Lenovo is no stranger to introducing products that are a little “out there” compared to the norm, and their Yoga line of devices have been at the forefront of this. During IFA 2016, the Chinese company is introducing their latest in the line of Yoga products, and as far as Android tablets go, we haven’t seen anything like this before. The Yoga Book is Lenovo’s 10.1-inch foldable, 2-in-1 Android tablet – with a Windows 10 version also available – that features 2,048 points of pressure sensitivity for taking notes and drawing diagrams, as well as a keyboard that’s not quite like any other we’ve seen.
At its core, the Yoga Book is a 10.1-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) Android tablet, currently launching with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, but this is about where the similarities with other Android tablets stop. The Yoga Book is named as such because it is essentially the 21st Century version of a note pad. The device is just 9.6mm thick when laid out as two displays, and this second display has a number of tricks up its sleeve. The second display is called the “Create Pad” and is practically where all the magic happens. With the included Real Pen, the Yoga Book allows users to lay a piece of A4 paper on the other display and write real notes onto paper, as well as draw whatever they want, and then also have it recorded by the Android tablet for digital notes. It can also be used without paper, turning the Yoga Book into a sort of graphics tablet, and with 2,048 pressure points, this isn’t a drawing tablet to be sniffed at, either. A 2-in-1, as the Yoga Book is being marketed as suggests a device with a keyboard. The Yoga Book does indeed have a keyboard, dubbed the Halo keyboard, which is a sort of touch keyboard that offers haptic feedback as people type on it like a laptop. This means that the Yoga Book doesn’t come with a physical keyboard, and given that the device folds over to become a full-blown Android tablet, attaching one could be difficult.
On the inside of this interesting machine is a quad-core Intel Atom Z8550 which can hit clocks speeds of up to 2.4 Ghz as well as 4GB of RAM. As for storage, users get 64GB of onboard storage as well as a microSD card slot for expansion. Keeping all of this awake is a sizeable 8,500 mAh battery. There is an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera as well as a 2-megapixel front-facing camera rounding the specs out with the Yoga Book. As Lenovo is aiming this at the productivity market, it’s good to see that there will also be a version with a SIM card slot included, as a lot of people need to get online while on the move, and simply can’t rely on there being WiFi everywhere they go. The Yoga Book will be available in either Gunmetal Gray or Champagne Gold and while pricing hasn’t been confirmed, it should go on sale towards the end of the year in earnest. Included in the box is the Real Pen stylus-cum-pen as well as 3 ink cartridges for it and the Book Pad, which allows users to create real notes as well as digital ones at the same time. Both the ink cartridges and Book Pad refills will be available separately, too.
