You might have overlooked Lenovo’s ThinkPad Yoga laptop hybrid line for serious 3D work. First, that yoga name. Like that popular exercise, these devices are pretty flexible: ThinkPad Yoga’s function as regular laptops or quickly turn into tablet form. Nice.
But the Yoga’s were never powerful enough for serious 3D work.
That’s all changed with the potent Nvidia graphics inside their latest go at it, the ThinkPad P40 Yoga. The new Quadro M500M chipset inside is a workstation level component that delivers instant response to your mouse or pen moves.
And yes, it does yoga of a sort with its different user modes. Of course it’s a ThinkPad, so it works well as a traditional laptop. But twist and fold back the screen, and you’ve got a tablet. Somewhere along the way, the machine can also be used in tent mode, something you’d use when giving a demo or catching up with the latest Mr. Robot installment.
You’ll wish you were as flexible as the Lenovo ThinkPad P40 Yoga Mobile Workstation with its different user modes.
If you’re handy with using pen input, you’ll appreciate that the ThinkPad P40 Yoga has Wacom’s Active ES sketching technology built in. This allows you to sketch right onto the screen, with the pressure sensitivity of a top Wacom Cintiq tablet. Now, that’s cool.
The Wacom technology delivers 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity on the Yoga’s 2560 X 1440 IPS display, meaning you can be as precise as you want. The supplied ThinkPad Pen Pro, which fits into the side of the computer, comes with a supply of additional pen tips that provide varied levels of tactile feedback.
You’ll want your ThinkPad P40 Yoga in tablet mode when doing sketches.
If you’re interested in numbers, the P40 Yoga employs Intel’s 6th generation Core i7 CPU, handles up to 16GB of RAM, and delivers a NVIDIA Quadro M500M GPU with 2GB VRAM. You can opt for a 512GB SSD for storage.
Another useful innovation making its debut is Lenovo’s Lift n’ Lock keyboard. This creation is like an anti-butt dialing mechanism for a laptop: you’re saved from miscellaneous key pushes when using tablet mode as a hinge automatically locks the keys when you switch the Yoga into said tablet mode. Don’t take my word for it – you can see Lenovo’s video on this by clicking here.
This is, as you might imagine, Yoga’s tent mode.
The P40 Yoga supports Lenovo OneLink+ cable docking solution, or you can opt for a ThinkPad Ultra Dock, a new dock featuring better performance and more versatile docking connectors than previous models, we’re told.
The ThinkPad P40 Yoga in stand mode.
Lenovo’s ThinkPad P40 Yoga will be available starting in the first quarter of 2016. Pricing begins at $1,399. Want more info? You can visit the ThinkPad P40 Yoga page here.
