Lenovo’s first PC with a foldable OLED display is up for pre-order for $2500 and up and expected to ship in the fourth quarter of 2020.

First announced earlier this year, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold is a computer that sort of straddles the line between tablet and notebook. It’s a Windows tablet with a 13.3 inch, 2048 x 1536 pixel touchscreen display. But since the screen can fold in the middle, you can position it so the bottom of the screen acts as a keyboard or pen input section while the top acts like a laptop display, hold it in two hands like a book, or fold the whole thing in half so the screen is covered.

Lenovo also offers optional accessories including a Bluetooth keyboard, an Easel Stand, and a Lenovo Mod Pen.

That said, the Thinkpad X1 Fold doesn’t have a physical keyboard built-in, which could make it an awkward fit for the kind of computing folks are used to doing with premium, business-class laptops. So I don’t really expect the Fold to replace other members of the Thinkpad family anytime soon – in fact, Lenovo just introduced several other new laptops including a 2 pound Lenovo ThinkPad X1 nano and a new crop of ThinkBook laptops with a choice of Intel or AMD chips.

But the X1 Fold could open up new possibilities for users who’d prefer to use touch and pen most of the time, only pulling up a virtual keyboard or connecting to a physical one when they need it.

That said, you’ll end up paying a premium price for a gadget that may not offer the same level of performance you’d expect from a $2500 PC.

It’s powered by an Intel Core i5-L16G7 Lakefield processor, which pairs four low-power Intel Atom “Tremont” CPU cores with a single higher-performance “Sunny Cove” CPU core (similar to the ones used 10th-gen Intel Ice Lake chips) and Intel Gen11 graphics. Performance is expected to be meh.

The Thinkpad X1 Fold also has just 8GB of RAM, although it is relatively speedy LPDDR4X 4267MHz memory. It’s soldered to the motherboard and there’s no way to upgrade.

The $2500 starting price also only gets you 256GB of solid state storage. Lenovo offers up to a 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD, but you’ll have to pay more than $3,000 to get it.

Lenovo also doesn’t include the optional Bluetooth keyboard or pen with the entry-level model.

What you do get is an unusual computer that you can use as a tablet or pseudo-laptop, which supports WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.1, and which has two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports, a 50 Wh battery, stereo speakers, four microphones, and a 5MP camera with IR support for Windows Hello-compatible face recognition.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold measures 11.8′ x 9.3″ x 0.45″ when unfolded, or 9.3″ x 6.2″ x 1.1″ when folded in half, and the it weighs about 2.2 pounds.

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2 replies on “Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold is available for pre-order for $2500”

  1. So you get a sub-laptop where you can still type fast on a real keyboard (imagine confined personal spaces like on the train, on a high table or in the audience at a congress presentation), a very light portable computer (imagine any space where you have a table) and a pretty big tablet (for when there is no table or you don’t need a keyboard) all in one 😉

    It’s a matter of perspective. In my opinion it’s the only concept with a foldable screen that makes sense. In fact it’s the only concept that actually turns a foldable screen into more than just a screen that’s foldable if you catch my drift. The only thing that leaves me puzzled is why the bluetooth keyboard is not included. And yes, it should have more RAM. I really like the return of the 4:3 or 5:4 aspect ratio and I don’t care about the everything-must-be-thin-nonsense anyway. I really hope this kind of device succeeds.

  2. So you get a big heavy tablet with lacklustre internals and pay about three times what the specs themselves suggest. If it had Tiger Lake and 16gb ram that would have totally transformed the proposition and at not much extra cost.

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