ThinkPad Helix deformation Flat Panel evaluation

Looking back at the CES 2013 Electronics Show early this year, it seems hard to remember what new products are being released, basically a bunch of products that are mixed together and lack an impressive part. and notebook products are more serious, in the exhibition to look at, just a bunch of similar appearance, the price of more than 1000 U.S. dollars in Windows 8 ultra-polar.

In this chaotic situation, Lenovo ThinkPad Helix can be called a standout. This is a flat/notebook two-in-one hybrid design products, in general, is a flat plate, and installed to the battery with the keyboard base, and became a super. Of course, it has a high hardware configuration and runs a full version of the Windows 8 system, and the configuration of the two batteries (fuselage + base) also gives it a long battery life. Even, it has a two-fan design on its keyboard base that allows you to overclocking the device. As it sounds, Lenovo's ThinkPad Helix is like a dream product designed for high-end users, and is expected to be rugged in terms of portability, office, strong performance and good scalability.

Lenovo ThinkPad Helix should have been on sale in February this year, but for a variety of reasons it has been postponed until now to come to us. As at CES, its specs and features have not changed, and I can't wait to start using it. But you have to notice the changes in the market: Intel has recently released a new generation of core processor Haswell, and some of the products using the processor have been released or listed, which makes me re-examine the value of Lenovo's ThinkPad Helix.

Whether Lenovo ThinkPad Helix has missed the best time to go on the market, it still has some opportunities. Then the price of 1679.99 U.S. dollars (about 10300 yuan) of high-end deformed flat plate is worth choosing, together with the evaluation of the content to find the answer.

Fuselage design: Good concept is only the beginning of success

Lenovo ThinkPad Helix's design concept may be more inclined to highlight the combination of the use of the form, the tablet part is like a notebook computer screen part, and the keyboard base combination is its most complete form. So it uses a lot of physical design in the connection section instead of being installed on a keyboard shell like Acer P3, connected by Bluetooth. But I personally think that Lenovo seems to attach too much importance to the concept of fitness, resulting in some of the details of the excessive design, affecting the overall use of the experience.

First, Lenovo's helix fuselage feels slightly thicker, with a 0.8-kilogram plate and nearly 1 kilograms of the base combined to 1.8 kg of total weight, perhaps the weight is still in the extreme range, but you need to consider that two parts of the weight is very close. In other words, the screen is a bit thick, it takes some effort to open the screen in the notebook form, and it probably turns the fuselage upside down. In addition, the combined fuselage is much thicker than the average 11.6-inch super pole.

The flat and base sections are designed with a black-tone design, using a frosted textured carbon fiber material that is very similar to the X1 of the ThinkPad Carbon. They are connected through a series of complex hinge connections, as many as 6 parts, in addition to the fixed interface and some port connection transfer, so that the normal use of the various interfaces on the keyboard base. The interface section has two USB and a mini video output port on the back of the base; The tablet computer has a USB, a mini video output, an SD card slot and a SIM card slot.

The hinge part of the design allows you to get some similar experience with Lenovo Yoga, you can install the tablet in front or back two directions, so that you can get a different display mode, in the screen outward, you can also put the screen on the keyboard to use, But the fact is that the original very thin flat plate into a thick slab, not much meaning. With a clumsy release button on the left side of the fuselage, you can separate the plate from the base.

Though the ThinkPad Helix is currently the most freely used form in Lenovo, the design has many problems and basically comes from hinges. I didn't even mention the ugly piece of metal on the back, it seemed to be a very perfunctory design just to block out the fans and some ugly design parts. It seems that Lenovo's designers mean: "These parts are really not beautiful, but you can cover them up."

And from X1 carbon or yoga 13 and other products can be found, Lenovo has gradually learned how to design a simple, lightweight, stylish laptop, but in the ThinkPad Helix seems to be completely backwards for several years, chaos and exposed screws, huge welding cracks can even pry open, The overall design makes people feel very strange. In a way, the ThinkPad Helix design concept is good, but the actual experience is far from achieving the desired effect, and more importantly, this is not the machine's only disadvantage.

screen, keyboard and Touch panel design: small screen + high resolution makes reading difficult

Lenovo ThinkPad Helix uses a 11.6-inch IPS screen, resolution up to 1080P, the overall display of clear and bright, accurate color reduction, visual angle is very wide, touch feel very good. But it has the same problem with many small, high-resolution Windows 8 devices, that high pixel density makes all the display elements too small, whether it's a Web page text or a program icon, which can be hard to read. Of course, this is not a hardware problem, only that Microsoft is still not ready for a high-resolution screen: Even the latest Windows 8 system, for the time being, does not support optimizations for high-resolution screens like Apple iOS or Mac OS x.

Lenovo's ThinkPad Helix Tablet also has a stylus slot in the upper-left corner, which seems to be the solution that Lenovo is proposing to cope with a high-resolution screen. This stylus does work at some point, including suspension previews, candidate features, and better selection of small icons, but this is still not the best solution. Lenovo ThinkPad Helix video playback is good, but the sound quality is more general, although the screen front has two small speakers, but the volume is lower than I expected.

Lenovo ThinkPad Helix Keyboard naturally adopted the ThinkPad series of signboard design, the key in the middle of a slightly sunken, radian design brings a good feel, but also we are familiar with the small red point pointing rod, functional key design comprehensive, the overall size of the keyboard is more than the average 11.6-inch products more spacious. In total, this is a piece of the best Windows keyboard, although the backlight feature is not configured.

Lenovo ThinkPad Helix is also starting to use a new design of the touchpad, discarding the previous key design, fully used in full touch form, use more smooth and smoother, and more suitable for operating Windows 8 system. Of course, some of the operational problems of the system still exist, some gestures to slightly cotton, this is the problem Microsoft needs to solve.

Performance and battery life: powerful and overclocking

With Intel already offering Haswell processors with better performance and longer endurance, the hardware configuration of Lenovo's ThinkPad Helix has been slightly outdated for the time being. It comes with a third generation Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor with a 1.8GHz frequency, as well as 4GB memory and 128GB/256GB solid-state drives. It also comes with a Windows 8 system with no built-in third-party applications, but Lenovo's own apps and Norton Antivirus will pop up occasionally.

In actual use, I feel Lenovo's overall performance of the ThinkPad Helix is very good, and Microsoft Surface Pro equivalent, while the ThinkPad Helix installed to the keyboard base, the built-in fan can make the processor overclocking operation, the overall performance better. In addition to large software like Adobe Illustrator, running a general mainstream application on the ThinkPad Helix almost imperceptible the performance gap between the tablet and the laptop.

However, Lenovo ThinkPad Helix image capabilities in general, it is easier to connect people to the graphics performance of the Haswell platform, so I believe that if the machine after the upgrade Haswell, will achieve better performance. As for endurance, the ThinkPad Helix tablet itself can achieve about 5 hours of continuous use, has been very prominent in similar products, while the keyboard base, the use of time to extend to 8 hours, if the future upgrade to a new platform, then the endurance will be immeasurable.

Evaluation summary and scoring: The connection design still needs to be improved

First of all, Lenovo ThinkPad Helix Worth affirming is that it really combines the tablet with the notebook, providing a solid performance, excellent keyboard and long-term endurance, which is generally similar products can not balance three advantages. But the price is to sacrifice some portability and the rough design of the product itself. I personally prefer a lightweight and stylish hybrid tablet/notebook, rather than a combination of two poorly designed products.

Lenovo ThinkPad Helix Overall Rating

And for the ThinkPad Helix this product the most influential part is not other unlisted Haswell mixed products, but from the brand itself competition. For example, you want to have a good tablet/notebook two in one computer, Lenovo Yoga Series is a good choice, it is thin and stylish and has excellent design, large size keyboard and touch board is also an advantage. If you are more inclined to notebook, ThinkPad Carbon X1 is also a lightweight design and has a good performance in every aspect of the model.

And for Lenovo ThinkPad Helix, I hope that Lenovo can take some time to rethink the design, with the Haswell processor, should be more recognition.