Lenovo has taken the Apple’s iPad Pro and Microsoft’s Surface and Surface Book and merged them all into a new Yoga Book two-in-one.
The new thin and light 10.1-inch convertible is equipped with three innovations: a touchscreen keyboard cover that doubles as drawing pad and lays flush against its screen, an add-on paper-like Create Pad to transfer written notes into the Yoga Book, and a Real Pen used to draw and write on both the cover screen and the Create Pad.
The Yoga Book, according to the company, is designed to seamlessly bridge touch, type, write and draw in “a new touchscreen form factor, purposely designed to meet the lifestyles of those we’ve identified as the ‘Touch Generation.’”
The touch Halo Keyboard understands and adapts to the typing habits of the user, and haptic technology is designed to reduce mistakes. When the keyboard is turned off, the cover becomes a drawing pad.
At the push of a button, backlighting lights up the keys, essentially making the keys invisible and turning the keyboard into a Wacom-enabled Create Pad. This digitizer, combined with Lenovo’s Note Saver app, creates digital versions of anything written or doodled on it. According to Lenovo, it took 18 months to develop the right coating for the Create Pad to replicate the touch and feel of real paper.
This cover is actually four layers: glass with anti-glare coating, a touch panel keyboard, an LGF backlighting membrane and, finally, an EMR digitizing film.
If you want to see what you’re drawing or writing on the black Create Pad surface, lay a piece of regular paper on top of it, keeping the paper in place with an included magnetic holder. Inside the Yoga box is a Book Pad – a pad of paper cut to A5 size to fit on the Create Pad surface. Anything written on paper on the Create Pad gets digitized.
Drawing and writing is done with Lenovo’s unique and aptly named Real Pen. Real Pen is not only a digital stylus but an actual ink pen, which comes with replaceable ink cartridges, for writing on the included Book Pad.
It is available in either Book UI, a Lenovo-adapted version of Android 6.0 OS (October, starting at $499) or Windows 10 (October, starting at $549).
