Lenovo's new concept laptops include solar panels and tall, foldable screens

Mar 3, 2025 - 04:30

0 2

Lenovo's new concept laptops include solar panels and tall, foldable screens

(Image credit: Lenovo)

Lenovo is known for its steadfast business laptops and premium ultraportables, but in the last few years, it's increasingly been using tradeshows to show off proof-of-concept ideas that are far-out, fascinating, or just plain weird. Ahead of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company is revealing a slew of concepts, including a solar-powered Yoga laptop and a ThinkBook Flip with an outward-folding 18.1-inch screen.

The company also has a ton of concepts regarding AI (Surprise!), a 3D laptop concept, and ideas for the "Magic Bay" on the ThinkBook 16p.

Yoga Solar PC Concept

The Yoga Solar PC Concept is a delightfully simple idea: stick a solar panel in the lid of a laptop to charge your PC. Specifically, it converts over 24% of energy, which Lenovo says is among "the best in the industry."

Lenovo says this conversion comes from "Back Contact Cell" tech that "moves mounting brackets and gridlines to the back of the solar cells, maximizing the active absorption."

Here's Lenovo explaining how the whole thing works:

"The breakthrough advanced Dynamic Solar Tracking system constantly measures the solar panel’s current and voltage, working with the Solar-First Energy system to automatically adjust the charger’s settings to prioritize sending the harvested energy to the system, helping to ensure maximum energy-savings and system stability no matter the intensity of the light. Even in low-light conditions, the panel is still able to generate power, sustaining battery charge when the PC is idling."

All of this, Lenovo claims, means that in direct sunlight, you can get enough energy in 20 minutes to run an hour of local 1080p video playback, assuming you have uninterrupted exposure to the sun. Since there are three USB Type-C ports on the concept, you can still charge with a cable. (This is good if you work in an office sometimes, or perhaps in perpetually cloudy weather.)

The laptop weighs 2.29 pounds and is 0.6 inches thick, so you're not seeing some huge increase in size due to the panel. The concept notebook is powered by an Intel Core Ultra processor (though Lenovo isn't saying which), up to 32GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, and a 50.2 WHr battery. There's a 14-inch OLED screen, as well.

Like most concepts, no price or release date is anywhere to be found.

Beyond the laptop, Lenovo has a kit for its existing devices (also a concept), called the Solar Power Kit for Yoga. It features a solar panel with USB Type-C that stores power in battery packs that you can use to power your laptop later. "With a detachable USB-C solar panel that can be attached to a bag, backpack, tent, or tree, the power bank can be charged wherever there is sunlight for the solar panel to capture," Lenovo wrote in a press release.

ThinkBook Codename Flip

On the business side of Lenovo's portfolio, another concept comes under the ThinkBook brand, "Codename Flip." The laptop has an 18.1-inch OLED display with a 2000 x 2664 resolution and 3:4 aspect ratio. The panel folds outwards using a dual hinge for five use cases:

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Header Cell - Column 0

Screen size

Aspect Ratio

Tablet Mode	12.9 inches	16:10
Read Mode	12.8 inches	16:10
Clamshell Mode	13.1-inches	16:10
Share Mode	13.1-inch and 12.9-inch (outward facing)	Dual 16:10
Vertical Mode	18.1 inches	3:4

Lenovo quotes both tablet and read mode as having 2000 x 1258 resolutions, so presumably you get something pretty close in clamshell and share mode.

Other specs include an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, 32GB of LPDDR5x RAM, and an unstated amount of PCIe SSD storage. It all fits in the chassis with a 13-inch laptop size, because the rest of the screen folds out. Lenovo has been very into flexible OLED displays lately; at CES 2025, Lenovo brought a laptop with a rollable screen

to market. That laptop, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6, came out of a previous concept from 2022.

Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.

ThinkBook 3D Laptop and AI Ring

Lenovo's last laptop-based concept at MWC is the ThinkBook 3D Laptop, using a "directional backlight" to switch between 2D and 3D. It's a 3200 x 2000 display, which Lenovo says is aimed at business and creative pros.

To go with the laptop is an "AI Ring" for touch-free navigation and adjusting 3D models. I want to see this one in action, but it seems pretty hard to beat the keyboard and touchpad on a clamshell laptop (which the concept does have).

Magic Bay Concepts

Lenovo also has a series of concept attachments for its ThinkBook 16p Gen 6 (a laptop that won't be sold in North America), which features a "Magic Bay" port for accessories. At MWC, Lenovo brought four Magic Bay ideas, though we have no idea if they'll come to market for the 16p or any other laptop in the future.

The first two are display ideas: There's an attachment with two 13.3-inch secondary screens to turn the ThinkBook into a three-screen workstation. There's also a smaller 8-inch display attachment to keep important information and messaging apps at the forefront or to serve "as a dedicated AI dashboard."

There are also two other AI-powered concepts, including "codename Tiko," which Lenovo describes as "A compact AI emotional interaction companion that displays real-time emoji-style status, provides interactive gesture-based responses, and offers personalized emoji." Then there's Tiko Pro, which seems more useful as an "AI-powered display" that acts as an assistant to bring you information as you need it. Honestly, it looks like a screen for Windows 8 live tiles, but we'll see what the final product looks like.

Lenovo has taken some concepts and brought them (or aspects of them) to market before. But as of now, all of these are just that - ideas. No prices or release dates have been mentioned yet.

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and Mastodon @FreedmanAE.mastodon.social.

Go To Source