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Innovation Awards: Tech Awards 2023 Editor's Choice series

By Kenny Yeo - 20 Mar 2023

Innovation Awards: Tech Awards 2023 Editor's Choice series

 

Innovation Awards

The Tech Awards Innovation Awards are bestowed on products that are deemed to be ground-breaking and capable of drastically reshaping their respective product categories. 

To make the cut, the product must have been announced in the past year and must be at least in working prototype form. It cannot be a mere concept. Two Innovation Awards were given out this year and they are both highly inventive notebooks that show tremendous promise and could advance the genre in meaningful ways.


ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 3D OLED

Glasses-free 3D notebooks are not exactly new, but one that is as polished as ASUS’ new ProArt Studiobook 16 3D OLED is. Granted, glasses-free 3D notebooks are extremely niche – in fact, no one has attempted one in the past decade – but that doesn’t take anything away from the fact that this new notebook from ASUS has, hands down, the most convincing and realistic glasses-free 3D visuals that we’ve seen.

@hwztech Asus Spatial Vision technology delivers unbelievably good glasses-free 3D! #ces #ces2023 #asus #proart #studiobook #3d #lenticular #glassesfree3d #oled #hwzsg #zachdoesces #fyp ♬ Innovation - AShamaluevMusic

The magic is obviously in the display. The display is OLED and has a high resolution of 3,200 x 2,000 pixels. To create the 3D effect, there’s a thin layer of lenticular lenses in the display. These lenses help deliver separate images to your eye, thereby creating the 3D effect. Further aiding this are the dual front-facing cameras. These track your eyes and tell the display to adjust accordingly so that it can deliver the best possible 3D visuals.

And certainly, the 3D effect is palpable and highly realistic (check out our reactions). During our time with the notebook, it looks as if objects are floating right in front of us. Moreover, once you turn the 3D effects off and the display switches back to 2D mode, it looks just like any other high-quality OLED display. 

According to ASUS, this is made possible because of its OLED displays. Because the lenticular lenses split the screen into two zones (one for each eye), display brightness and screen resolution are essentially halved. Thankfully, its OLED displays’ high resolution and brightness levels help mitigate this.

If 3D notebooks ever make a comeback in full swing, they will have the ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 3D OLED to thank.

 

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i

Lenovo has been working on new notebook form factors for years. After all, this is the company that pioneered the convertible notebook. And while it has dabbled in dual-screen notebooks in the past, the latest Yoga Book 9i looks like its most thoughtful one yet.

Unlike the company’s old ThinkPad X1 Fold, where it’s one large folding screen (which was also our Innovation Award winner from 2021), the Yoga Book 9i instead uses two 13.3-inch OLED displays. Think of it as a giant Galaxy Fold or Surface Duo. Where Lenovo has been clever is in the ways you can maximise these two screens. 

Key to the Yoga Book 9i’s versatility is the stand that comes with the notebook and its detachable keyboard. With this stand, you can unfurl the twin displays and use them in both landscape or portrait mode. And in this mode, you can place the keyboard at the bottom of the stand and what you’d have is a mobile workstation with twin 13.3-inch displays. This is far more screen real estate than even what the ASUS ZenBook 17 Fold offered.

Lenovo has also built-in gestures to further maximise the dual displays. For example, if you press and hold on to a window and flick, it’ll instantly rearrange itself on the other screen. And if you use five fingers to tap on the app, it’ll immediately expand to fill both displays. It’s quite clear that Lenovo has put thought into the Yoga Book 9i’s dual-screen mode.

The beauty of the Yoga Book 9i is that you don’t have to use the stand. You can simply fold it at 90 degrees, and the other display will now work as a virtual keyboard and trackpad. And if you prefer to type on something more tactile, you can place the detachable keyboard on top of the virtual one, and the bottom half of that second display now becomes the trackpad. Used in this manner, it’s no different from any other 13-inch clamshell-style notebook.

All in all, it’s one of the most thoughtful takes on a dual-screen notebook we’ve seen yet, and we can’t wait for it to be released later this year.

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