Lenovo's Yoga Is an Ultrabook With a Twist

LAS VEGAS — Lenovo has announced its latest play in the ultrabook space: the IdeaPad Yoga, a thin, full-featured notebook with a funky hinge that lets you fold the screen all they way around, turning the device into a tablet. Lenovo says the Yoga will be available during the second half of 2012 with a starting price of $1,200. The Yoga is a Windows 8 device, so its 13.1-inch touchscreen will take advantage of the operating system's 10-point multitouch capabilities. There's an Intel processor under the hood, and the Yoga will be configurable to hold up to 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of SSD-based storage. The size and weight are comparable to most other ultrabooks: 0.67 inches and 3.1 pounds. As an ultrabook, it's stylish — there's a leather palm rest, leather trim, and the typical Lenovo chicklet-style keyboard. To convert into a tablet, the Yoga uses a two-point hinge. You can either fold the screen into “tent” or “easel” configurations, so that it functions much like a traditional tablet propped up by a stand, or you can fold the lid all the way around and hold it like a normal tablet — albeit one thicker, heavier and larger than the tablets you're used to. When you flip it around into a tablet, the Windows 8 desktop switches to the Metro UI. Volume buttons are on the sides of the device so they're easy to reach in any of the touchscreen modes. The ultra-tablet-hybrid-book-thing joins several other like-minded Lenovo devices announced at the Consumer Electronics Show taking place here this week. On Sunday, the company showed off a pair of low-priced ultrabooks, the IdeaPad U310 and U410, and the IdeaPad S2, an Android-powered tablet with a keyboard dock that converts it into something very close to a laptop. We'll have hands-on photos and videos with the IdeaPad Yoga in the coming days.

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