back to article Lenovo’s phantom ThinkPad X1 foldable laptop finally materializes

Lenovo has finally delivered the ThinkPad X1 Fold 16 folding laptop, more than a year after teasing the device. “Pushing boundaries can take you to interesting places,” wrote the marvellously named Jerry Paradise, VP of Lenovo's Commercial Portfolio and Product Management. “When we announced the ThinkPad #X1Fold last year, we …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    improving operational consistency

    in English: trying to make it break (fold?) less often

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    A technical achievement, no doubt

    I have no use for such a thing, but I have to admit that, from the videos I've seen, this time Lenovo has apparently gotten things right.

    I'm just wondering how long that foldable screen is going to last.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    doubles RAM to 16GB

    wow, they DO imitate apple. Minus the OS.

  4. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

    I find it fascinating that back in the early days of IBM Thinkpads, the 701C had a fixed sized screen and a folding keyboard to make the system smaller. This one has a fixed sized keyboard, and a folding screen.

    How things change.

  5. Tubz Silver badge

    Can't see anybody selling a lot of $3500 laptops unless the users have had the corporate accountants shot, to stop them blocking sales and their own brains removed.

  6. Crypto Monad Silver badge

    When folded out, you get a 16.3" screen at 2560 x 2024

    The "starting" weight is 1.28kg, but with keyboard and stand it's 1.94kg. At that weight you might as well have a proper laptop - so I can't really see the point.

    I guess it's for people who liked the Sony Vaio C1, and will tend to use it folded with the lower half acting as touch keyboard??

    1. ericneo2
      Meh

      Add the power brick and you're at 2.5kgs so yeah a slim gaming laptop with better battery, cooling, CPU and GPU.

      The market for mobile portable tablet devices want a Surface like device with 5G built-in with 32GB of RAM. They don't want a dedicated GPU.

      1. WereWoof

        2.5 KG? That`s as much as my old 17" HP P$ desktop replacement was back in 2006.

        1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Have to say I've never understood the complaints about laptop weight. In my mind, 2.5 kg is pretty negligible. I often have both my work and my personal laptops in my backpack, along with their power supplies and sundries. No big deal.

          Sure, there are many people who for one reason or another can't or shouldn't cart that sort of weight around, but for most users, is it really a problem? We're not mining coal here.

    2. Crypto Monad Silver badge

      For comparison, a Macbook Air M2 weighs 1.24kg and has a 2560x1664 screen (13.6"). Maybe just carry a pair of reading glasses to deal with the smaller screen?

  7. John H Woods

    I have become a fan ...

    ... of the portable monitor. I've got a fairly cheap 4k that is almost the same form factor as my Stinkpad, and you get a lot of extra screen estate (not to mention two screens).

    I'm struggling to think of too many situations where you could unfold a big screen like this but not use a portable monitor ...

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: I have become a fan ...

      Agreed. But it's still very early days in terms of folding screens. I'd say I'll wait 5-10 years, but I'll be retired by then, probably won't have the wherewithal to waste that amount of cash on a vanity laptop and have no use case for it any more :-)

      After all, the early laptops were often barely even "laptops", requiring mains power to run (lets not go near the "luggables"), then crappy LCD screen emulating CGA or worse came along on some quite heavy, chunky laptops. Now we have wafer thin OLED screens that weigh next to nothing but don't like being folded at all. Early adopters will be all over these foldable screens, the rest of us will probably be able to afford them and find them useful and convenient eventually, as the tech moves on, production and reliability improves. Or maybe it'll be a dead end and we never get cheaply produced, reliable, flexible electronics.

      Weird aside. Remember CRTs and the switch to flat screen LCD and the strange effect of flat screen appearing to bend inwards after spending time in front of the bulging CRT? I just had a weird throwback experience to that. I spent most of the day in front of a very wide curved display panel, then had to go into one of out mini conference rooms with a "traditional" flat screen and it looked like it was bowed in at the middle :-)

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: I have become a fan ...

        the rest of us will probably be able to afford them and find them useful and convenient eventually

        Frankly, I'm with Mr Woods. I can't see ever wanting one of these.

        Though I should note that I'm not even a fan of multiple screens.

  8. Dave@Home

    That's some exchange rate

    base model in US is $2,499.00

    base model in UK is £4,119.00 - $5027 (rounding to nearest $)

  9. hammarbtyp

    That's a lot of folding...

    dosh

  10. theOtherJT Silver badge

    "a 16.3" OLED touchscreen display at 2560 x 2024"

    Can I have that without the laptop please? Or the folding?

    It's so weird to me that we're seeing more and more portable devices with what's basically a 4:3 screen resolution but it's still damn close to impossible to buy a regular desktop monitor like that.

  11. eldakka

    Spending an extra $900 buys you those peripherals, doubles RAM to 16GB and SSD to 512GB, but keeps the Core i5-1230U.

    Wow.

    I was interested, I thought it'd be worth playing with, but paying $3400 to get 16GB/512GB - the bare minimum any device over 2k should come with - is insane.

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