At first look, the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 appears like your customary Home windows laptop computer, however whenever you take the show off, it turns into an Android pill. I bought to take a look at Lenovo’s actually hybrid 2-in-1 at CES 2024 — learn on for my first impressions, or watch the video above to see it in motion.
With the show docked, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 is a reasonably generic 14-inch Home windows laptop computer. It’s just a little bit thicker and heavier than you would possibly anticipate from a laptop computer this measurement, however that’s as a result of it’s primarily two machines in a single.
Contained in the keyboard, or the hybrid dock station, you’ve bought a full Home windows expertise. Take away the show and you’ve got your Android pill. Regardless of the added weight, the machine’s hybrid nature does give it loads of versatility. Perhaps you need to watch a film on the Android pill, however dig into some spreadsheets on the Home windows facet with a full keyboard — with the ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 you are able to do simply that utilizing whichever OS or kind issue most closely fits a particular activity.
Lanh Nguyen / Android Authority
After all, the truth that you’ve gotten two wholly separate working techniques does result in some trade-offs. For instance, whenever you take the pill off, you gained’t get continuity from the Home windows software program. What you had been doing on the laptop computer isn’t going to right away switch over to the Android pill. However you do get file sharing — in case you save a file in your Home windows machine, you’ll be able to entry that on the Android pill. This provides some comfort for hybrid work duties and environments. This may be additional enhanced by hooking up a monitor to the bottom, as then you should utilize the Android and Home windows techniques concurrently.
So far as its suitability as an Android pill, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 5’s removable 2.8K OLED show is clearly fairly huge at 14 inches, but it surely’s fairly gentle within the hand. Primarily based on my brief time with it, I really feel like I might be okay holding it for an hour or so with out getting an excessive amount of wrist pressure. In contrast to Home windows tablets, you additionally get the good thing about all of the Android options that you’d anticipate, together with entry to the Google Play Retailer, and a UI that’s way more suited to the touch controls than Home windows.
Lanh Nguyen / Android Authority
On the again, you’ve gotten a dual-camera system, which is fairly customary for an Android pill, however distinctive for a laptop computer. You have got a 13-megapixel major lens paired with a 5-megapixel ultrawide. After all, we’re probably not positive why you’d be doing loads of images together with your laptop computer, however folks do use tablets for images on a regular basis.
And since that is Lenovo and it takes privateness very critically. On the high, you’ve gotten a digicam shutter button, so you’ll be able to flip off your webcam with a {hardware} change. And that works for each the Home windows facet and the Android facet.
Lanh Nguyen / Android Authority
When you’re involved about efficiency, contained in the Home windows a part of the machine you’ve gotten your self an Intel Core 7 Extremely chip (with Intel Arc graphics), backed by 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. The Android facet, in the meantime, is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, together with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The latter processor is approaching two years outdated, but it surely’s a dependable flagship processor that has confirmed to be an environment friendly performer all through our years of testing.
The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 will go on sale in Q2 2024, with pricing beginning at $1,999. That’s fairly costly, however bear in mind, you’re getting two machines right here in a single, which could possibly be a superb resolution for many who need the pliability of Home windows and Android on the go, whereas saving some area of their backpack. Whereas this isn’t the primary time we’ve seen this concept of mixing the 2 OS’ — anybody bear in mind the unreleased Samsung Ativ Q or the ASUS Transformer Ebook Duet? — however this contemporary implementation truly appears set to hit the market later this 12 months.
