The Lenovo ThinkBook 13x Gen 2 is a 2.7 pound notebook with a 13.3 inch display and an Intel Alder Lake-U processor. But the most unusual thing about this laptop is that it’s designed to work with an optional wireless charging pad.
When Lenovo introduced the notebook a year ago, the company also unveiled a wireless charger that can send 65W of electricity to the notebook while offering another 10W to charge a phone or other gadgets. Now Lenovo has unveiled a second-gen wireless dock that adds WiFi 6 to the equation. The result is a dock that’s good for more than just charging.
The new dock has an HDMI 2.0 port, USB-C port, and three USB 2.0 Type-A ports, allowing you to connect up to two 4K/60Hz displays, a keyboard, mouse, storage devices, or other USB peripherals to the dock.
But you still don’t need any wires to connect the dock to your laptop. The dock uses Power-by-contact technology to charge the ThinkBook 13x Gen 2 and WiFi 6 for a high-speed, low-latency data connection.
Lenovo does seem to have reduced the laptop charging capacity a bit though. The dock now sends 45W of electricity to the ThinkBook 13x Gen 2 when it’s placed atop the laptop charging area.
The Qi charging pad on the side of the dock still offers 10W of power for smartphones, smartwatches, earbuds, and other gadgets that support the Qi wireless charging standard.
Lenovo says the updated wireless dock will be “bundled with select 2023 models of the ThinkBook 13x Gen 2,” and it doesn’t sound like there are any plans to sell it separately to folks who may already have that laptop.
It’s also a little disappointing that the press release doesn’t mention any plans to add compatibility with other laptops, which means that if you want Lenovo’s latest wireless charging technology you’ll have to buy a laptop using last year’s processor technology.
