Hands-on with the Lenovo hybrid that’s both a Windows laptop and an Android tablet

At first look, the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 seems like your commonplace Home windows laptop computer, however once you take the show off, it turns into an Android pill. I received 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 a bit of bit thicker and heavier than you may count on from a laptop computer this measurement, however that’s as a result of it’s basically two machines in a single.

Contained in the keyboard, or the hybrid dock station, you’ve received 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. Possibly you wish to watch a film on the Android pill, however dig into some spreadsheets on the Home windows aspect with a full keyboard — with the ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 you are able to do simply that utilizing whichever OS or type issue most closely fits a particular process.

After all, the truth that you will have two wholly separate working methods does result in some trade-offs. For instance, once you take the pill off, you gained’t get continuity from the Home windows software program. What you have been doing on the laptop computer is just not going to right away switch over to the Android pill. However you do get file sharing — should you save a file in your Home windows machine, you possibly can 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 use the Android and Home windows methods concurrently.

So far as its suitability as an Android pill, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 5’s removable 2.8K OLED show is clearly fairly massive at 14 inches, but it surely’s fairly mild within the hand. Based mostly on my quick 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. Not like Home windows tablets, you additionally get the good thing about all of the Android options that you’d count on, together with entry to the Google Play Retailer, and a UI that’s much more suited to the touch controls than Home windows.

On the again, you will have a dual-camera system, which is fairly commonplace for an Android pill, however distinctive for a laptop computer. You will have a 13-megapixel main lens paired with a 5-megapixel ultrawide. After all, we’re not likely 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 severely. On the high, you will have a digicam shutter button, so you possibly can flip off your webcam with a {hardware} swap. And that works for each the Home windows aspect and the Android aspect.

In case you’re involved about efficiency, contained in the Home windows a part of the machine you will have your self an Intel Core 7 Extremely chip (with Intel Arc graphics), backed by 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. The Android aspect, 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 keep in mind, you’re getting two machines right here in a single, which may very well be a great resolution for many who need the flexibleness 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 keep in mind the unreleased Samsung Ativ Q or the ASUS Transformer E-book Duet? — however this contemporary implementation truly seems set to hit the market later this 12 months.