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Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 2-Minute Preview

When we first heard about Lenovo’s new 21:10 laptop with a second built-in side screen, we were honestly ready to write it down. Well, we got the chance to test the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 for ourselves this week at Lenovo’s CES 2022 showcase in New York City, and we have to admit that Lenovo may be on to something here.

First of all, we immediately questioned the portability factor, e.g. long Laptop. At 16.14 inches in length, this is too long to fit in almost any of the best backpacks we tested this year. But not all.

And if you’re a photographer, your “backpack” is likely more like those giant isolated cubes that GrubHub and DoorDash suppliers heave around. In all fairness, if you are serious about your craft, you can probably get the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 to fit.

If you’re not a photographer you might have more problems, but it’s not insurmountable, and the usefulness of a built-in second display next to the keyboard would make up for any other inconveniences you might have to endure.

You probably already have a Wacom tablet with you with all the other cables and the like, so the simplification is a huge benefit too.

There is also an optional pin docked on the laptop’s rear hinge. So, if you are looking for an all-in-one graphic design platform, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 could very well be the laptop you have been waiting for. whole career to buy.

Speaking of purchases, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 isn’t a one-off concept device, it will hit the market in May 2022 and prices start at just $ 1,399 (around £ 1,080 / A $ 1,960) which makes it a lot cheaper than that the Asus. ZenBook Duo 14 or the Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15.

Additionally, if you’re a photographer or a designer, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 offers a much more natural workspace than the ZenBook Duo without sacrificing your keyboard space.

Assuming you’re right-handed, the secondary touchscreen replicates more naturally to the right of the keyboard than it does above when a separate Wacom or similar tablet is used on the side.

In short, for someone looking to edit photos or digital artwork, this laptop is made just for you and it’s affordable enough to be the laptop to take you through a four year arts program at university.

Most apps like Adobe Photoshop have already implemented functionality that uses secondary displays and tablets for creative workflows, and this works seamlessly with the tablet display of the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3.

The ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 also offers some features for non-photographers and artists.

The laptop also offers the ability to split the main screen in half, with a 16:10 display on the left and a 1: 2 display on the right, the latter perfectly aligned with the screen next to the keyboard. This allows you to drag documents from the main screen to the sub screen while reading.

The secondary display also seamlessly integrates with note-taking apps like OneNote, so you can take notes during meetings or in class.

While these other features aren’t quite as enticing as the more artistically oriented features, they nonetheless bring a lot to the table for students who appreciate the multitasking skills, and given the price, we can see this be popular with college students is.

Of course, there are trade-offs, and not just in terms of the size and weight of the laptop. There’s no separate GPU, so this probably isn’t the best laptop for professional movie editing or 3D modeling.

If you’re a student working on short films or learning 3D modeling, the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 should work fine, but it will definitely fall short in a production environment.

Intel Iris Xe’s integrated graphics are pretty good in terms of integrated graphics, but there are few Blender workloads that take forever to render without a separate GPU. Ditto for encoding 4K videos.

Even so, thanks to the 12th generation Intel Alder Lake CPU, you can still take advantage of the LPDDR5 memory, which will definitely come in handy. The laptop is limited to a PCIe 4.0 SSD, and it insanely lacks an SD card slot, but it has a Thunderbolt 4 port, along with a standard USB Type-C port, two USB Type-C ports. A ports and HDMI output.

The laptop also uses Lenovo’s standard aluminum alloy chassis, so it’s solidly built, but it all adds up to a 4.40 lb / 2 kg laptop which, because of its length, feels heavier than it actually is. It also comes with Harman Kardon speakers with Dolby Atmos so your Spotify sounds great, at least at work.

We’ll be able to give you a better overview of how well this notebook works in practice after the test, but this is without a doubt one of the most interesting laptop innovations that we saw at CES this year. Year.

We’re absolutely excited to try it out and see if Lenovo has found gold in the creative industry with this one.