(Credit: Brian Westover)
LAS VEGAS—Lenovo just put the "two" in 2-in-1 in an all new way at CES 2024 with the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid system, which combines a Windows 11 laptop with a detachable Android tablet. That's right, it's got Windows and Android devices combined, and the results are deeply intriguing.
As a laptop, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid uses an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, running Windows 11. With up to 32GB of memory and 1TB of SSD storage, it's a capable laptop and not so different from other 2-in-1 designs we've seen. With the display attached, the laptop has a 14-inch 2.8K-resolution OLED display to show off. The port selection looks decent enough, with two Thunderbolt 4 connections and an audio jack, and the touch-screen display supports both finger and pen input.
But the top half of the detachable is more than just a display: It's also a standalone Android tablet. The 14-inch, 2.8K OLED tablet has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ processor inside and runs Android 13. With 12GB of memory and 256GB of storage in the tablet alone, it's a formidable device in its own right.
Lenovo Brings the Voltron Dream to Life
The two systems then merge, Voltron-like, with a magnetic docking connection at the laptop hinge. When paired and docked, they function as a standard Windows laptop. Pull it off of the laptop, and it functions as a standalone Android tablet, but with a twist: You can still use the base and tablet together.
Android has its own ecosystem of apps and capabilities, but Lenovo has added a special operating system (OS) streaming feature that lets you continue to access apps and files from your Windows machine when the tablet is in Android mode.
The Windows PC half, on the other hand, can either run as a standalone PC, connected to an external monitor, or be used as a wireless keyboard and touchpad for the Android tablet. The tablet can access the files on your Windows machine (the keyboard), so you have no need to worry about losing data access when you switch to tablet mode.
You'll also find a screen mirroring option that lets you use the detached tablet as a separate display for the Windows system, or a picture-in-picture option that lets you access the Android apps and functions of the tablet when the two halves are docked together in laptop mode.
Computing Duality Without Dichotomy
It's a dizzying number of hardware and software combinations, with the choice of OS, and various options for pairing the laptop and tablet halves for continuous use, whether together or apart. The result of all these options is hopefully a new level of usability and seamless capability no matter how you want to use your machine.
The question for any dual-OS system, of course, is whether the interactions between the two are smooth and useful enough to justify dealing with whatever rough spots remain. We will withhold judgment until we get a chance to test it ourselves, but that factor should be kept in mind by anyone intrigued by this dual-system 2-in-1.
We're looking forward to getting this into the labs for hands-on testing, but we might wait a while. The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid is coming sometime this summer, with an expected starting price of $1,999. That's actually not a bad price considering that you get both a powerful Windows laptop with an OLED display and a 14-inch Android tablet, with keyboard and pen support. Hold out until this summer for deeper coverage.