RAID on CPU) controller and you'll need to think about possible license upgrades as the basic version only supports SATA drives and RAID0 or 1 arrays. If you want NVMe support, you'll need to purchase a Standard key which adds NVMe RAID10 or a Premium key for RAID5 support.

Be prepared for some serious screwdriver action for upgrades as the main riser cage is secured by eight screws and needs to be carefully removed to avoid any cables coming loose. Lenovo offers a choice of riser cards with options for a PCIe slot on each side or in our case, a single slot on the right with the other side occupied by the two SFF SSD bays.

With a dual slot riser, you can add adapters each with four M.2 NVMe SSD slots. You'll find two easily accessible M.2 boot drive slots behind the server's lower cover and there's room for an optional dual M.2 NVMe cabled adapter there as well, although this will be disabled if you have both SSD adapter cards on the riser.

Wireless and Bluetooth 5 are on the menu as Lenovo's optional dual-slot adapter can be plugged in at the front of the motherboard. Wireless aerials are fitted on each side of the chassis using SMA connectors and the WLAN module employs an Intel AX210 chip so WiFi 6/6E and WPA3 encryption are supported.

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE360 V2 review: Remote management

Remote management looks good as the SE360 V2 sports the same XClarity Controller (XCC) 2 chip and dedicated Gigabit port as offered by Lenovo's larger ThinkSystem servers. An XCC Standard license enables features such as remote power controls, sensor monitoring, and inventory while a Platinum upgrade adds remote KVM, virtual media services, remote OS deployment, power-capping, and the Neighbour group management feature where multiple servers can be managed from one XCC interface.

The XCC provisioning manager makes light work of RAID configuration and OS installation. Using the XCC remote console to mount a virtual Windows Server 2022 ISO, we selected the 'Effortless Install' option and watched it load the OS in 35 minutes with no further intervention required. 

Lenovo's XClarity Administrator provides centralized remote management of all Lenovo systems and we run this in the lab as a Hyper-V VM. After discovering the SE360 V2, it provided a full inventory, system, and power utilization details, power controls, and options for remote OS deployments and firmware updates.

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE360 V2 review: Is it worth it?

The ThinkEdge SE360 V2 shows Lenovo is getting very serious about edge computing. Its innovative design packs a remarkable server package into the smallest of spaces and value looks good too, with prices for entry-level models starting at around £2,400.

The rugged chassis allows it to operate comfortably in hostile environments but take your time with hardware upgrades as internal space is quite restricted. Nevertheless, it delivers a powerful processing package with a surprising expansion potential and support for plenty of M.2 NVMe SSDs and two GPU cards making it very versatile.

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE360 V2 specifications 

The channel is evolving, with multi-cloud disrupting the way the channel works, edge computing set to offer a major opportunity in the form of large-scale digital transformation projects, and artificial intelligence (AI) offering a wealth of new possibilities. .

These three key trends will define the future of the channel in the coming year, changing the way partners operate and the services they deliver for customers.

Going forward, channel partners will require knowledge and education around these trends and must embrace them to help their customers maximize their IT investments.

Tech vendors have a duty to educate and inspire partners to drive these technologies forward. Collaboration will be essential in the channel ecosystem endeavors into creating fresh opportunities and new ways to deliver for customers.

Multi-cloud is no longer a luxury

Hybrid and multi-cloud are the twin engines that are driving the modernization of IT across every sector, including a disruption of the channel landscape. In 2023, the work of a traditional corporate reseller, that buys, enhances and sells products, still exists but alongside new, evolving ways to work. 

Cloud service providers are increasingly taking over some of the capacity, as business requirements that historically were done in a data center are moving to the cloud.

Customers enjoy the benefits of cloud infrastructure, but also realize that adopting a one-size-fits-all approach carries risks, including the fact that they might be left behind by more agile competitors.

There is no doubt that the multi-cloud trend will continue, moving from the large enterprise market where it began into the small and medium business space.

This is changing the role of resellers who are now helping to create or manage cloud infrastructure, and delivering solutions that empower customers to enjoy the benefits of hybrid cloud. Resellers will increasingly play a critical role in managing digital transformation projects and offering customers the choice of multiple cloud vendors.

Going forward, multi-cloud will become even more ubiquitous. Gartner predicts that “cloud computing continues to evolve, progressing from being just a technology disruptor, to where, in 2028, it will be a necessity”.

For resellers in the channel, this offers a variety of opportunities, offering everything from platform to infrastructure and end-user services. Multi-cloud will be adopted widely by organizations of all sizes in the channel.

The opportunity of edge

Edge computing offers a new chance for channel partners to deliver specialist solutions to sectors that are hungry to bring the computing to the data, rather than vice versa. This technology is considered the backbone of modern digital transformation, and as a result will be an increasing presence in the channel in the coming years.

The ability to move processing and applications to the places where data is produced will be central to every transformation project, in turn driving enterprise spending on software, hardware and services.

IDC forecasts that spending on edge computing will reach $317 billion by 2026, having risen by 13.1% to $208 billion this year.

Over the next couple of years, compute power will move significantly to the edge, eliminating the need to send data off-site. By processing and computing at source, edge enables real-time decision-making, with benefits felt across all aspects, from improved customer experience in retail to helping telecom providers to virtualize network functions.

Given its increasing importance to a multitude of sectors, channel partners are already spending significant time and money to pick the right technology suppliers for edge projects.

For channel partners, this is a golden opportunity to deliver specialist solutions that enable edge computing, and this is only going to grow as more sectors embrace it.

AI in the channel

Channel partners are already keen to ride the wave of AI. Everyone is talking about it, whether they are in the technology business or not. But the challenge for IT vendors over the coming year is to inspire channel partners to understand how they can use AI to solve real business challenges.

Technology vendors can give partners the confidence to unlock their imaginations in terms of what AI could bring to customers. Partners need to figure out who to work with, which solutions to use, and what business models to adopt. IT vendors can therefore help channel partners understand the answers to these problems, and in turn help customers start their AI journey.

IT vendors need to access state of the art AI solutions, allowing customers to deploy AI faster, safely, and more efficiently. Key to this is providing access to a partner ecosystem, including AI Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), across various applications and services. 

ISVs will be among the first to reap the rewards of AI, with Canalys predicting that generative AI will offer a $158.6 million opportunity for the channel ecosystem by 2028.

Partnerships will be crucial here. One of the major roadblocks to wider AI adoption is the fact that even if companies buy the best software or hardware, there can still be issues harnessing the technology and ensuring employees have the right skills to maximize their AI investments. It is crucial that IT vendors have initiatives in place to combat these challenges.

For example, the Lenovo AI Innovators Program works closely with AI software companies, letting partners connect with AI and hardware experts to ensure everything works, helping the channel to take advantage of the opportunities of AI.

Towards new opportunities

These three tectonic shifts are redefining not just the way enterprises use technology, but the way the channel operates, and the opportunities for partners. 

As cloud technology, edge computing and AI become increasingly prominent in the world of work, opportunities will grow even further for forward-thinking channel partners.

Collaboration and careful planning will enable the channel to take advantage of these possibilities, and deliver innovative services for customers in every sector.

Buying any budget Chromebook is a case of making compromises. If you're spending £400 or less per laptop, you're not going to get the best screen, great performance, epic battery life, and premium build quality. In fact, there's a good chance you won't get any of the above. With the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook, you can look forward to a strong overall specification, a display that's better than the average, and more stamina than most of its rivals, but there are compromises that you're going to have to make elsewhere. In many respects, it's a fine, compact, and lightweight Chromebook that's ideal for life on the go, but if you're looking for high-end ergonomics or performance, it might not be the one for you.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14: Design

The clear priority with the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook's design was clearly to keep the size and the weight down as much as possible within a cost-effective and mostly plastic chassis. It measures just 324.4 x 216.2mm on the desk and stands 19.3mm tall at its thickest point. In use, it feels smaller than your average 14-inch laptop, particularly front to back, and at 1.5Kg it's not going to weigh any bag or backpack down. 

It's finished in what Lenovo calls a 'storm grey' metallic, but only the lid is aluminum, with the rest a still very solid feeling plastic. There's barely any flex or give anywhere on the body, with the only points of interest the speaker grills on the underside, towards the front, and vents behind the hinge and on the base towards the rear. It's virtually silent in operation, not even making any significant noise when pushed with more demanding apps.

Connectivity is slightly disappointing. Instead of the usual pair of USB Type-C ports, we get a single USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type C on the left-hand side, along with one USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A on either side. The lack of any 10Gbps connectivity for faster storage isn't as much of an issue on a Chromebook as it would be on a Windows laptop, but the single Type-C port will be out of action every time the IdeaPad Slim 3i is charging. Still, there's some compensation in the HDMI 1.4 output, not to mention the wireless connectivity. With both Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1, it's one area where the IdeaPad Slim 3i is bang up to date.

There's a price to pay for this Chromebook's compact size, and that's the touchpad. Measuring just 10.5 x 6.2cm, it doesn't give you a whole lot of space to move around in, though it's sensitive enough to be usable and the click mechanism works fine. The keyboard, meanwhile, will be a matter of taste. The layout makes the most of the horizontal space and there's a decent amount of travel, but I found the action weirdly inconsistent, with some keys tighter and having a little more click to them than others. Again, though, there are plus points; backlit keys don't come as standard on every Chromebook for this kind of money.

It's worth noting that you'll find the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 sold as both a standard Chromebook and a Chromebook Plus model. If you find the latter at a similar price point it's worth buying just for the additional Chromebook Plus features and perks, though the vanilla version should be eligible for a Chromebook Plus upgrade. We say should, because our test model hasn't been upgraded several months after the launch of Chromebook Plus, despite appearing on Google's eligibility list.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14: Display

The Display is another area where the Slim 3i Chromebook exceeds expectations. Lenovo claims a 300cd/m2 maximum brightness, but in tests it reached 329cd/m2. And while its color palette won't give a MacBook Air or Microsoft Surface Pro any serious competition, with sRGB coverage of just 61%, image quality looks – subjectively – pretty good. Whether browsing the Web, streaming video or working in productivity apps, it doesn't look like a second-rate screen, merely one you wouldn't want to use for serious image-editing or video work. 

Audio isn't too shabby, either. If you're anticipating deep bass and a wide sound stage then you're going to be underwhelmed, but the MaxxAudio branded sound system is perfectly acceptable at low volumes for background music, streaming video, voice chats, and Google Meet or Teams meetings, and the same goes for the built-in microphone array. Detail from the 1080p webcam could be sharper, but images look well-exposed even in mixed or artificial lighting, and the built-in privacy shutter is an added bonus.   

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14: Performance

The IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook uses one of the more unusual CPUs in Intel's current line-up, the Alder-Lake Core i3 N305. Unlike other Core i3 processors it's an eight-core CPU, but those eight cores are all Efficient cores rather than the Performance cores you'd see on even the basic Core i3-1305U. Those cores will reach speeds of up to 3.8GHz with a 15W TDP, but even so, you're not going to get the same performance you might expect from other Core i3 processors. The N305 performs more like a supercharged Pentium Gold.

You can see this reflected in our benchmark results. Across Geekbench 6 and the browser-based Jetstream and Basemark benchmarks, the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 falls behind the Acer Chromebook Plus 514, with its quad-core Ryzen 7 7320C CPU, and it's even further behind the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 with its Core i3-1215U. In Geekbench 6, it scores 913 in the single-core tests and 2849 in the multi-core tests. The Chromebook Plus 514 scores 1169 and 3571, while the Chromebook Plus CX34 scores 1791 and 5172. The difference is even more pronounced in graphically demanding benchmarks. Where the Chromebook Plus 514 scores 938.08 in the Basemark 3.0 Web benchmark, the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 scores just 859.62.

This should have some impact on your decision if you plan to run a lot of Android apps or Linux apps on your Chromebook, but it's not such a deal breaker if you're mostly using web-based apps. With 8GB of RAM to back it up, the N305 is perfectly capable of handling a couple of browser windows with a dozen tabs open in each, or of running all your Google Workspace productivity apps in separate windows and cutting and pasting text and images between them. It's slower than more powerful Chromebook Plus Chromebooks, but it doesn't actually feel slow. 

One upside of having a less performant but energy-efficient CPU is extended battery life. Playing 1080p video on a loop with the screen brightness set to 170cd/m2, the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 kept on going for 11 hours and 37 minutes before running out of puff, beating the Acer Chromebook Plus 514 by nearly three hours and the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 by even more. You can comfortably get a day's work polished off without reaching for the charger.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14: Is it worth it?

The IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 is going to make a lot of sense for some cost-conscious buyers. It's small, light, and very portable, and the screen, wireless connectivity, audio, and battery life are all way beyond most Chromebooks you will find for this kind of money. The ergonomics aren't top-notch, but not in any way that seriously hampers usability, and performance will be good enough for most practical scenarios. 

If you're looking for a primary device for a small business or specific user, then you might want something with a bigger screen, a better keyboard, and more horsepower on tap – something like the Acer Chromebook Plus 515, the Chromebook Vibe CX3401 Flex or if budgets permit, the Acer Chromebook Spin 714, but as a secondary device for use while out and about, the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 offers plenty of value.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 specifications

AI PCs have rapidly emerged as a key industry buzzword in recent months, with leading stakeholders going so far as to describe AI-capable devices as the “future of computing”. 

Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger made this bold statement at the chip giant’s AI Everywhere conference in December 2023, suggesting that AI PCs will be the “star of the show” in 2024 and beyond, providing users with vital AI-powered capabilities aimed at boosting productivity.

Given Intel has a vested interest in promoting this viewpoint as a major manufacturer, Gelsinger’s comments are hardly surprising. However, they do highlight what has been a rapid shift in focus across the industry in recent months.

Generative AI has taken the world by storm, but its use has typically been limited to cloud-based environments. Generative AI-infused hardware is the obvious next step in this evolutionary path.

Industry analysts seem to agree on this, with many bullish on the prospect of AI PCs in coming years. Recent research from Canalys, for example, noted that the emergence of AI-capable devices marks a “watershed moment” for the PC industry, and one that is likely to “reinvigorate the market and transform user experiences”.

In 2024, Canalys predicts that 19% of PCs shipped globally will be AI-capable. This initial, tentative flow of AI PCs into offices worldwide will rapidly develop into a torrent over the course of the decade, however.

By 2027, the consultancy expects 60% of PCs shipped globally to be AI-capable, with much of this growth initially driven by commercial adoption in 2024 onwards.

AI PCs could be a silver bullet for sluggish industry growth

The emergence of AI PCs and heightened business interest in this new frontier comes at a perfect moment for the PC industry, which has experienced a significant deceleration over the last two years. 

Research from Canalys in January 2023 revealed the global PC market witnessed a “record decline” in the last quarter of 2022 - the biggest decline since the consultancy began tracking shipments in the 1990s, no less.

The market also experienced two consecutive quarterly declines of over 30% in 2022, highlighting the fact this wasn’t just an abnormality; both businesses and consumers curtailed spending on this front due to deteriorating economic conditions.

Major manufacturers, including Dell, Lenovo, and HP, were among the worst hit by this decline, with all three recording extremely concerning nosedives in shipments across 2022 and early 2023.

But AI PCs could offer a much-welcomed reprieve for struggling manufacturers, presenting them with a prime opportunity to capitalize on new revenue streams and to overcome a record-breaking slump.

The aforementioned firms have all signaled their intention to pounce on the AI PC craze in recent months, with HP in particular viewing this as a key battleground with industry competitors.

In October 2023, HP chief executive Enrique Lores told attendees at the firm’s ‘Imagine’ conference in Palo Alto that the “age of AI will create a new kind of PC”.

Speaking to ITPro at the time, Alex Cho, president of personal systems at HP, said the confluence of AI and the era of hybrid work has created the perfect conditions for the rise of this new type of device and a new era of computing.

In providing more powerful, AI-infused devices, businesses can supercharge productivity and reap long-term rewards.

“Tomorrow, everyone will experience the full potential of AI, as the PC goes from personal computer to the personal companion,” he said.

More recently, CES 2024 offered a glimpse into this current industry focus, with the consumer electronics conference utterly saturated with AI device announcements.

Dell, for example, unveiled a laptop that included a dedicated Windows Copilot key. 

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s decision to make the biggest change to its keyboard setup in more than two decades underlines the long-term intent here.

Much like its core product offerings, AI tools will be woven into the very fabric of the devices we use in years to come, and it’ll all be at the click of a button.

Lenovo has expanded its hybrid cloud portfolio with solutions aimed specifically at optimizing generative AI deployments as firms ramp up adoption efforts.

The expansion will see new products including Lenovo’s ThinkAgile hybrid cloud solutions and ThinkSystem server platforms rolled out to customers, as well as expanded services for AI applications.

The ThinkAgile and ThinkSystem infrastructure solutions are built on the 5th generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, featuring Intel’s AMX technology that promises to increase efficiency and support AI inferencing and training on models up to 20 billion parameters.

Alongside its infrastructure solutions, Lenovo will provide Professional Services for AI and TruScale as-a-service offerings to assist businesses lacking the knowledge base that AI implementations require.

With its new hybrid cloud package, Lenovo appears to be priming up to capitalize on an expected spike in demand for AI-ready platforms that will support businesses looking to accelerate generative AI deployments.

Kamran Amini, vice president and general manager of server, storage, and software at Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group emphasized the importance of providing businesses with solutions that can support their generative AI ambitions.

“The new portfolio is designed to support today’s AI, virtualization and multi-cloud workloads while increasing energy efficiency and agility with one seamless platform.”

Is hybrid cloud the key to generative AI success?

With organizations of all shapes and sizes exploring use cases for generative AI across their operations, the infrastructure and software solutions to facilitate implementing AI models are becoming increasingly important. 

Public cloud solutions present a tempting option for businesses looking to minimize the work on their end, with this approach allowing organizations to avoid managing their own infrastructure and giving them access to pre-configured models to test and deploy AI applications.

Yet the public cloud is not without its drawbacks. Large enterprises who need to prioritize security and privacy, for example, will not want their private data hosted on the public cloud.

As such, hybrid cloud solutions will still have an important role to play in bringing generative AI to businesses.

Employing a mix and match approach between on-prem and public cloud solutions means businesses can benefit from its simplicity, and the raft of modern tools available for AI models, while also being able to train their models with private data in a secure environment.

This is a trend that is expected to continue across 2024 and beyond, according to industry stakeholders. Speaking to ITPro in October, NetApp chief executive George Kurian said he believes hybrid cloud will be “the only way” for businesses to capitalize on generative AI, highlighting the flexibility this model can provide.

“Customers will want to try proof of concepts on the public cloud where all the modern tools are available, and once they understand which makes sense, they can scale it in their own data center.”

A number of hybrid cloud solutions tailored for generative AI workloads have been announced recently, anticipating a surge in demand from business of all types.

HPE, for example, announced their ‘enterprise computing solution for generative AI’ that offers a full stack solution for enterprises to tune pre-trained models with their private data on-prem, and then deploy custom models across their organization via their GreenLake hybrid cloud platform.

How do you make Formula One (F1) more exciting? Few will spend two hours on a given Sunday watching cars file around a track in a procession, and least of all the millions of new fans drawn in by the deftly-edited documentaries and clips that only show the most tense moments of races that are otherwise packed with more boilerplate exchanges.

Ahead of the 2022 season, the F1 authorities decided to change the rules and use one cloud computing services to inject a more competitive atmosphere into races.

F1 enforced modifications to the design of the cars that would make it easier to overtake, to boost the overall excitement of races. Its engineers and experts had a good idea about what modifications would result in more overtaking but needed evidence to prove it. 

Testing is wildly expensive and terrible for the environment; wind tunnels are limited in size and scope, especially when you’re measuring overtaking which necessarily requires two cars. Instead, F1 turned to its partners at cloud computing giant AWS to see if software simulations could provide the answers.

Racing at the edge

F1 teams each design their own cars but must do so within the very tight confines of the F1 regulations. These stipulate how big certain parts must be, or put constraints on the design of different components. In order to meet these requirements while still achieving a competitive edge, teams have to collect and analyze big data.

Data has often been described as the new oil, and this is true even in a sport like F1. Rob Smedley, former Ferrari race engineer and now an F1 consultant working alongside AWS, compares contemporary F1 with when he joined in the 1990s, joking “we still had abacuses”.

“When I first came in, there were probably 20 sensors on the car,” says Smedley. “Fast forward not many years after – in fact, above five years – and there’s probably something like 100 sensors on the car and like 1,000 or 1,500 data channels.

“If you look at today’s cars, in test mode, they might have 500 sensors on the car, to just keep extracting more and more data.”

Smedley says his generation of engineers pushed the use of data and edge computing sensors to “drive better decisions” for two reasons: “one, to design fundamentally faster racing cars and then, two, to optimize those racing cars for any given track or condition”.

“We started to use much heavier deployment of data analytics, we were very early adopters of neural networks and subsequently machine learning. Given the complexity and how wide the problems are, it’s just kind of gone on from there,” he says.

So, with no shortage of data to fall back on, F1 bosses turned to the cloud to help them rewrite the rulebook.

Looking to the cloud for aerodynamics

When it comes to testing F1 cars there are several options, but none of them are cheap. Dr Neil Ashton, principal computational fluid dynamics architect at AWS, says the “old-school way of doing it” is the physical test, where you drive a car around a circuit lots of times to collect data.

“Formula 1 recognized that one, that was costing a lot of money and two, it’s not really environmentally friendly to be doing that sort of testing. So, physical testing from a Formula 1 point of view has long been reduced.”

Some alternatives don’t impact sustainability initiatives as much, such as wind tunnels which which shoot wind over cars to test the aerodynamics of new designs. Ashton says NASA had one facility where you could fit a whole aircraft inside the wind tunnel, but “it requires the power of a small city”. Although the F1 tunnels aren’t that power-hungry, they’re still expensive to construct and limited in space, which isn’t ideal when you’re trying to measure the impact of changes on overtakes.

So with both traditional testing methods proving expensive and ineffective for design testing, it had to be simulated in software via digital twins of cars. But why go for the cloud instead of a dedicated supercomputer? “They [F1] did have access to computing power through an on-premise, more classical ‘supercomputer’, but that had a fixed capacity, which meant that simulations were taking about 60 hours,” says Ashton. 

With a supercomputer taking up to three days to run a simulation, and only having the capacity to run one simulation at a time, “it really did limit their capacity to go through many, many different designs,” says Ashton. 

“Whereas the whole premise of cloud computing is you get access to this virtually unlimited capacity, where the limitation is really on the individual to produce the ideas rather than the compute.”

Running the new car designs through a simulation on AWS’s cloud infrastructure instead of the supercomputer reduced the time of each run from 60 hours down to 12. And the cloud could handle multiple runs simultaneously. “That’s the difference between getting something done on the same day versus two or three days,” says Ashton. “You go into the office, you run something, you get it back by the end of the day.”

The F1 engineering team originally planned to run 20-30 simulations a week but was able to boost that to 80-90 tests with AWS’s cloud infrastructure. With a limited window in which to rewrite the rulebook, the cloud made a much bigger set of changes possible.  

Scalable compute for an ever-changing sport

Running simulations on AWS might be cheaper and faster than using a wind tunnel, but is it as accurate? Neil Ashton claims it’s very close. “It depends very much on the specific simulation that’s being done,” he says. 

“It can be within a few percent, so 1 or 2% difference. But it could be worse than that, or better than that, depending on the specific technique that is used.”

However, the more computing power that’s thrown at the problem, the better the results. “Essentially, there’s a linear relationship between the accuracy of the simulation and the compute power required,” Ashton adds. 

“That’s why so many companies are moving to the cloud, because they see that if they want to get their simulations to be more accurate, they need more compute. If you want to close that gap from 2% to 1% to 0.5%, it is increasingly going to be about more compute. That’s the direction of travel across many different industries.”

Aside from adding multiple cars to the scenarios, there are other things you can simulate with software such as the impact of crosswinds, temperature differences, or adverse weather conditions. Simulations also let the testers model the fluid and structural motion of the car together, “so you can really start to get into the physics,” says Ashton. 

Finally, once all the simulations are run and results are collected, “that mathematical model can essentially go inside your racing game”. That is, the car simulators F1 drivers train with. 

“When they give that test driver the steering wheel, that person will have pretty close to a feel of what the car would be like so that when a team says ‘we have a new part that we’d like to test,’ they will actually test it in the simulator first to see if it gives an advantage. If it gives an advantage in the simulator, then they may go and physically build it and send it to the track.”

Pairing hardware and software for live results

The goal of the 2022 rule changes was to create a car with a much smaller ‘wake’, reducing the turbulence experienced by cars chasing drivers. To that end, changes were made such as fitting wheels with wake control devices and redesigning the rear wing expel air above the car following behind. All of this was simulated over six months, generating 550 million individual data points before the rules were finalized and teams could get on with designing their cars.

Rules were tweaked again at the start of the 2023 season, and they will continue to be for years to come, as F1 looks to get the formula right. Hamilton’s teammate, George Russell, remarked recently: “The sport took a really good turn for the better when these new cars were introduced [in 2022], but we need to take it to the next step now.” 

Neil Ashton thinks that’s possible with ever-more cloud computing power coming online with each passing year. “If you could do more and more compute, you could design the cars more efficiently,” he says. “That would create even more exciting cars, that would create even more exciting racing. I think we’re in an inflection point now where it could really do something great for the sport.”

When it comes to practices and race day, a whole industry kicks into play. Huge trucks arrive at each location, forming temporary HQs for each team known collectively as the paddock.

Tucked discreetly behind the paddock is F1’s Event Technical Centre (ETC), a suite of temporary rooms packed with monitors, workstations , and serious-looking technicians. In terms of data, this is the ground zero of each race. Every byte of information is tracked by the dozens of sensors on each car, with the cars themselves thrown up on multiple 4K video streams that eventually appear on our screens.

While the coverage you see on TV is topped and tailed by the hundreds of broadcasters who beam races around the world, they rely on a single source: F1 itself. It has total control of the broadcast as if it were a TV production company as well as the organizer of the event. F1 also fully controls the technical services, from the timing that decides who wins and who loses to the bottomless pit of telemetry (rev counts, the steering angle, the G-forces) produced by internet of things (IoT) sensors on cars. Viewers eventually see these stats on their screens.

This process is managed by a comparatively small team that’s more akin to a small to medium-sized business (SMB), with a few hundred employees, rather than the global megabrand that one might think of when presented with the name ‘Formula 1. 

“We’re not a massive organization,” says Pete Samara, director of innovation and digital technology at Formula 1, speaking on the practice day before this year’s Silverstone race. “We’re an SME effectively, and efficiency is really important.”

At its most basic that means buying hardware that will keep working (“that we don’t need to switch on and off”) and a system that allows staff to order whatever they need to their job. “We’ve got engineers, editors, broadcast graphics operators, computer-aided design (CAD) designers that are 3D-forming this building. So all types of user profiles.”

For the past few years, F1 has chosen Lenovo as its hardware partner, and that partnership extends to its data center. Or, strictly speaking, two data centers. The control center that pops up at each race is merely a satellite compared to F1’s Media and Technology Centre in Biggin Hill.

Processing all the data captured at each event – around 500TB of media in the course of a 90-minute race – necessitates more compute power than the modest hardware contained in the ETC. For this,  it is beamed back to F1’s Biggin Hill base, where the data is processed in real-time and transmitted to broadcasters.

F1 also has big plans to enhance the quality of the data it provides to broadcasters in the coming seasons. Rob Smedley says he’s spent some time with the football Premier League broadcasters, watching how they cover live matches. “You’ll have your data scientists in the background saying ‘right, here are some really interesting stats’, and then you’ll get the pundits, who are actually engaging directly off-camera with the data science team… and they feed that directly to the audience.”

“We need to get to that [in F1],” says Smedley, “There’s technology we’re trying to build with AWS at the minute which will eventually get us to that. It will be more virtual, it will be more artificial intelligence (AI) driven, because you’ve got a hundred different broadcasters with a hundred different commentators, all maybe at that point telling a hundred disparate stories. So in order to get in sync, then we’ve got to use the data, but we also use got to use technology.”

This content originally appeared on ITPro's sibling magazine PC Pro. For more information and to subscribe, please visit PC Pro's subscription site.

The global PC market is expected to rebound in the fourth quarter of 2023 as the beleaguered industry begins a return to growth. 

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 64.3 million in the third quarter of 2023, according to analysis from Gartner, marking a 9% decrease compared to the same period last year and the eighth consecutive quarterly decline. 

However, the consultancy said that there is ample evidence that the lengthy slump has finally “bottomed out” and that a return to growth can be expected in the coming quarters. 

Mikako Kitagawa, director analyst at Gartner, said heightened demand in several industries points to a revival for the market, but warned enterprise demand is still lagging.  

“Seasonal demand from the education market boosted shipments in the third quarter, although enterprise PC demand remained weak, offsetting some growth,” he said. “Vendors also made consistent progress towards reducing PC inventory, with inventory expected to return to normal by the end of 2023, as long as holiday sales do not collapse.”

“There is evidence that the PC market’s decline has finally bottomed out,” Kitagawa added. 

Major suppliers still feeling the pinch

The global PC space remained largely unchanged in terms of market share during the last quarter, Gartner found, with several major suppliers reporting poor results. 

Apple's shipments declined sharply compared to a year ago, the consultancy said. 

This was, in part, due to its shipment volumes increasing significantly across Q3 2022 after supply disruptions eased in the wake of the pandemic. 

Dell also reported a sixth consecutive quarter of shipment decline. This continued decline was largely influenced by weak enterprise PC demand. 

Other major suppliers, such as Lenovo and HP, did report promising results during the previous quarter, however. 

Although Lenovo recorded yet another year-on-year decline in shipments, this was limited to a single-digit decrease, Gartner said. 

The promising results from Lenovo come amid a period of heightened optimism for the supplier, which anticipates a return to pre-pandemic sales volumes in the coming year.  

In August, the firm said it believes it is “well-positioned” for a year-on-year recovery in the latter part of 2023 and early 2024. 

HP was the only vendor to report year-on-year growth during Q3 2023, Gartner said, with shipments increasing across all regions. 

“The good news for PC vendors is that the worst could be over by the end of 2023,” said Kitagawa. 

“The business PC market is ready for the next replacement cycle, driven by the Windows 11 upgrades. Consumer PC demand should also begin to recover as PCs purchased during the pandemic are entering the early stages of a refresh cycle.”

Looking ahead, Gartner projects that the global PC market will experience 4.9% growth across 2024 across both the business and consumer segments. 

Lenovo has announced a new reseller agreement with Esper that will see the tech giant distribute a range of devices running enterprise-grade Android and dedicated device management. 

Esper specializes in software deployment and device management, with the firm’s Foundation platform enabling DevOps practices for devices running the Android operating system.

As part of the deal, Lenovo will sell its Android-supporting devices with Esper Device Management, allowing users to remotely deploy, manage, monitor, and update devices from a central hub,

The collaboration will also see four Lenovo desktop machines shipped pre-loaded with the Esper Foundation custom Android OS. 

In an announcement, Lenovo said the new partnership, which was facilitated by its OEM Solutions business, will benefit customers in the retail, hospitality, and healthcare sectors. 

“Dedicated devices are proliferating across several key industries, and our new joint solution with Esper allows us to deliver the best of Android with the consistency and predictability of Lenovo’s x86 devices,” said Johanny Payero, director of global advanced solutions marketing and strategy at Lenovo. 

“We are focused on giving customers the ability to deploy devices quickly, remotely managing those devices in the field, and continuously releasing software updates to those devices to deliver exceptional experiences.”

As Android becomes increasingly popular across the enterprise, customers now have the option to build their ThinkCentre M70a desktop PCs with the operating system.

Lenovo’s ThinkCentre M70a 3rd Gen desktop PC will be the first of four x86 platforms to run Esper Foundation for Android, which includes enterprise-ready Android 11 with customizable branding, peripheral compatibility, and quarterly security patches. 

The platform also comes complete with a minimum of three years support, Esper Seamless provisioning, as well as app and system crash notifications.

The ThinkCentre M70q, M90n-1 IoT, and the ThinkEdge SE30 v2 are also slated for the end of the year and will round off the quartet of x86 offerings.

Esper COO and co-founder, Shiv Sundar, said the combination will provide customers with a robust Android operating system that is purpose-built for dedicated device use cases. 

“Customers globally are seeing significant value in running mission-critical operations on Android tablets and now they’re going to benefit from Lenovo’s world-class x86 devices and form factors,” he said. 

“Ultimately, with Lenovo, we’re seeing Esper customers moving fast, innovating, and delivering delightful customer experiences.”

Don't be deceived by this rack server's modest dimensions as Lenovo's ThinkSystem SR250 V2 offers a surprisingly good hardware package in its short-depth chassis. Aimed at growing SMBs that want a flexible on-premises solution, this compact 1U single-socket server also looks good value with prices for entry systems starting at around £1,100.

On paper, it looks a lot more capable than competing single-socket SMB rack servers from other vendors. Taking over from the four-year-old SR250 model, it supports all ten members of Intel's latest Xeon E-2300 CPU family, doubles maximum memory capacity to 128GB, and puts plenty of Gen4 PCIe expansion slots on the table.

Storage features don't see any significant enhancements but none are needed as the original SR250 and the new V2 model both support four LFF or up to ten SFF drives. The only other entry-level Xeon E-2300 rack server we can think of that's capable of matching this high storage density is Fujitsu's Primergy RX1330 M5.

Lenovo ThinkSystem SR250 V2 review: Storage choices

Lenovo offers three chassis variants with entry systems sporting four LFF hot-swap drive bays. For higher device densities, you can choose an eight SSF bay version or pull all the stops out and go for the ten SSF bay model.

A minor change to storage from the older SR250 is the removal of the AnyBay backplane which allowed two NVMe SSDs to be used in the last two bays. You can still use one NVMe SSD in the SR250 V2 but only with the four SATA LFF 'simple-swap' (cold-swap) configuration.

RAID options are extensive as all models include an embedded Intel VROC (virtual RAID on CPU) controller which supports eight simple-swap SATA drives and software-managed RAID0, 1, 10, and 5 arrays. Hardware RAID controller choices include the ThinkSystem RAID 5350-8i SATA/SAS3 cache-less PCIe adapter provided in our review system with the server also supporting the 9350 models which add cache protection and RAID6 arrays.

You can save all your front bays for data storage as the SR250 V2 supports Lenovo's optional dual-slot M.2 SATA SSD adapter card. It links up with the VROC chip to provide a mirrored array for running an OS or hypervisor but, unlike Dell's BOSS cards, it will take up a PCIe slot.

Lenovo ThinkSystem SR250 V2 review: Hardware

Cracking the lid reveals a tidy, well-designed interior with the supplied 6-core 2.9GHz Intel Xeon E-2336 CPU located on the right-hand side and topped off with a large passive heatsink. Snuggling up alongside are four DIMM slots and Lenovo opted to show off our system's capabilities by populating them all with 32GB TruDDR4 modules.

The server comes with dual embedded Gigabit network ports and there's room to add more as the two available PCIe Gen4 slots support Lenovo's dual and quad-port Gigabit and 10GbE cards plus its dual-port 10/25GbE SFP28 adapters. The third PCIe slot is reserved for Lenovo's ThinkSystem RAID cards and note that if you try to save money by specifying a cheaper dual-core Pentium G-series CPU, the PCIe slots will drop to Gen3 speeds.

Four cold-swap fans behind the drive backplane handle all chassis cooling and general noise levels are low enough for it suitable for a small office. If you add Lenovo's optional Nvidia Quadro T1000 GPU card, bear in mind it will cause the fan speeds and noise levels to ramp up – not hugely, but noticeably.

Power supply choices include a single fixed 300W PSU for lower-specified systems. The other option is a dual bay for 450W hot-plug PSUs and you'll need these if you specify an 8-core Xeon E-2300 CPU, the 10-bay SFF chassis, or the GPU card.

Lenovo ThinkSystem SR250 V2 review: Server management

A clever feature of the ten-bay model is Lenovo has sufficiently reduced the width of its drive carriers to free up enough room to the right for its operator panel which offers a bunch of status LEDs plus USB 3.2, USB 2, and VGA ports. The USB 2 port plays an extra management role as connecting a mobile to it and pressing the server's ID button for more than three seconds allows you to use the XClarity Mobile app to directly view the system's status.

For general remote management, the SR250 V2 sports the same XClarity Controller (XCC) chip and dedicated Gigabit port you'll find on all other ThinkSystem servers. It presents a smart web console offering plenty of details about system and hardware status, utilization graphs for CPU, memory, and power, hardware inventory, and access for managing RAID arrays. Lenovo included an XCC Enterprise license with our server which enables remote KVM, virtual media services, power capping, and remote OS deployment tools.

A feature we found very useful is the embedded provisioning manager and its Effortless Install option. After mapping a Windows Server 2022 ISO file to the server, we nipped out for a coffee and came back 30 minutes later to find the OS ready for action with all required drivers installed.

We run Lenovo's XClarity Administrator in the lab as a Hyper-V VM and after discovering the server's BMC network port, it allowed us to remotely monitor it. The free version includes a 90-day trial of all features but after this has expired you'll need to cough up for a Pro licence for each managed device which costs around £16 each.

Lenovo ThinkSystem SR250 V2 review: Is it worth it?

Lenovo's ThinkSystem SR250 V2 is a very affordable choice for space-poor SMBs and remote offices seeking a powerful and compact 1U rack server. A big choice of Xeon E-2300 CPUs and a high memory capacity makes it very versatile, the embedded XCC controller provides some great server management features and it stands out from the crowd of entry-level rack servers with its ability to present up to ten SFF drive bays.

Lenovo ThinkSystem SR250 V2 specifications 

PC shipments in the United States declined by just 6% year-on-year during the second quarter of 2023, which Canalys said shows signs of a “significant improvement” compared to previous quarters. 

Analysis of Q2 shipment statistics from the consultancy found that PC shipments declined to 18.2 million units. 

Desktop devices, including desktop workstations, saw a steep decline across the quarter, with shipments falling by 12% to 3 million units. 

The US tablet market also faced a “similarly modest decline” at 5% while notebook shipments were down 4%. Canalys said the decline in the notebook market was “bolstered by the return of Chromebook demand in the education sector”. 

Meanwhile, comparable spending habits among consumers and businesses showed positive signs moving forward. 

PC shipments to the commercial sector were down just 4%, while the consumer sector recorded a larger drop of 10%. 

Ishan Dutt, principal analyst at Canalys said the recent statistics paint a positive picture for the market looking ahead to Q3 and Q4. 

“Despite undergoing another year-on-year decline, the US PC market showed promising signs of improvement in the second quarter,” said Dutt. 

“The long-term outlook for PCs in the US remains positive,” he added. “As macroeconomic pressures subside, the strong fundamentals around post-pandemic PC usage behavior and the larger installed base across all segments will be a boon to the industry.”

The outlook for the broader PC market remains positive, Canalys said, with Q3 stats expected to show a rebound. 

“Although businesses and consumers are likely to exhibit some caution in spending on PCs in the short term, the industry can now look forward to further improvement in the US,” Canalys said. 

The consultancy expects an “even smaller shipment decline” of just 4% in Q3 2023, which could be followed by a 12% increase in growth across Q4. 

“Beyond that, the market is forecasted to grow 9% in 2024 and 12% in 2025,” the firm added. 

PC shipment market rebound

The analysis from Canalys could calm growing fears among major PC vendors, all of which have experienced acute challenges across 2023 amid challenging economic conditions.

In January, research from Gartner revealed that the global PC market witnessed a “record decline” in shipments. 

The total number of shipments across Q4 2022 stood at 65.3 million, marking a 28.5% decline and the sharpest dip since the consultancy started tracking shipments in the 1990s. 

Hesitancy and reduced spending power among both consumers and businesses alike compounded the situation further in the months following this research, with major vendors such as Dell, Lenovo, and HP all recording sluggish sales growth.  

The market experienced two consecutive quarterly declines of over 30%, alternative research from Canalys found. 

Vendor optimism rising

Positive signs have been rumbling away in recent weeks, however. In August, Lenovo recorded a 24% dip in revenue across the first quarter of its financial year. 

While the earnings report raised concerns of a steeper decline, the firm retained a positive outlook for the coming quarter and highlighted what it believed to be a “return to stability” in the market.  

“The group’s PC business is stabilizing and well-positioned for a year-on-year recovery in the later part of 2023,” Lenovo said at the time. 

The PC manufacturer also suggested that while the global PC market was “regressing to pre-COVID levels”, the broader market will return to “structurally higher levels” than pre-pandemic conditions long-term. 

SMBs and remote offices looking for an entry-level tower server with a good combination of power, capacity, and value will find Lenovo's ThinkSystem ST250 V2 a worthy candidate. Stepping up as a replacement to the venerable ST250 model, it adds plenty of new features including support for all ten members of Intel's Xeon E-2300 CPU family, a doubling in maximum memory capacity to 128GB, uprated PCIe Gen 4 expansion slots and more flexible storage options.

The ST250 V2 includes Lenovo's embedded XClarity controller for enterprise-class remote monitoring and management but goes further than its predecessor with the Platform Firmware Resiliency (PFR) hardware root of trust. Not normally seen in entry-level servers, this is a silicon-based security feature that's designed to monitor the server's firmware for authenticity, recover corrupted images to a known good state, and block malicious attempts to overwrite it.

Price-wise, the ST250 V2 looks very affordable with the 7D8FA01LEA model costing a shade under £1,300 and including a speedy 6-core 3.2GHz Xeon E-2356G CPU, a 32GB stick of TruDDR4 memory, an unpopulated 8-bay SATA SFF drive cage, a single 750W hot-plug PSU and an XClarity Enterprise license upgrade. Lenovo offers plenty of other CPU choices including cheaper dual-core Pentium G-Series chips although we can't see any real benefits in these as the Xeon E-2300 options don't cost a lot more and are significantly more powerful.

Lenovo ThinkSystem ST250 V2 review: Design and expansion

The tower chassis is very solidly built and its steel side panel can be padlocked shut or secured with a Kensington lock. In base systems the front-mounted devices and drive bays are unprotected but Lenovo offers an optional lockable front security door and chassis intrusion switch.

You can also flip the server on its side where it becomes a 4U rack mount model. Note that along with slide rails and a cable management arm, the rack mount kit includes a tray to hold the server in place which adds an extra 1U to its height.

Cooling is handled well with the CPU fitted with an active heatsink, dedicated fans provided for each drive cage, and a large 12cms diameter fan located on the rear panel. They're clearly capable of shifting a lot of air but noise levels are commendably low making the ST250 V2 a great choice for smaller offices that value tranquillity.

Networking gets off to a good start as the server comes with dual embedded Gigabit network ports and there's plenty of room to add more with Lenovo offering a choice of dual and quad-port Gigabit and 10GbE adapters plus dual-port 10/25GbE SFP28 options. The server has four available PCIe slots with the x16 slot uprated to the Gen 4 variety when a Xeon CPU is in residence.

Lenovo ThinkSystem ST250 V2 review: Storage features

The ST250 V2 offers an impressive range of storage features with base models starting with 4-bay LFF or 8-bay SFF hot-swap drive cages. There's room above for a second cage and you can have a hybrid mix of LFF and SFF cages if you wish.

The embedded C256 chipset and integral Intel VROC (Virtual RAID on CPU) controller supports up to eight SATA drives and offers software-managed RAID0, 1, 10, and 5 arrays. Bear in mind that the VROC controller only supports 'simple-swap', or cold-swap, SATA drive bays but you can choose from a wide range of Lenovo RAID cards that bring hot-swap into play along with support for SAS3 devices and RAID6/60 arrays.

A limitation of the on-board SATA controller is if you install an optical drive in one of the upper 5.25in. peripheral bays, it automatically reserves two SATA ports thus reducing HDD and SSD support to six devices. We aren't convinced many SMBs will need it but as long as you have a Xeon CPU (a Pentium CPU doesn't have enough lanes), you can also add one high-performance NVMe SSD which is cabled directly to the motherboard's MCIO connector.

The single M.2 SSD slot on the older ST250 motherboard has gone as Lenovo now offers an optional dual-slot M.2 adapter card. Similar to Dell's BOSS cards, it provides a RAID-protected repository for running an OS or hypervisor from but only supports cold-swap SATA SSDs and occupies a PCIe slot.

Lenovo ThinkSystem ST250 V2 review: XClarity management

It may only be an entry-level tower but the ST250 V2 is endowed with the same full-fat XClarity Controller (XCC) chip and dedicated Gigabit port you'll find on Lenovo's larger ThinkSystem servers. The XCC Standard version provides features such as remote power controls, sensor monitoring, and inventory while the Enterprise upgrade adds remote KVM, virtual media services, remote OS deployment, and power-capping.

The XCC's web console presents plenty of information about critical hardware components plus device utilization and provides hardware inventory and firmware upgrade tools. OS deployment is a piece of cake as we used the built-in provisioning manager to create a mirrored dual-drive SSD array and left the Effortless Install option to load Windows Server 2022 from a mapped ISO file in 30 minutes with no further intervention required from us.

Centralized remote management is provided by Lenovo's XClarity Administrator which we run in the lab as a Hyper-V VM. After adding the ST250 V2 to its console, we could remotely monitor it, employ the image library for firmware updates plus OS deployments and access the Administrator host from the XClarity iOS app, and monitor the server from a mobile.

Lenovo ThinkSystem ST250 V2 review: Is it worth it

The ThinkSystem ST250 V2 is a fine choice as a first server for SMBs as this well-built tower offers a good hardware package for the price and has plenty of room to expand with demand. It stacks up well against the competition at this price point, delivers an impressively high storage capacity, and includes Lenovo's embedded XCC controller for full remote management and monitoring.

Lenovo ThinkSystem ST250 V2 specifications 

Let’s get one thing out of the way: glasses-free 3D screens are nothing new. Anyone who owned a Nintendo 3DS, introduced way back in 2010, can attest to that. What’s new is that glasses-free 3D technology is now genuinely excellent. At IFA 2023, Lenovo revealed its first 3D monitor. If you’re yet to be convinced by 3D displays, this will change your mind.

It’s so good because the technology is now personalized to you. Investigate the lower bezel of the ThinkVision 27 3D and you’ll find a pair of tiny HAL-like cameras staring upwards, hidden behind tinted glass.

These track your eyes’ movement. The next key element is a switchable lenticular lens, which directs pixels to either your left or right eye.

Even that can’t convey how realistic and crisp the end result is. Nor the fact that it won’t give you a headache after ten minutes. With a mouse in hand, you can zoom in and out of your created 3D models (or an entire world), rotate it, examine it in minute detail. It feels real, with no fuzzy blurring.

Who is the ThinkVision 27D 3D aimed at?

It’s perfectly possible to game in 3D on this monitor, and you may be surprised by just how many games support this feature. However, this isn’t the intended market for the ThinkVision 27 3D, with Lenovo instead targeting professionals who create 3D content.

That’s a catch-all term, including games – there’s even a neat headphone stand. I suspect, though, that the first tranche of buyers will already be familiar with CAD software and its brethren. I can definitely imagine a row of these monitors in the offices of car makers, product designers, and architects.

While it’s expensive – I’ll leave the exact price as a cliffhanger – I suspect that many science teachers would love to have these screens to show a 3D model of the heart, say. This brings us to one more obvious candidate for large 3D screens: healthcare.

Support for third-party software

Lenovo will ship its own 3D Explorer software with the screen. A spokesperson told me the development of this software, rather than the hardware, is the reason the ThinkVision 3D won’t go on sale until February 2024.

Creators will still use their favorite software packages to create content, but they can then export them in a format that will be viewable on the display. In essence, 3D Explorer is a platform that allows creators to view and share their efforts – and for end users to admire them.

Lenovo will also include an SDK for developers to build 3D applications. Expect an update on this at Lenovo’s Tech World 2023 event.

A top-quality display in its own right

The ThinkVision 27 3D is also a great screen. I must take Lenovo at its word that it covers 99% of the DCI-P3 gamut (favored by movie makers) and Adobe RGB (for print designers), but I know from testing previous ThinkVision displays that the company lives up to its claims. Certainly, the images I saw on the screen packed a colorful punch.

Expect excellent color accuracy, too. Lenovo factory calibrates each monitor to have an average Delta E of under two on its DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB profiles.

It always helps to have a 4K resolution on a big monitor, but even more so here as that resolution is cut in half: one pixel is beamed to your left eye, the other to your right eye. A refresh rate of 60Hz is nothing special, nor is a peak brightness of 310cd/m2, but both are fine for the intended usage of this monitor.

The 3D features will only work over a USB-C connection, with a generous 100W of power delivery to keep even powerful laptops charged, and Lenovo packs in plenty more ports too: two HDMI 2.1, one DisplayPort 1.4, an RJ-45 socket, and five USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports.

How much will it cost?

There are two more things you need to know. The first is that, while most of the lens processing is done via electronics in the monitor, you'll still need a computer with graphical grunt. Lenovo says the monitor requires GeForce GTX 1050-level graphics at a minimum, plus at least 16GB RAM, and an oddly specific Core i5-7400 processor.

The second thing is the price. This announcement came at Berlin’s IFA trade show, so we only have euros so far, but it will be €2,999 inc VAT – which is roughly $3,250, or £2,500. That’s expensive even when compared to professional quality 27in monitors with a 4K resolution, but if the Lenovo ThinkVision 27 3D speeds up your workflow then you could argue it’s a bargain.

Lenovo and VMware have expanded their partnership to bring new Nvidia-powered turnkey generative AI solutions and multi-cloud solutions to business customers. 

Announcing the move at VMware Explore 2023, the companies said the new offerings will provide businesses with an accelerated path to digital transformation through integrated edge-to-edge cloud offerings that simplify the development of next-generation AI and data intelligence.

Lenovo also unveiled its newest Reference Design for Generative AI, a new and fully integrated ThinkSystem solution that features Nvidia-accelerated computing and software to help businesses implement AI.

“This expanded collaboration with VMware is a pivotal next step in enabling more businesses to seamlessly leverage modern edge, AI, and hybrid cloud capabilities powered by NVIDIA in order to harness data for accelerated business outcomes,” said Kirk Skaugen, president of Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions Group.

The aim is to help customers benefit from more predictable outcomes through Nvidia’s AI Enterprise platform, which includes Nvidia NeMo software designed to boost the development and deployment of production-ready large language models (LLMs).

Lenovo’s newest Reference Design for Generative AI based on LLMs will show businesses how to deploy and commercialize powerful generative AI tools and foundation models, using a pre-validated, fully integrated solution for data centers running on VMware vSphere.

The offering features Nvidia GPU-dense platforms that are purpose-built for AI workloads, including the Lenovo ThinkSystem SR675 V3 and ThinkSystem SR670 V2, offering up to eight GPUs in a compact 3U or smaller footprint.

The Lenovo computing platforms offer three server configurations in one, including support for Nvidia HGX A100 4-GPU systems with Nvidia NVLink technology and Lenovo Neptune hybrid liquid cooling. They also provide four or eight GPU configurations featuring Nvidia L40S and 80GB Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPUs, or Nvidia H100 NVL servers.

By combining Lenovo and Nvidia technologies with VMware, the companies say these servers will help professionals take generative AI applications like intelligent chatbots, search, and summarization tools to users across industries.

“VMware and Lenovo are partnering to help clients of all sizes become digital companies by investing in the infrastructure required to power a new generation of modern applications, such as Generative AI,” commented Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s Cloud Infrastructure Business Group. 

“Together we’re helping mid-market and enterprise customers manage their changing IT landscape, deliver faster innovation, and improve business outcomes.”

Lenovo said it is also adding Nvidia’s latest Spectrum-X networking technology to its AI portfolio, using Nvidia BlueField-3 data processing units (DPUs) and Nvidia Spectrum-4 switches in its generative AI reference design.

“Together, we’re helping enterprises create custom models using their valuable business data that will enable them to run intelligent generative AI applications, including intelligent chatbots, assistants, search and summarization,” said Manuvir Das, vice president of Enterprise Computing at Nvidia.

Additionally, new ThinkAgile VX Integrated Systems with VMware aim to help mid-market businesses enter the next wave of AI and machine learning with IT that is easier to deploy across hybrid, multi-cloud and edge environments.

Lenovo’s ThinkAgile VX with VMware Cloud Foundation provides integrated multi-cloud infrastructure for building and managing private and hybrid clouds, leveraging VMware’s tools for automating the deployment and management of infrastructure and applications.

The company is also offering an on-demand model with Lenovo TruScale Hybrid Cloud for VMware, a new private cloud infrastructure as a service offering designed to enable IT admins and developers to tackle next-generation applications and scale hybrid cloud workloads on demand. The solution is available through a single, pay-as-you-grow model for total cost of ownership savings, the company said.

The global PC shipment market has experienced a marked decline over the past year amid deteriorating economic conditions, but there could still be light at the end of the tunnel for manufacturers in the space. 

An earnings report from Lenovo this week painted a dire picture of the current state of the market, with the firm recording a 24% dip in revenue across the first quarter of its financial year. 

This decrease exceeded an already pessimistic outlook by analysts, and marks four consecutive quarters of decline for the manufacturer. 

Last year, Lenovo recorded a 14% dip in annual revenue amid a long-running market slump that saw counterparts in the space record concerning figures. 

Dell, ASUS, Acer, and HP all recorded negative growth over the last year, indicating that this current slump has been indiscriminate across the board for major suppliers. 

However, despite what appears to be a bleak outlook for firms, Lenovo remains optimistic that stability will return to the market in the coming months. 

“The group’s PC business is stabilizing and well-positioned for a year-on-year recovery in the later part of 2023,” Lenovo said in a statement this week. 

The firm noted, however, that the global PC market is “regressing to pre-COVID levels” in the short-term, but could still remain at a “level structurally higher” than pre-pandemic conditions in the long-term. 

Lenovo’s optimistic outlook appears to point toward a tentative return to profitability for the major manufacturers in the space - and recent analysis supports this position. 

Q2 data from Canalys showed that the total shipments of desktops and notebooks dipped by 11.5% year-on-year to around 62 million units worldwide. 

The slide follows two quarters of concerning market activity which saw a respective decline of over 30%. But while this paints a negative picture, Canalys noted that Q2 actually represented a “sequential increase” in shipments. 

This, the consultancy said, shows that the “market is on track for accelerated recovery” in the second half of the year. 

Gartner research on market conditions aligns closely with that of Canalys, and points toward progress in the space. 

ITPro spoke to analysts at Gartner who pointed to the company's August 2023 research that showed “the rate of decline in the PC market has slowed”. 

Analysis from the firm found that shipment volumes may have reached their lowest point to date, and that the industry will see a “gradual increase” in demand in the coming months. 

Gartner said it expects PC inventories will normalize by the end of 2023 and that a return to growth will occur in early 2024. 

The idea of taking a laptop and replacing the keyboard deck with a second display is not new. Acer tried it with the Iconia 6210, which was built around two 14-inch, 1,366 x 768 touchscreen displays back in 2010. I dimly recall fiddling about with one and thinking it was an answer to a question nobody had ever, or would ever, ask.

Modern display technology is giving the basic idea behind the Iconia 6210 a new lease of life with machines like the Asus Zenbook Fold OLED, and the new Lenovo Yoga Book determined to make physical keyboards a think of the past. Well, almost. Leonovo bundles the Yoga Book with a physical Bluetooth keyboard, so there's life in that old dog.

When faced with a product like the Yoga Book, something that could just as easily be described as daft as revolutionary, it helps to be able to distil what it offers into a concise and simple sentence, so here goes: The Yoga Book is a Windows laptop with two displays. If you do not need two displays, there's no need to pay £2,000 for the Yoga Book when you can buy something like the Asus Zenbook 14 Flip for half the price. 

But the Yoga Book could answer your prayers if you need a mobile two-screen solution without all the palaver of a separate portable display, most of which are rather drab and dreary IPS affairs.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: Design

While the Zenbook Fold uses a one-piece flexible display, the Yoga Book consists of two screens with a hinge between them. That puts a 20mm gap between the two displays, but Leonovo has used the space well by turning it into a soundbar.

An all-metal clamshell design with rounded sides, the Yoga Book is an impressively smooth and solid affair with no wobble in the displays or around the 360-degree hinge. At 299.1 x 203.9 x 15.95mm and 1.2Kg it's small and light enough to slip into a backpack and sit unnoticed. If you look carefully, you will see that the lower part with the ports and the power button is slimmer than the upper part, but the difference is negligible.

The origami stand, Bluetooth keyboard and active stylus add another 400g to the proceedings. Still, they pack down into a space not much larger than the keyboard itself, and the elastic sleeve for the stylus keeps it firmly in place whether the stand is wrapped up for transit or in use as a support for the Yoga Book.

The Yoga Book is not exactly replete with ports. Three Thunderbolt ports are all you get, one on the left and two on the right. If you are charging, you will need one of the ports to connect the 65W charger that Lenovo bundles. Other than the power button and webcam kill switch on the right at the front, the sides of the Yoga Book are free of ports, slots, and jacks. There isn't even an audio jack though the increasing ubiquity of Bluetooth earphones means this is not the issue it once was.

The origami stand itself is an impressive piece of design. Once you've opened it up, you simply place the magnetic rear edges together, at which point it forms a sort of triangular funnel on which you can stand the Yoga Book in either landscape, with both screens staked in front of you almost vertically, or portrait with it open like a hardback book. 

Looking at the stand empty, you fear for the stability of the design, but once the Yoga Book is in place, it's all surprisingly stable and sturdy, helped by the deep bar at the front, which prevents the Yoga Book from sliding forward.

In the absence of the stand, you can use the Yoga Book in either laptop form, in tent mode or as a tablet, albeit a relatively thick one. In "tent" form with Windows set to duplicate rather than extend the display, it is a great tool to present to someone across from you. The Yoga Book is a supremely versatile design.

We do, however, wish at least one of the Thunderbolt ports had been placed at the front of the lower part. As it is, cables and docks dangle in mid-air when the Yoga Book is set in the stand in portrait because all the ports are effectively in the middle of the device. 

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: Software

If the hardware part of the Yoga Book is a triumph, the software part is somewhat half-baked in places. To start with, while the Smart Note app is present and correct, the Smart Reader e-reader app, which lets you read PDF, Mobi, Epub and text files as books with one page on either screen, is listed as "Coming Soon".

Similarly, the widget bar that appears above the keyboard is limited to showing your Outlook calendar on the left and the Windows news feed on the right. There really should be more options on offer, even if it's only to see your Outlook inbox.

There are a few system glitches, too: Sometimes, the cursor would just vanish from the screen. This only seemed to happen in general use when we used the small trackpad, but when dialogue or alert boxes popped up on the main screen, it happened regardless of the touchpad format. A quick tap of the display with finger or pen got us out of the bind, but that's not the point.

According to the Dual-screen Settings tab in the User Center CP, you should be able to 'flick' open windows between the two screens, but the action only ever worked when flicking from the top screen to the bottom, never vice versa. You can tap the open app icon in the taskbar to achieve the same result, which is just as well, as sometimes windows would refuse point blank to let us pick them up.

None of these foibles are what we'd call deal breakers, but they do speak to a worrying lack of attention to detail by Lenovo, which isn't acceptable on a device costing this much.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: Keyboard, Touchpad and Webcam

The bundled Bluetooth keyboard is impressive, with a positive and clean, if rather shallow key action and a good layout. The only faults we found with it are the lack of fold-away feet to increase the angle of attack (there is a foldable, magnetic card stand in the box, which we presume is for use as a keyboard riser, but it's no real replacement for feet and is too steep for our liking) and the absence of a backlight. Given the cost of the Yoga Book, the last is hard to swallow.

The virtual keyboard can be summoned onto the lower screen by either an eight-fingered tap, touching a text entry box or tapping the keyboard icon in the system tray. It offers four levels of haptic feedback, a sound option to accompany each keystroke and a wide range of opacity ranging from solid to nearly transparent. 

It is the best Windows virtual keyboard I've encountered, though admittedly, that's not a high bar. At the touch of a button (F10, to be precise), the keyboard can either occupy the top 60% of the lower screen with a touchpad and buttons below it (the touchpad can be set to occupy the same 110mm-wide space as the two virtual buttons below it or the entire width of the screen, our preferred option). Or the keyboard can drop into the lower 60% with a widget bar occupying the space above if you use a Bluetooth mouse.

If you drop the Bluetooth keyboard onto the lower screen at the top, then once again, the visual touchpad appears. Move it to the lower part, and the widget bar materialises. The physical keyboard is held in place by magnets that are strong enough to keep it in place but not so strong that you can't pick it up and remove it single-handedly.

The 1080p webcam proved to be a solid performer capturing a bright and crisp video image with decent colour saturation. Once you download the Lenovo Smart Appearance App, you can access features like face tracking and virtual or blurred backgrounds and a disturbingly wide range of facial adjustments. These are similar to the features that Asus bundles with its high-end compact laptops, but unlike the Asus system, all the filters on the Yoga Book can be used simultaneously. 

The camera also has an IR scanner to support Windows Hello facial recognition, which is important in the absence of a fingerprint scanner, and there is a physical camera kill switch. 

There was nothing extraordinary about the performance of the SKHynx PCIe 4 SSD, but the sequential read and write speeds of 3,925MB/s and 1,944MB/s were perfectly respectable for a machine of this category.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: Display and Speakers

The two 2,880 x 1,800, 16:10 255dpi OLED panels proved remarkably consistent in their performance, each registering peak SDR brightness of 368cd/m2 and each showing colour gamut coverages of 100% sRGB, 97.8% Adobe RGB and 98.7% DCI-P3. In HDR mode, the maximum brightness from an area <10% jumped to 576cd/m2, easily above the maximum mandated by the Yoga Book's Vesa DisplayHDR 500 TrueBlack certification.

That peak SDR brightness is acceptable for indoor use, and thanks to the infinite contrast ratio typical of OLED screens, content looks superb, but in bright outdoor environments, reflections from the gloss-finish glass screens are an issue.

Lenovo doesn't bundle any software to change between color profiles, and the Leonovo Display Control Centre on the Microsoft Store wouldn't talk to either monitor, so you are stuck with the basic Windows color profile.

The display is – or rather the displays are – very colorful thanks to expansive gamut volumes of 167% sRGB, 116.2% Adobe RGB, and 119.4% DCI-P3. Color accuracy was excellent, with the average Delta E 94 coming in at 0.3.

Usefully you can adjust the brightness levels of each screen independently, meaning you can lower the level on the keyboard screen while keeping the main display nice and bright. The same is true for HDR; you can engage it on either display, on both, or on neither. In this respect, the Yoga Book behaves just like a Windows laptop with a portable monitor attached to it.

The soundbar that joins the two halves of the Yoga Book is home to 2 x 2W and 2 x 1W speakers made by Bowers & Wilkins. They do an excellent job of work, pumping out an impressively loud 80dB(A) as measured from a pink noise source at a 1m distance. The soundscape is underpinned by amble bass, and the higher ranges have plenty of expansive detail.  

Bundled with the Yoga Book in the UK is Lenovo's new Active Pen 3. With 4,096 levels of pressure and tilt detection, it worked well with Adobe Fresco as well as Lenovo's own Smart Note app and proved a handy tool for sketching, note-taking, and photo editing.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: Specs and Performance

The Yoga Book runs on an Intel Core i7-1355U CPU, a 10-core component with a maximum TDP of 28W, and just two performance cores. Graphics are handled by Intel's Iris XE integrated GPU, and you get 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM. As you would expect from what is essentially two tablets joined together, there's no way to take anything apart, so user upgrades are out of the question.

The Yoga Book scored 163 in our standard 4K media benchmark and 5,506 in the PCMark 10  test. Both are good results for a machine built around a U-series Raptor Lake CPU and indicative of a level of performance that will take most office productivity jobs in its stride. 

The issue for us is that the form factor of the Yoga Book primarily lends itself to video editing with programs like Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, which support dual monitor use, and here, unsurprisingly, the Yoga Book struggles: Rendering a 5min 4K video clip in DaVinici took 4:45 on the Yoga Book compared to 1:49 on the Asus ZenBook Pro 14 with it's RTX 4070 GPU and Core i9-13900H CPU. 

The Yoga Book is clearly no gaming machine, but Lenovo has made a bit of an effort on this front, so if you download Modern Combat 5, Dungeon Hunter 5 or Asphalt 9 from the Microsoft Store, you can view the map in those games on the lower screen.

Heat management is good, especially when remembering that the Yoga Book is passively cooled. At no point in testing did thermal throttling rear its ugly head, and the warmest the bottom part of the assembly got was 40°C during stress testing.

Battery life was surprisingly good for a machine with two displays, Looping a video in VLC with the main display set to 170cd/m2 and the second display set at 50cd/m2 so the keyboard was just visible, drained the 80Wh battery in 8:33, which was a far sight longer than we expected. Turn one screen off altogether and you can get 10 hours of light use from a full charge.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: Price

There's only one model of the Yoga Book 9i available in the UK, and it will set you back £2,299 with VAT or £1,915 without. That's quite steep when you can pick up the likes of the Asus Zenbook Flip 14 for around £1,250 ex VAT, filling much the same space but with one touch screen and a proper keyboard. A 13.3-inch MacBook Pro will set you back a similar amount.

The deciding factor will be the dual-screen format; right now, it's a good reason to buy the Yoga Book, but if Lenovo devoted some more attention to bespoke software, it could become an irresistible reason: The missing Smart Reader app really did irk us. Here's hoping Lenovo puts the pedal down with software development for the Yoga Book. It deserves it.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i review: Specifications

Global PC shipments dipped by nearly one-third in the first quarter of 2023, marking a continued decline on previous quarters amidst deteriorating economic conditions.

Research from IDC showed that total shipments of PCs declined 29% in Q1 to 56.9 million units. IDC said that weak demand, excess inventory, and a “worsening macroeconomic climate” were all key contributing factors to the drop in shipments.

The firm’s research also noted that shipment volume in Q1 2023 was “noticeably lower” compared to pre-pandemic levels.

More than 59 million units were shipped in Q1 2019 and 60.6 million were shipped in Q1 2018.

Apple, Lenovo, Dell Technologies, and ASUS were among the worst-impacted firms by this precipitous decline in shipments.

Apple saw a 40.5% decline in the first quarter, bringing its total market share down to 7.2% compared to an 8.2% share in the same period last year.

Lenovo and ASUS both experienced a 30.3% decline in shipments across the previous quarter while Dell shipments declined by 31%.

The recent statistics paint a potentially concerning picture for Apple, which has typically weathered sluggish device growth in recent months.

In the final quarter of last year, PC manufacturers saw a significant decline in shipments, with Dell experiencing a 37.2% decrease alongside notable dips for HP, ASUS, and Lenovo. Despite this, Apple shipment volumes dipped by just 2.1%.

IDC said that, despite sluggish sales and a bleak outlook for the coming quarter, this period presents an opportunity to give the supply chain “some room to make changes as many factories begin to explore production options outside China”.

Additionally, IDC noted that PC makers have begun to pull in orders for Chromebooks due to an “expected increase in licensing costs later this year” and are expecting some growth movement as organisations begin shifting en-masse to Windows 11 later in the year.

“PC shipments will likely suffer in the near term with a return to growth towards the end of the year with an expected improvement in the global economy and as the installed base begins to think about upgrading to Windows 11,” the consultancy said.

Linn Huang, research vice president for devices and displays at IDC, said this upcoming refresh period could offer a reprieve for manufacturers, but this is heavily dependent on recovering economic conditions.

“If the economy is trending upwards by then, we expect significant market upside as consumers look to refresh, schools seek to replace worn down Chromebooks, and businesses move to Windows 11,” he said. “If recession in key markets drags on into next year, recovery could be a slog.”

Lenovo is set to launch a new service offering businesses 24-hour priority hardware support, as well as new ThinkPads.

The company unveiled Lenovo Premier Support Plus, a new service offering direct contact with company technicians at any time of day to help them solve their hardware problems faster.

If employees experience problems with their device, they can quickly connect to an IT expert, said Lenovo. The service is tipped to improve customers' finances by increasing productivity and reducing downtime.

Lenovo is also providing AI-powered tools and predictive models to help IT teams monitor their hardware and any potential issues they might have, although it hasn’t detailed how this technology works.

The aim of this is to help IT teams “predict, diagnose, and prevent issues from becoming problems, thus reducing IT teams’ workload to help unlock their full innovative potential”. It’s set to provide teams with insights, alerts, and user experience scoring.

Lenovo currently has a similar support service called Lenovo Premier Support which provides companies access to technicians for hardware and software support, only available during business hours.

The new service hasn’t officially launched yet, but a Lenovo spokesperson told IT Pro it’s expected around mid-March, although this could vary by location.

Lenovo releases 13 new laptops in 2023 ThinkPad portfolio

The company has also released new hardware which it said is geared towards hybrid workers.

The ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2 and ThinkPad Z16 Gen 2 make use of the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Processors with Windows 11 and can be equipped with a 2TB PCIe SSD to make demanding tasks easier to complete. The ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2 is set to be released in July 2023 and will be priced at €1,649 (£1,448), while the ThinkPad Z16 Gen 2 will be available from August 2023 and will start at €2,249 (£1,975).

Lenovo is also releasing the ThinkPad X13 Gen 4 and ThinkPad X13 Yoga Gen 4 with narrower bezels, targeting frequent travellers who need a better screen-to-body ratio and hybrid working features.

Both laptops can come with Windows 11 Pro and use 13th-generation Intel core processors. The X13 Gen 4 can also come with the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Processors if needed.

Both devices will be available from July 2023. The ThinkPad X13 Gen 4 will start at €1,190 (£1,045), while the ThinkPad X13 Yoga Gen 4 will start at €1,290 (£1,133.

The company has unveiled the latest generations of the ThinkPad T series, which have had more than 20 generations since it was introduced in May 2000.

Lenovo revealed the T14 Gen 4, T16 Gen 2, and T14s Gen 4 can come with an optional 5MP camera with infrared as well as blue light display options to prevent eye strain.

The ThinkPad T14s, T14, and T16 will be available from July 2023 and will start at €1,590 (£1,396), €1,345 (£1,181), and €1,390 (£1,221) respectively.

Lenovo has also included a low blue light display option in the ThinkPad L13 Gen 4 and L13 Yoga Gen 4, which it said helps with battery efficiency. The newer releases in the L-series, such as the L14 Gen 4 and L15 Gen 4, are also able to come with up to 2TB SSD storage, double what the previous generation came with.

The ThinkPad L13 and L13 Yoga will be available from April 2023 and start at €839 (£737) and €980 (£860) respectively, while the ThinkPad L14 and L15 will be available from May 2023 and start at €775 (£680) and €755 (£663).

Lastly, Lenovo is marketing the ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 and 16-inch ThinkPad E16 for small and medium sized businesses.

The devices have a bigger display and a new keyboard and larger touchpad, and are for “value-conscious” users as they are cheaper than the premium ThinkBook options. Theycan be configured with 40GB or dual-SSD storage too.

Users can also give them a battery boost by choosing a 47Whr or 57Whr battery option if they need to use their devices on the go for longer periods of time. These laptops will be available from June 2023 and start at €770 (£676) and €780 (£685) respectively.

Lenovo has unveiled its new 360 Engage initiative, which introduces new core competencies and a revamped tier system as part of its wider channel programme refresh for 2023.

Available from 3 April, there will be a total of five new core competencies to help partners 'learn and earn' at both the individual and company-wide levels.

Sellers can progress through learning paths in Life Cycle Services, Workforce Performance, Infrastructure, Advanced Infrastructure, and TruScale categories to achieve new credentials and certifications.

Lenovo said these new competencies have been designed to help partners improve their skill sets and become trusted advisors to customers, ultimately improving sales and revenue growth opportunities.

The vendor is also introducing a new ‘360 Tier’ to its structure, which combines the features of its existing Intelligent Devices, and Infrastructure Solutions tiers.

“Partners are familiar with our existing tiers for Intelligent Devices and Infrastructure Solutions,” said Jeff Taylor, executive director of worldwide channel marketing and programmes at Lenovo.

“Those incentives are not going away; Lenovo 360 Engage adds a new level of incentives through our new 360 tier, which offers even more ways to earn for partners who want to branch out and sell across both portfolios.”

Launched back in January 2022, the Lenovo 360 programme provides partners with access to the company’s full portfolio across services and solutions, infrastructure, and intelligent devices.

Lenovo said the framework is designed to help partners strengthen their position in the market through its combination of solutions, marketing, and sales enablement resources, as well as its ecosystem connections.

Alongside the addition of 360 Engage, Lenovo is extending access to the programme’s 360 Circle initiative in 2023, following the completion of a successful pilot last year.

The scheme connects partners with experts and other businesses on environmental, social, and governance objectives, providing tools and resources to help develop sustainability-focused solutions. Partners can now apply via the Lenovo Partner Hub.

Additionally, the firm also announced its new 360 Solutions Hub resource, which has been designed to provide partners with a host of sales enablement assets and integrated features - such as guided search, guided selling, and co-selling tools.

The Lenovo 360 Solutions Hub will also be available from April, rolling out to selected markets across North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region, with further expansions planned for 2024.

Matt Zielinski, Lenovo’s executive vice president and president of international markets, said the 360 programme is “completely revolutionising” the way the company does business with partners.

“As we continue to evolve the incentives, programmes, and resources to help them grow their businesses, we’re sending a clear message – we are the channel-centric company, and that’s a commitment that will not waiver,” he said.

Lenovo has released patches to address two vulnerabilities that could have allowed cyber criminals to run malicious code through the deactivation of UEFI Secure Boot.

Researchers at ESET first discovered the vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2022-3430 and CVE-2022-3431, which, if exploited, could lead to threat actors circumventing the basic security functions of a victim’s operating system (OS). These bugs carry a severity rating of ‘high’.

The vulnerabilities affect 25 devices across the ThinkBook, Yoga and IdeaPad ranges in total, although not all these devices are affected by both vulnerabilities. As these devices are heavily used in business settings, employees could be adversely affected by the flaw and potentially sustain damage to sensitive data.

The flaw, which sits within a driver in the affected devices, allows for attackers to alter a variable in non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM) to modify the secure boot setting of a device. This was not due to an error in the code of the affected drivers, but rather because the affected devices were mistakenly equipped with drivers intended for use only during manufacturing, with relaxed control over secure boot settings from within the OS.

UEFI flaws are severe, as they allow for threat actors to alter critical device processes, and potentially install malware within the victim’s flash memory. For example, threat actors could use such a flaw to install a rootkit, which could carry out malicious activity while remaining very hard to detect, and can even survive OS reinstallation.

“Secure boot is built on a hierarchy of trust typically rooted in technologies fixed in the hardware of a device,” Professor John Goodacre, director of the UKRI’s Digital Security by Design challenge and professor of computer architectures at the University of Manchester.

“Such systems are used to ensure that despite any exploitation of a vulnerability during the normal operation of a system it can be recovered through a reboot. It is therefore essential that by design, the secure boot of a system cannot be altered while in normal operation. Unfortunately, all software should be considered to contain vulnerabilities, and therefore it’s essential that during normal operation no mechanisms can circumvent secure boot.

“Although a move to using digital secure by design execution of software will significantly reduce the opportunity to exploit vulnerabilities, any mechanism in which an exploitation of normal operations can take control of secure boot means they are open to ransomware and other denial of service attacks and highlights the need for trust across the various components of secure boot.”

The Ideapad Y700-14ISK is affected by a third vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-3432, which comprises another driver flaw that results in a similar modification of the secure boot sweating. However, Lenovo will not release a fix for this as the device has exceeded its developer support lifecycle.

This is not the first time that Lenovo has had to release such a patch. In April, ESET researchers discovered more than 100 Lenovo models vulnerable to UEFI malware attacks, also as a result of manufacturing drivers mistakenly left on the devices.

Similar concerns have been raised in the past, with Dell BIOS vulnerabilities found in 2021 enabling threat actors to execute malicious code at UEFI level on an estimated 30 million devices, and researchers from Advanced Intelligence and Eclypsium having found a variant of the Trickbot malware that can brick devices at UEFI level in 2020.

ESET recommends that those using the affected devices update their firmware version immediately.

Lenovo's ThinkPad range has traditionally been aimed exclusively at business users and its focus has resulted in machines that are genuine thoroughbreds. However, the Chinese giant is starting to stretch the ThinkPad brand with a view to pinching sales from the more compact laptops of its rivals.

The new ThinkPad machines come in 13.3in (Z13) or 16in (Z16) with both lines designed to offer the essence of ThinkPad but with AMD-power. The Z13 we have for review here is the entry-level model with a price of £1,591 exc VAT. If you want the range-topping model with a 1TB SSD, 2280 x 1880 OLED screen, 32GB of RAM and the most powerful AMD Ryzen 7 Pro chip be prepared to cough up £2,066.

Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 review: Design

The Z13 certainly looks a lot less utilitarian than the X1. Made largely from recycled aluminium, it has a clean and modern look to it, much closer to the aesthetic of Dell's XPS and Apple's MacBook Pro machines. Our review unit came with the brushed 'Arctic Grey' aluminium lid but you can also have a soft-touch faux leather that Lenovo calls 'vegan leather' (It's actually plastic). That model has bronze rather than silver sides and does look very stylish. And the palm rest consists of a sheet of matte finish tempered glass.

The Z13 is very sturdy and feels like it will take some serious abuse before anything breaks. At 1.26kg it's also 150g lighter than the MacBook Pro 13 but marginally heavier than the MacBook Air (1.24kg). And at 14mm it's thinner than the Dell XPS 13 though that does have a marginally larger display at 13.4in.

Thankfully, certain ThinkPad design cues have been kept, such as the large lip on the top of the display, which makes opening it with one finger very easy. There's also the red dot above the 'i' of ThinkPad on the lid that lights up when the machine is on. The 180-degree screen rotation hasn't been carried across though, with the Z13's lid coming to a halt at 145 degrees. The only design feature we took issue with is the position of the power button which is on the right side of the body next to the Type-C port as It just doesn't fall easily to hand. Removing the back from the Z13 is a simple enough job but all you can do once you're inside is to swap the SSD. Everything else is soldered in place.

Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 review: Display

You can choose a Z13 with one of three variations on the 16:10 theme; two feature 170dpi 1,920 x 1,200 IPS displays - one is touch-enabled, one is not - while the third option is a 250dpi 2,880 x 1,800 OLED touch panel. The finish on the IPS screens is matte, whereas the OLED model is gloss. The entry-level display on our review unit performed well, registering a maximum brightness of 430cd/m2 and a contrast ratio of 1582:1.

There's also nothing wrong with the colour metrics with an sRGB colour gamut volume of 98.6% and Delta E colour variance of 1.92. That's just under the magic 2 at which even a trained eye will have difficulty noticing any colour variance. The display has very robust viewing angles and does a good job of keeping reflections at bay both indoors and out. The panel is also Eyesafe certified, which means it reduces the amount of blue light without affecting the visible colour of the screen.

Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 review: Keyboard & touchpad

Lenovo has done a good job squeezing a standard-sized keyboard into a small space. The gap between the keys and the chassis is under 5mm, not quite as thin as the 2mm on the XPS 13 Plus but still pretty impressive. The keyboard graphics are a model of clarity; the two-stage backlight is ideally calibrated and the key action is nigh-on perfect. The 1.35mm key travel is less than you'll find on some other ThinkPad models but the solid base and positive return still make this a joy to type on for prolonged periods. Some dedicated business users will bemoan the absence of dedicated Page Up and Page Down buttons, though.

Sitting in the middle of the keyboard is the iconic TrackPoint - removing it from a laptop carrying the ThinkPad name would be unthinkable. It not only moves the cursor but with a double-tap launches a communications menu that lets you adjust some microphone and camera settings and launch Microsoft Dictation.

The usual ThinkPad combination of a small touchpad and three physical mouse buttons has been replaced by a larger, glass haptic (or ForcePad) touchpad with three virtual mouse buttons at the top. A row of seven small dots marks the centre button while a thin rough-finish line extends to either side marking the 'bottom' of the flanking buttons. This virtual setup is less intuitive than the physical keys one would find on a traditional ThinkPad, but it is a good trade-off for a larger (120mm x 70mm) touchpad. The gliding properties are very good while gestures are executed more smoothly than on the ThinkPad X1's much smaller touchpad.

Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 review: Specs and performance

The entry-level Z13 is built around an AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 6650U processor. That's a 6-core, 12-thread 28W component with a maximum boost clock speed of 4.5Ghz. With that, you also get 16GB of quad-channel RAM and AMD's integrated Radeon 600M integrated graphics processor. That level of cooperation between the chip maker and OEM seems to have paid dividends when it comes to performance and endurance.

In the ITPro in-house multi-media benchmark, the Z13 scored 208 points which is a very solid performance for a laptop without a discrete GPU. To put that into context the new M2 MacBook Air scored 215 points while the MSI Prestige 14, which boasts a 12th gen Core i5-1240P and an Nvidia RTX3050 GPU, scored 247. The Z13 easily beats the 10-core Core i7-1255U-powered ThinkPad X1 Carbon which only scored 130.

For a 6-core processor, the 6650U really is quite the performer and no matter what the productivity task, the Z13 will execute it with alacrity. Just as impressive is how quiet the Z13 is. Even when under stress you have to put your ear pretty close to the action to be able to hear the fans. When running hard the Z13 did get a little warm on the rear underside but not by an excessive amount.

Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 review: Battery life

The Z13 uses a three-cell 51.5Wh battery so we were pleasantly surprised then when a full charge lasted 12hrs 45mins in our looped video test. That's an excellent result and better than any of the obvious Intel-powered alternatives we've encountered. As always you'll get more from a MacBook but that doesn't detract from the fact that the Z13 will get you through a full day's hard work and then some before you need to reach for the compact 65W USB charger.

Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 review: Ports and features

The one area we hoped that Lenovo wouldn't ape Apple and Dell is the reduction of ports, but sadly it has. All you get are two USB v4.0-spec Type-C ports (one on each side) and a 3.5mm audio jack but one of those Type-Cs is needed for charging. The AMD chipset should have been a clue that there's no native support for Thunderbolt but given that the specifications for 40Gbps USB4 and Thunderbolt 4 are not massively different that shouldn't be an issue.

The webcam is a decent 1080p affair that renders crisp images and colourful video even in quite low-light environments. It also supports Windows Hello facial recognition which gives a second option for biometric login alongside the fingerprint scanner that has its own dedicated key. Camera security is provided by an eShutter rather than a physical shutter meaning the camera can be locked electronically by pressing the F9 key, while enhanced platform security is provided by Microsoft's Pluton tech.

Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 review: Verdict

In trying to make a ThinkPad that is a little less like a ThinkPad, Lenovo could have made a machine too idiosyncratic for those customers that want compact laptops from the likes of Apple and Dell. Or, not idiosyncratic enough for its dedicated ThinkPad users.

Thankfully, Leonovo pulled it out of the bag by coming up with a notebook that's stylish, well made, and easy to use, and with just enough of the traditional ThinkPad features to take on the competition. What's more, that impressive trade-off between performance and efficiency from the Ryzen 5 Pro chipset is the cherry on the cake. One that makes this an excellent notebook for both business and pleasure, provided you have some really deep pockets.

Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 Specifications

Lenovo’s ThinkPads are the doyens of compact business laptops, so any update to the range is most certainly worth paying attention to. The main story in this most recent update of the X1 range is the introduction of the latest 12th generation Intel Alder Lake processors, but there are a few other updates worthy of mention, including a new and improved webcam, a better sound system and a slightly reprofiled keyboard.

However, buying a ThinkPad X1 isn’t exactly straightforward thanks to the very wide choice of specification options. You chose from five Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processors, four capacities of SSD, six types of display, two levels of RAM and three operating systems (Windows 11, Linux Ubuntu and Linux Fedora) - all of which results in a very wide price spectrum.

Lenovo is currently offering four off-the-shelf models ranging from £1,394 exc VAT to £2,341 exc VAT, though those prices include a 32% discount currently on offer. When we specified a machine to match our review sample, we came out with a price of £1,782 exc VAT, but again that includes the current discounts. Without them, the price is a more sobering £2,649 exc VAT.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon review: Design

The basic ThinkPad design is highly regarded and close to iconic so unsurprisingly, Lenovo has resisted the temptation to change things unnecessarily. The all-black case is still made up of a carbon fibre lid and magnesium alloy body, and it still complies with the US Department of Defense's MIL-STD 810H standards of resistance to shock, particle ingress, vibration, and extremes of temperature.

Subjectively, it feels very well made. Removing the bottom from the X1 is a simple enough affair, but once done all you can do is swap out the SSD since everything else is soldered in place.

For a 14in laptop, the dimensions are well within par at 15mm thick and 1.12kg. Granted it’s not quite as small and light as the latest ultra-compacts like the new M2 MacBook Air or Dell XPS 13 Plus, but the differences are bordering on negligible and both those machines have smaller displays.

Design flourishes are limited to the brushed metallic effect on the hinge covers, optional carbon fibre weave on the lid, and a red LED dotting the ThinkPad logo on the lid. Instead, the designers have focused on more practical tweaks, like the lip at the top of the display that lets you easily open the X1 with one finger. Like the MSI Prestige 14, the X1’s lid can also be opened all the way back to 180 degrees.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon review: Display

Lenovo is offering the X1 with six screen options, including 1080p models with optional touchscreens and privacy filters, QHD and 4K models, and even a 2,880 x 1,880 OLED configuration.

Our review model featured the FullHD touch screen with a privacy filter, and with a maximum recorded brightness of 499cd/m2 and a contrast ratio of 2215:1, the basic performance metrics are class-leading. It’s a colourful affair too, supporting 100.3% of the sRGB colour space. The Delta E colour accuracy registered at 1.9, just under the target figure of 2 which means that colour difference is barely detectable even to a trained eye.

Despite having a slightly flexible plastic rather than glass covering, the matte-finish anti-reflective screen reacted positively and quickly to all touch inputs. However, Lenovo’s ePrivacy filter is a questionable option for one simple reason; it doesn’t work that well. Granted it does restrict viewing angles, but not by much - at a 45-degree angle, copy on the screen was still readable. More advanced privacy settings like presence detection are available as standard through the Lenovo Commercial Vantage app, though.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon review: Keyboard

ThinkPads have a well-deserved reputation for having the best keyboards in the business and the new X1 is no exception. As expected, you have the trademark features like the iconic TrackPoint navigation nub and the three rows of ‘mouse’ buttons above the trackpad.

What shines through most brightly is the underlying quality of the keyboard. It’s rock solid, while the keys themselves have a superbly responsive and positive action. The keys have been slightly reprofiled giving them a squarer, more slender appearance but they’re still supremely comfortable to type on. The white-on-black graphics are a model of clarity while the two-stage backlight is perfectly calibrated.

The glass trackpad is a little smaller than the norm at 110 x 55mm, but that's down to the three buttons that rob space at the top of it. It’s a compromise we’d happily live with though, since it doesn’t impact the usability of the trackpad one iota. The corner click-action is smooth, positive and near-silent.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon review: Specs and performance

The model on test is built around an Intel Core i7-1255U vPro processor with 16GB of quad-channel 5,200Mhz DDR5 RAM. The U-series Alder Lake chips are designed for efficiency rather than performance and to this end, the 10-core, 12-thread 1255U features 8 efficient cores but only 2 performance cores with a maximum TDP of 28W.

Running IT Pro’s in-house multi-media benchmark, the X1 scored 130 points, similar to the score we’d expect from the range-topping 11th generation Core i7-1195G7 which features only 4 cores and 8 threads but has a higher Turbo Boost speed of 5Ghz to the 1255U’s 4.7Ghz.

As you might expect given the extra cores, the 1255U shows the 1195G7 a cleaner pair of heels when it comes to multi-core performance. The former scored 7,423 in the GeekBench 5 multi-core test, while the latter would do well to exceed 5,500. That means the X1 has more than enough power to chew through even demanding productivity tasks with alacrity.

It does so without breaking a sweat too, thanks to Lenovo improving thermal management and airflow by introducing small intake spaces below the keys. The dual fans meanwhile, run quietly even at full speed.

It’s worth mentioning at this juncture that one thing you can’t specify in the new Carbon X1 is a discrete GPU, so you have to make do with Intel's Iris XE integrated processor no matter which model you buy.

The 512GB Samsung SSD in the X1 was also impressively fast, returning sequential read and write speeds of 5,098MB/sec and 3,746MB/sec, respectively.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon review: Battery life

That power comes at a cost though, and considering the 1255U is a chip designed for efficiency, we were disappointed by the X1’s battery life. Our battery test involves turning the screen brightness down to 170cd/m2, engaging Airplane mode and running an SD video in VLC until it all goes dark.

The best the X1’s 57Wh battery could do was 6hrs 45mins; you should expect better in a world where the latest ARM-powered MacBooks can manage more than double that. Thankfully Lenovo bundles a petite and lightweight 65W Type-C charger with 3 meters worth of cable, meaning recharging should at least be straightforward.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon review: Ports and features

With the likes of Dell and Apple cutting back on I/O ports, it’s good to see Lenovo has given priority to real-world usability. To this end, the X1 features two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 and two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports along with an HDMI 2.0b connector and a 3.5mm audio jack. Machines with optional cellular connectivity also feature a standard nano SIM slot. As is becoming increasingly common these days, there’s no memory card slot.

Wireless duties are handled by the ubiquitous and ever-reliable Intel AX211 card, which supports Bluetooth 5.2 as well as 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E. Should you opt for a cellular modem, you can choose between 4G or sub-6GHz 5G, and for an extra £10 you can also add an NFC chip under the trackpad.

Lenovo has rightly decided that a decent quality webcam is an important feature in this post-pandemic world, and has fitted the X1 with a high-quality 1080p camera that produces excellent results in all lighting conditions. The camera also features a physical privacy shutter and support for Windows Hello IR facial recognition, as well as a fingerprint reader in the power button. The quad-microphone array is equally capable, with an effective suite of noise cancellation features accessible through the Dolby Access app.

The speaker system is quite superb for a productivity laptop, with an abundance of volume; measured at a 1m distance the output averaged 85dB from a pink noise source with peaks of 88dB from a music source. As well as a very decent wedge of bass both the high- and mid-ranges sound great, with plenty of stereo separation. The sound quality benefits from two upward- and two downward-firing speakers, the former mounted under grilles that flank the keyboard.

As well as featuring a Discrete Trusted Platform Module (dTPM 2.0), with the X1 Lenovo has joined HP in offering Tile-ready machines that can be tracked using Tile’s location system. A subscription is required, but once set up it should make recovering a misplaced or stolen X1 that bit easier.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon review: Verdict

The new 10th generation ThinkPad showcases all of the family’s strengths: The superb and unique keyboard, the rock-solid construction, the minimalist but elegant styling, and the broad range of purchase options. Prices are on the steep side, but that’s nothing new for ThinkPads.

The battery life may be more of a deal-breaker for you, but to be fair to Lenovo, that’s largely because Intel hasn’t managed to improve the efficiency of its processors to match improvements in performance. If you can look past the longevity, however, this laptop is a standout in virtually every other aspect.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 specifications