Lenovo adds a colorful second screen to the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3

Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie. I love funky laptops that are just a little bit different. And for CES 2022, so far the Lenovo think book plus gen three is scratching that itch for me. Speaker 1: So even though we usually think of Lenovo as a pretty button down company, they make think pads, you know, very plain business laptops. They make yogas [00:00:30] witch fold, but you know, we're still very traditional in their own way. Even their gaming laptops, uh, have a certain understated gray design to them. Uh, they also do a lot of fun, funky stuff off the think book. Plus gen three is the funky weird laptop from this year's CES. It follows on the feet of previous think book systems, which have tried to play around with the concept of secondary screens on laptops, which is something that every couple of years comes outta the woodwork and people try it out, [00:01:00] never quite catches on. And then we don't see it for a while. This one I've got high hopes for, because it combines a bunch of really interesting things. Uh, previous think books with secondary screens actually had E ink displays on the, on the back of the screen, uh, which I think is super interesting. Speaker 1: I love E ink, but maybe it's not the most practical thing in the world. Other people who have taken color screens and made them secondary screens inside a laptop often replace the touch pan with that. So you have a touch pan. That's also a color, you know, [00:01:30] LCD touch screen, and that's not super practical either. So here in this new think book, plus you've got a 17 inch display and then you've got a separate eight inch color, LCD touch screen built into the bottom half of the laptop, but then you've also got a regular touch pad on top of that. So you're not losing out on having just that traditional touch pad experience. Now the regular screen, it's not just, you know, your standard laptop screen. It's actually a 21 by 10 aspect ratio screen, which is something that's pretty [00:02:00] rare, but I always like it when I see it. Speaker 1: That means it's super super screen. Uh, some gaming monitors are set up like this, and I think it's a really interesting way to just get maximum real estate. If you're gonna look at things side by side on the screen. And then of course, you've got this second display right over here next to the keyboard. And it's almost like they took like an eight inch, you know, little tablet and just dropped it right in there. Now, what can you do with the secondary display? You know, a lot of it is gonna depend on how different software applications supported, but in general, [00:02:30] uh, you can use it as a launcher and put some, you know, shortcuts you most frequently used programs on it. You can use it as like a notepad, uh, where you have notes and you can just have 'em on that screen rather on your, on your big screen. Speaker 1: Uh, you can use it for, uh, media controls and lighting controls and things like that. If you send those commands to that particular screen, or you can use it as like a big number pad, you know, if you need an actual, you know, number pad, but you don't have that on your laptop, you know, you can use it as that. Also [00:03:00] Lenovo says you can also use it to mirror some stuff on your smartphone. I'm assuming that's, especially if you have a Motorola Android phone, cuz Lenovo makes those also, uh, you could waterfall content off, let's say your, your full screen document onto this as a secondary space to hold extra text that doesn't fit on your main screen, or you can use it as a Wacom, almost style habit with a stylist to do some editing on your photos or some artwork. I haven't seen that in person yet. Speaker 1: Uh, but that sounds very interesting to me now on the big screen, [00:03:30] the resolution is 30, 72 by 1440 on that little eight inch LC D the resolution is 800 by 12. So is this the most practical laptop you've ever seen? Well, no, but it's interesting to see people try new ideas and of anybody throwing stuff at laptops to see what's gonna stick. I trust Lenovo at least to, you know, make sure the ergonomics of it work because they're experts in, you know, keyboard layout and everything like that. And of course, I like the idea of having a color touch [00:04:00] screen in here that does not interfere with the regular touch pad. And isn't like in a weird spot, like on the back of the lid where you're not really gonna see it all that often Lenovo says this new think book plus gen three will be available in may of 2022. For what I think is a fairly reasonable 1399, considering there's so much interesting, unusual stuff going on in there.