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Keeping everything neat and tidy with the ThinkPad Stack products

By Salehuddin Bin Husin - on 6 Jan 2015, 12:00pm

Keeping everything neat and tidy with the ThinkPad Stack products

Lenovo's ThinkPad Stack line of products can be stacked any order you choose.

Whether you have a small desk or you just hate clutter, one of the best ways of clearing  and saving space is just to stack things up one on top of the other. Of course, you can only stack certain things, to a certain height before they get unstable. You probably wouldn't want to stack expensive electronics since if they fall over (especially if from a height), you'd be looking at a pile of useless metal. At least if you would if you're not using the ThinkPad Stack products.

Leveraging on the relatively well known Thinkpad brand, these devices are modular pieces of equipment that can be bought piecemeal and then combined to form one towering monolith of tech. There are four individual pieces (for now, there might be more in the future) that can be stacked together. There's a wireless access point adapter, a Bluetooth speaker, a power bank and lastly, an external HDD.

The products can be connected together via little nubs that fit into the case of any ThinkPad stack module. On top of that, ThinkPad Stack products also have have magnets to hold them in place when stacked. For electronic data transfer, they all utilize pogo pin technology to connect to each other.

An example of pogo pin technology. In this case, being used as a charger.

Now that you've see the products and know how they fit together, let's take a look at each of them separately to find out what hardware they have inside.

At the bottom of the pile (going by the picture at the top of the page), is the ThinkPad Stack power bank. It contains a 10,000mAh battery and will cost US$49.99. Next up is the ThinkPad Stack HDD. It's a normal mechanical HDD, using USB 3.0 with a 1TB capacity (no word on whether you can swap out and put in another HDD into the case) and will cost US$199. Unlike the other two products, the HDD will also come with the wireless access point adapter (the box at the very top), although they can be used separately. Finally, we have the ThinkPad Stack bluetooth speaker, which will retail for US$89.99. All of the products in the line will hit American stores in April. 

There's no word on local pricing or availability but the US pricing does seem a bit high, especially when converted to local currency. Even the cheapest item in the line (the power bank), is still much more expensive than a similar capacity power bank, an example being the Xiaomi power bank we previously reviewed. Same thing goes for the HDD, although since it's packed in with the wireless access point adapter it isn't as tough a pill to swallow. As for the speakers, since we haven't heard them in action without own ears, we'll reserve judgement.

In essence, you're paying a premium for the connectivity, the modular design and the ThinkPad name. If that's a price you're willing to pay, remember that products will be available in the US starting this April, with no local launch or pricing yet announced.

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