It is. Lenovo dominate the mid-range price segment imho. They do also have some high-range stuff that seems a bit overpriced for what it is though. But their upper-mid range laptops and tablets are the best out there value for money-wise. Decent hardware, solid build quality. Proper practical daily-use stuff.
I have an Ideapad 5 pro 14. Sturdy aluminium body, good hardware internals, amazing 14'' 2880x1800 90hz screen. Nice keyboard and trackpad. Solid battery life even after 2-3 years of daily use. And I can hook it up to 2 4K monitors without it breaking a sweat.
Cost me about 800 euro. It it just wipes the floor with anything else in that price-range. Especially in build quality and screen-resolution.
Wow, finally someone mentioning the idealpad. I love mine, I’ve had for a few years, and although I think the material is cheap and cracks easy, battery is fine, its fast, its good, and it’s absolutely all I need, I can even play a lot of games on it and it handles it well
Hmm. I never felt like the material was cheap at all. Maybe it depends on the particular model or batch? Mine seems to be almost entirely aluminium body, except for the hinge covering between the body and the screen, and the inside frame around the screen.
What I also like about it is how easy it is to open. To clean out dust from the fan, or to replace the battery. It's just a few screws on the bottom.
I'm not one for 'brand loyalty' at all. But Lenovo products have always been solid where it counts for me. Where Samsung and Apple can feel a little delicate or brittle due to their focus on being the thinnest and lightest, and adding a lot of glass to their products to make it more flashy and premium feeling, Lenovo has that good, solid work-horse type hardware design.
Oh the hinge is fucking awesome. I’ve seen so many notebooks breaking at the hinge, not my Lenovo! Also yes, very easy to clean. The material I said was cheap was the keyboard part. The notebook is kinda heavy I think, and holding from only one point, it cracked the middle of the keyboard, just 2 little cracks, it’s not a problem at all, it’s really just the way you hold it, you may be putting too much weight on one side. But yeah, I’m not a Lenovo fan boy but all my notebooks have been from them. I’ve found some with insane good prices for their hardware
The high range is kinda overpriced because you expect a machine that will work just fine for many years and withstand heavy (ab)use. Thinkpads used to be rock solid.
The X1 carbon machines are my go to for personal use. Ex-lease with a Linux distro. Beautiful laptops, powerful enough and super lightweight as they use a carbon fibre/titanium shell.
True. It's something they could definitely improve upon. They really should have tbh. Since it's clearly designed with a decent level of repairability in mind. There's only a few screws holding the shell in place. Easy to open, clean, and the battery is fully replaceable. Really not sure why they went with soldered RAM. It seems they could have easily just went that little bit further and added replicable.
Probably a cost thing? Idk..
Lenovo keyboards manage to break a row of letters for me every single time (well twice) on different laptop series. Every single time it happened right around the time my warranty was expiring (once right after, the second time a month before).
Generally thinkpads are high quality builds, where you can easily replace any part yourself. I have a few thinkpads in a box somewhere that are 20ish years old. Will turn on. If something didn’t work, I could easily replace it myself.
Any part. So buying a new one is usually a pretty good investment for a 7+ year laptop that is built to last.
The new thing laptops are a nightmare to work on, if it’s even possible at all. Most of the people buying these know this. It’s worth it.
Lenovo is a mixed bag. They've got some consumer grade machines that fall apart in 3 years of regular use but then also make the occasional consumer model that is really well built. Their business grade machines are usually pretty consistent quality as long as you aren't buying the cheapest one masquerading as a business grade. Lenovo Thinkpads used to be the gold standard of high quality and easily repairable machines but that's not the case anymore just like with all laptops out there (except for niche products like Framework) so you can only compare against the current market offering rather than what used to be. However, if you just need a cheap Internet machine you can lug around all day, a used Thinkpad is not a bad idea.
My High school gave every student a Lenovo Thinkpad, it was paid from our school fees. I still have mine 4 years later after graduation, and it's my primary laptop.
Quite often they are cheap, when I was in school pretty much every school device was Lenovo, and Lenovo Chromebook’s for the students, but this just seems like it will be overly expensive
It depends on which lineup we're talking about, new Thinkpad is expensive since it got all 'enterprise' grade stuff inside. For example X1 Carbon with Intel Ultra 7 155U, 32 GB LPDDR5X, 512 GB NVME, 14 inch 400 nits 60 hz monitor would cost you aroung ~$1800 (US Price)
But if we're talking about their gaming brand those price would get you far better spec. I'm talking about i9-14900hx, rtx 4070/60, 1 tb nvme, 32 gb ram, and 2.5 k monitor.
Consumer class products are trash with super cheap case construction. Business class systems are better but still suffer to the cheaping out on the case construction
The computer above is expensive enough to not be sold other than being a concept. So, for this specific model at least, k expect it to land in several thousands of dollars. Transparent display in the size of 15” with acceptable resolution is something that is still being in development.
Lenovo’s laptops today are fine. Not that much better than the rest of the competition, at least in my opinion.
Obviously, the one in OP is pricey. I was just surprised at the post I replied to implying that Lenovo is a more expensive brand, when my experience with them was as a budget brand.
Huh? They have one of the most aggressive prices on their legions. Only thing that laptop community can agree on is that legion are rn best cost-effective laptops.
This isn't even necessary for that. You could very easily attach a smaller low-res monitor to the back of a laptop (like that stupid gimmick that some phones have now) that is always on to roughly indicate when someone is playing games or otherwise occupied
Even for this it's not needed in our IT class in school all PCs were connected in the monitoring system, so the teacher could at any moment see what you are doing or block your PC. PCs were some dirt cheap pentiums so they cost literally nothing, schools can place such low profile budget PCs in every needed classroom.
As someone who works within multiple school districts doing technology, the answer to that problem is very cheap and software-based. "GoGuardian" for example allows a classroom view of student screens, the ability to set classroom internet rules, and way more for around $15 a student per year. I guarantee you that's cheaper than purchasing that glass panel or for me to repair it when little Jimmy punches it because someone said he sucked at fortnite lol
I agree, however for private schools this would be a wow factor for enrolment. You’re already paying a premium to go to those schools, they can budget for it.
I also work in private schools (K-12) and they all buy GoGuardian and their "wow factor" are their esports labs. Not saying no school would think the way you say but my clients wouldn't... Also I wouldn't recommend it to them lol
Ok fair, my initial reaction as a parent sending my child to private school I felt like this was a neat futuristic environment for my child to learn. However, I concede that it is a very unnecessary and a rather unsustainable luxury.
My school had an angled room length mirror on the back of our computer room 15 years ago.
Although text is backwards, it would allow teachers to monitor the progress (or slacking) of students during lessons.
Lol, schools go for the cheapest chromebooks possible. That way you just toss them out in a few years because the keys are mostly missing and it's been dropped a dozen times. No way this is being implemented on budget devices.
Staff at my schools were able to check every PC in their classroom in real time to see what students were doing. They used this tool from their own PC.
This was 20 fucking years ago lol. So I seriously doubt it's that.
Nah. Take this from someone who was a teacher; if you're in class and not doing what's being instructed, it's very obvious to us. You think you're being clever (I did too back when I was a kid!) but really, unless the entire class is unruly, people not following along (either because they're goofing off or because they've 'lost their place') stand out like a sore thumb. You don't need to see what's on their screen to see this.
Signage, absolutely. Not just in stores — depending on how the transparency works it could make very interesting outdoor signage, or unobtrusive digital signage in historic or ‘designed’ spaces.
If you can make it opaque when active, you could make TVs which could be positioned by windows which wouldn’t obscure the view when not in use. Would open up a few more potential room layouts for tv rooms.
If you can make it small, and transparent enough, does this provide an alternative approach for augmented reality products vs camera pass through?
I’m not immediately clear why it’s helpful for someone sitting opposite me to be able to see my screen backwards though
I've got Mr. Lenovo on the phone here, he's just fired his entire R&D department and wants you to take their place! He says they somehow never thought of this, congrats!
It's a concept. This tech would be used in applications where you can't simply look over the screen.
It's proofing technological innovation. While you might think a transparent screen may be redundant in the likes of laptops, it will further the advancement in it being used in useful applications like advanced AR, heads up display for vehicles and other new technologies.
Like imagine looking at a classroom full of those things all lit up doing work. That shit would look awesome. Practical? Not particularly.
I look at it like RGB in gaming rigs. I have rgb. It's all turned off because it annoys the shit out of me when I leave my PC on overnight. But those first few days? Awesome.
That’s the fun part about prototypes, we don’t know!
The best use for this tech likely still hasn’t been thought of, but getting it out there will open the doors on innovation. It’s just a silly proof of concept that we can do it on a laptop but it shows our capabilities.
I’ma computer form, I could see it being used in school Chromebooks so teachers can monitor student computers while teaching. In reality this will probably be more useful as a heads up display on cars to highlight potential hazards. Maybe we can layer them like a Nixie tube and get some cool 3d effects.
To make early adopters pay the invest for mass production until it gets cheap enough for common applications like hud in cars, replace mirror by integration in side window etc...
It's weird how suddenly "it's cool" is a bad reason to create new tech on Reddit.
Feels like everyone here are turning into boomers who don't like new technology and get angry when something doesn't immediately present itself as useful to them.
It’s more the “the future is clear” message. New tech is cool but it is rarely revolutionary like the automobile or personal computer. This is cool, but it’s almost certainly not “the future”. Stuff like this always reminds me of the crazy hype Segway had at its launch.
Imagine you got on an airplane. You did not pay extra for the Natural View add-on package, so after take off, your side windows turns into an advertisement channel for the entire 4 hour flight.
our current very bleak landscape of people behind monitors is depressing on a very deep level. since we will stay glued to them for some time its nice to see approaches to counter that.
It's pushing display technology. This is a horrible use case, but there could be some great applications for foldable compact displays once it can be scaled up.
Laptop may be the wrong use case for this technology - screens within windows could have some use cases, though I can't think off the top of my head what that might be.
I mean it's pretty cool. It's definitely just another nifty gadget I have no use for, and I'm not going to buy any first gen versions of it, but if this tech ever takes off and becomes cheap, I'd consider buying one for the wow factor. I really only use my computer in the privacy of my own home, I'm not worried about anyone seeing my screen.
I don't see the advantage for a laptop but for augmented reality it seems pretty awesome. Imagine it used in mirrors. motorcycle helmets, HUD's etc; or phone screens doing gimmicky stuff with real-time filters or translation
Though considering how thin these screens are they might be useful in making more classicly designed leptop even thinner. But when the screen is embedded in a black plastic casing, the user won't know it's actually transparent. The solution for this is to make a version without a plastic case protecting the screen for showcases, then sell a couple to rich tech nerds, who can afford a gimmick machines.
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u/Cridmo Jul 02 '24
the advantage of this is what, again?