Solar panels are finding new ways to fit into unfamiliar places. With that in mind, it’s taken far too long for anybody to try sticking one directly into a laptop. For MWC 2025, Lenovo showed off a Yoga Solar PC concept. Too many laptops claim full 24 hours of battery life even though you’ll never get it. I’ve seen the Yoga Solar in action, and it’s intriguing enough, considering it may actually last for 24 hours without needing to plug it in.
Welcome to Lenovo’s wacky world of concept products. The company is known for taking ostensibly odd laptops and making them a reality, such as the $3,500 ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable that debuted at CES 2025. Amid the launch of several new Yoga, ThinkBook, and ThinkPad laptops (in case you were praying, yes, the big red TrackPoint is back), Lenovo is showing off some wild designs. There’s a slew of mobile devices with downright weird displays, including some that fold backward and extra screens you slot into the back of the laptop lid. None of these have prices nor any hint of a possible release. But when most laptops look and feels so similar, there’s still room for innovation—even if some designs aren’t that practical.
The Lenovo Yoga Solar PC Is Relatively Thin and Light Despite the Solar Panel Lid
The Yoga Solar PC left the best impression out of the crowded field of concept laptops. The solar panel on the lid has a supposed 24% solar conversion rate, which is already rather impressive, knowing the normal conversion rate for most user-end solar panels is between 15 and 22%. Lenovo claims they achieved this by maneuvering the gridlines you usually find on a solar panel behind the solar cells, offering more real estate for energy absorption. The laptop can also measure the current voltage, which gets translated and prioritized for specific system settings.
Like any solar panel, this doesn’t need direct sunlight to get power, but the difference when I pointed it out a window on a sunny day was significant. Lenovo’s software showed the power accumulation at around 7 V when facing away from the sunlight and 12 V when facing toward it. It could get more when getting direct sunlight. Despite the presence of the solar panel, the laptop still weighs a little more than 2.6 pounds, which isn’t out of the realm of what to expect from most modern laptops.
We should note that the panel isn’t generating the required power to run the PC continuously. Lenovo claimed that 20 minutes of direct sunlight will transform into about one hour of video playback battery life. Depending on the CPU and battery, that could be 1/20 of the laptop’s battery life. This concept PC was running on an Intel Lunar Lake chip, which is already relatively power efficient. It could be handy for construction workers who don’t want to plug their laptops into their truck bed. Hell, I would want to take it to the park to get some work done so both my laptop and I can soak up some rays.
What About a ‘Flip’ Bendable ThinkBook?
Don’t think it’s just the rollable trying new things with flexible screens. Lenovo’s ThinkBook “codenamed Flip” (why does a concept laptop need a codename?) is another way of getting an 18.1-inch, vertically-minded OLED screen. Still, it achieves the same goal as the Rollable by folding up from the lid. This also means users across from the Flip can see a portion of the screen. The PC supports Workspace Split Screen to show a different image on the rear versus the front. The obvious problem with this design is it leaves the curved, folded portion of the screen exposed, even with the lid closed. Lenovo needs to work out a way to keep the extra screen safe from dust and accidental bumps.
But what if you wanted more screen space on the horizontal axis? The new Lenovo ThinkBook 16p Gen 6’s Magic Bay extenders are here. The dual screens are essentially the same as the Xebec, with two wings that plug into a PC’s Thunderbolt ports to add multiple screens. Lenovo’s design uses the pins on the Magic Bay to eliminate the need to use up valuable ports. There are already a lot of dual displays, though I think the more practical compact 8-inch display could be handy for keeping Slack open without relying on an external display. We found the Xebec could be so heavy it needs a kickstand to keep the laptop lid upright. The Dual Display Magic Bay concept has the same issue.
But there’s more. Take, for instance, Lenovo’s idea for 3D screens in the form of a curved display and a laptop. It’s similar to Samsung’s 3D technology, which relies on eye tracking to produce a faux-3D image on the screen. It only works if you’re sitting directly in front of it, so the camera can’t pick up the image either. The 3D image does look extra spiffy on a 34-inch curved display, and you can change it to 2D with a single switch if you can’t stand that Nintendo 3DS look.
Big Red Button Fans Rejoice: The ThinkPad X13 Brings Back TrackPoint
The device maker had so many concepts on display that the regular products you can buy seem blasé by comparison. That ThinkBook 16p Gen 6 can get up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, a Nvidia RTX 5070, and 64 GB of RAM. The Yoga line also gets Intel Aura Edition versions, like the Yoga Pro 9i with a new Intel Core Ultra and up to a Nvidia RTX 5070 discrete GPU. The Yoga Pro 7i Aura Edition, with its 3K OLED display, can get up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 CPU.
As for ThinkPad fans, the big news is the first 2-in-1 convertible for the line of business laptops in the form of the ThinkPad T14. The 14-inch line includes an AMD Ryzen Pro AI 300 CPU or an Intel Core Ultra 7 H, U, or V line (with different RAM options depending on CPU. The Ultra H and U and Ryzen Pro can also get a 2.8K OLED display. Then there’s also the ThinkPad X13 Gen 6, a portable laptop with the red “nipple” TrackPoint in the center of the keyboard. ThinkPad fans made a stink over this year’s X9 dropping TrackPoint in favor of a haptic trackpad. Even in a world of wild concepts, sometimes it’s the little touches that matter.
