Lenovo mixes smartphone features into its all-day Miix 630
This 2-in-1 is part of a new breed of PCs at CES 2018 with Snapdragon processors and always-on LTE.
- Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
Despite years of increased performance and higher-res screens, the one thing that still drives most people crazy about their laptops is battery life. That's the appeal behind a new breed of PCs that run on Snapdragon 835 processors from Qualcomm, rather than the Intel (and occasionally AMD) CPUs that power nearly every modern PC.
A handful of examples have been announced by HP and Asus, and now Lenovo is joining the party -- so far, still a pretty exclusive one -- with the Miix 630. This 2-in-1 hybrid is a windows-powered 12.3-inch slate-style tablet with an included backlit clip-on keyboard and a stylus.
Lenovo claims up to 20 hours of battery life, which is the main selling point of these new Snapdragon PCs. But they also offer always-on LTE connections, which is a throwback to a once-common laptop feature, a built-in data connection, that's been rarely seen in recent years. It also adds to the phone-like vibe.
Like the other Qualcomm-powered PCs we've seen, this run Windows 10 S, which is a limited version of Windows 10 that only allows apps from the official Windows 10 app store to be installed. There are some valid security reasons for doing that, and it helps ensure software compatibility with these new processors, but it also limits your choice of web browsers, photo editing applications and more. Fortunately, like most Windows 10 S systems, you can upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for free for a limited time.
The Lenovo Miix 630 is expected in the second quarter of 2018, starting at $799 in the US. International price and availability have not been announced yet, but that translates to £590 or AU$1,020.
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