Lenovo teases new ThinkPad laptops featuring Kaby Lake processors and precision touchpads

Lenovo is getting a head start on CES with the announcement of a bevy of new ThinkPad laptops and 2-in-1s featuring Intel’s seventh-generation Kaby Lake processors, more authentication features, less bloatware, and improved trackpads.

The company’s unveiling covers a range of both new and upgraded machines. For starters, it is updating the ThinkPad X, L and T lines with USB-C ports, optional LTE connectivity, and support for Windows Hello with optional infrared cameras. In addition, the new ThinkPads will get better displays, faster DDR4 memory, and more storage space.

There are other design tweaks as well to go with the hardware upgrades. For instance, the performance-oriented ThinkPad T-series notebooks now have thinner bezels, which results in smaller and lighter machines.

More notably, the ThinkPad T570 – also the most powerful of the lot with up to 32GB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 940MX GPU – can be equipped with Intel’s blazing fast Optane technology, a new class of memory and storage based on 3D XPoint that promises to be much faster than existing SSDs and RAM. This is actually the first laptop to be announced with support for Optane, even though Intel has not said when it will ship the technology.

That said, given how immature the technology is, opting for the Optane PCIe M.2 drive in the ThinkPad T570 will really only see it serving as secondary storage or for caching.

One new introduction is the ThinkPad Yoga 370 2-in-1, a 13.3-inch convertible that fills the gap between the 200- and 400-series Yogas. It is rugged enough to meet MilSpec certifications, and features a 1080p display, 10-hour battery life, and 1.37kg chassis.

There’s also a refreshed ThinkPad 13, intended as a more affordable 13.3-inch ultrabook with a 1080p touchscreen display and NVMe SSD storage.

On top of that, Lenovo said that its 2017 ThinkPads will all run Microsoft’s Signature Edition image of Windows 10, which comes stripped clean of bloatware. This should be a welcome boon to business customers, as it means faster systems with fewer chances of security vulnerabilities.

Another minor, but much-anticipated change, is the support on several of the new models, including the ThinkPad X270, Thinkpad Yoga 370, and ThinkPad 13, for Microsoft’s Windows Precision Touchpad. This is a set of drivers for configuring touchpad gestures that was released with Windows 10, and should help provide a more responsive and accurate touchpad than the inconsistent trackpads hosted by ThinkPad laptops over the years.

Here's a list of everything that was announced:

• ThinkPad Yoga 370
• ThinkPad T470
• ThinkPad T570
• ThinkPad T470s
• ThinkPad T470p
• ThinkPad 13
• ThinkPad L470
• ThinkPad L570
• ThinkPad X270

We’ll probably hear more about these new laptops at CES next week, and will update when there’s news on local availability and pricing.

Source: AnandTech

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