Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 Review - PCMag

Lenovo is known for comparatively spartan, office-friendly designs, particularly with its ThinkBook business laptops. But the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 ($2,309 arsenic tested) is intolerable to mistake for your mean achromatic slab: This 17.3-inch behemoth volition person colleagues peering implicit your cubicle partition to spot it, acknowledgment to an integrated 2nd screen, shaped similar a smartphone display, to the close of the keyboard.

The first ThinkBook Plus featured an e-ink show built into the lid, portion the Gen 2 model offered improved handwriting and interaction. The caller procreation is simply a existent glow-up, replacing the e-ink lid with an 8-inch, pen-friendly interaction surface successful the thenar remainder that tantalizingly promises to marque each your productivity dreams travel true. In reality, portion it's a technological showcase for Lenovo and a chill speech starter astir the office, the dual-screen attack handicaps this ThinkBook successful some artillery beingness and wide easiness of use. We springiness recognition to the institution for pushing caller and archetypal merchandise ideas, but we can't springiness this Lenovo much than 3.5 stars.

Frankenstein Design

The Plus portion of the ThinkBook Plus is its superior attention-getter: an 8-inch interaction surface with a Swiss Army Knife database of functions, from serving arsenic a 2nd show to becoming a numeric keypad oregon a note-taking tablet for usage with the bundled stylus. We'll dive into the details successful a minute.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Putting a good-sized 2nd show beside the keyboard makes for an extra-wide laptop chassis (0.71 by 16.2 by 9.1 inches). Lenovo compensates for the horizontal agelong by giving the superior interaction surface a unsocial 21:10 facet ratio with 3,072-by-1,440-pixel resolution. The Gen 3 tips the scales astatine 4.4 pounds, which isn't ponderous compared to different 17-inch laptops, but the widescreen plan gives it a pronounced rectangular signifier erstwhile closed compared to, say, the Dell XPS 17 (0.77 by 14.7 by 9.8 inches).

Lenovo boasts that the operation of 3K solution and an ultrawide sheet is an manufacture first, and it's awesome successful its ain right, delivering bully colour sum and brightness successful our tests. Of course, that's not the show you're funny about.

Double the Display

With 10-point multi-touch, 800-by-1,280-pixel resolution, and pen enactment (the supplied stylus stores successful a niche successful the chassis), the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3's 2nd surface is fundamentally a petite embedded tablet. And oh, the things this surface tin do.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Some of the basal functions look clever enough, specified arsenic activating a fig pad that turns the interaction surface into a nine-key cluster. There's besides a note-taking app that lets you scribble, sketch, and prevention handwritten notes.

You tin besides usage the 8-inch show arsenic a 2nd surface for thing you privation to support an oculus connected without giving up portion of the superior display. Whether that's Slack oregon Microsoft Teams, your Twitter feed, oregon a YouTube video, you tin determination it to the mini surface and power it with either interaction oregon accepted keyboard and touchpad input. You tin adjacent widen a papers model down onto the 2nd surface utilizing what Lenovo calls a "waterfall display" function.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Of course, you tin get a 2nd surface without buying a purpose-built laptop by simply attaching a mobile show similar the Mobile Pixels Duex Lite we reviewed past year. But Lenovo has much ambitious plans. You tin reflector contented betwixt the 2 displays, letting you annotate documents and images with the pen adjacent portion sharing your main surface successful a presentation. The auxiliary surface besides has its ain app launcher which you tin customize with your prime of widgets and tools.

Finally, you tin brace your smartphone with the laptop, mirroring the telephone onto the 8-inch show to marque it easier to entree apps and files oregon work messages arsenic they arrive. It sounds amazing, but mean Android and iPhone users are near out—Lenovo lone offers this instrumentality to owners of phones from its Motorola brand.

There's nary denying the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 is simply a fascinating instrumentality connected blurring the lines betwixt idiosyncratic computing and pocketable mobile devices. Unfortunately, it starts to autumn isolated successful applicable use.

Cool Concept, Disappointing Reality

Actually utilizing the laptop rapidly changes from intriguing to frustrating. Given a full caller interface oregon astatine slightest a acquainted interface successful an unfamiliar place, it's not arsenic intuitive arsenic the classical keyboard and touchpad oregon the superior interaction screen. Some of the features described supra dependable fantastic but are clunky successful existent use.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Using the 2nd surface for mundane content, for example, isn't arsenic comfy arsenic it would beryllium with an outer show horizontally aligned with the main display, since the 8-inch sheet isn't successful your oculus enactment successful mean use. Looking down astatine your keyboard to ticker a video is amazingly uncomfortable and inconvenient. The Motorola telephone pairing diagnostic volition lone beryllium of involvement to a tiny percent of smartphone owners.

Even multitasking with the surface is simply a spot much, and I fishy Lenovo knows it. In a promo video(Opens successful a caller window) for the laptop, the institution uses the buzzword "hypertasking," for an intrusive improvement of multitasking that encompasses everything from web browsing connected 1 instrumentality portion watching Netflix connected different to participating successful a telephone gathering from the bathroom.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

In an perfect world, we'd beryllium capable to replicate the productivity boost of aggregate screens and devices with a azygous laptop-like device, but I don't deliberation that this latest ThinkBook Plus has cracked the code.

Port Selection

The ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 shuffles its larboard layout, putting ports connected the backmost borderline of the instrumentality alternatively of on the close broadside wherever the smaller surface resides. On the laptop's near flank, you'll find an audio jack and a azygous USB-C 3.2 larboard that doubles arsenic the AC adapter connector.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Around backmost are an HDMI show output, dual USB Type-A ports, and a USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 larboard with DisplayPort, powerfulness delivery, and storage-array and docking-station support. For wireless connectivity, the strategy has Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth.

Testing the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3: Decent Performance With a Dual-Screen Drawback

Our reappraisal portion is the basal configuration, priced astatine $2,309 with a 12th Generation Intel Core i5-12500H processor (four Performance cores, 8 Efficient cores, 16 threads). It's paired with 16GB of memory, a 512GB NVMe solid-state drive, and Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics. Upscale configurations are available, including Core i7-12700H models with up to 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. The topmost config costs $2,789.

Choosing examination systems for our benchmark charts was a spot of a challenge, since 17-inch concern laptops are scarce. We yet settled connected the Dell XPS 17, our existent favourite big-screen desktop replacement; a 16-inch concern workstation, the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 4; and 2 different dual-screen systems, the gaming-oriented Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 and the erstwhile Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 2. It's not the cleanest premix of machines for show comparisons, but the Plus Gen 3 is acold from your mean laptop.

Productivity Tests

The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a assortment of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measurement wide show for office-centric tasks specified arsenic connection processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We besides tally PCMark 10's Full System Drive trial to measure the load clip and throughput of a laptop's storage.

Three benchmarks absorption connected the CPU, utilizing each disposable cores and threads, to complaint a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D motor to render a analyzable scene, portion Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates fashionable apps ranging from PDF rendering and code designation to instrumentality learning. Finally, we usage the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to person a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p solution (lower times are better).

Our last productivity trial is usually workstation shaper Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud mentation 22 of Adobe's celebrated representation exertion to complaint a PC's show for contented instauration and multimedia apps. Unfortunately, the trial failed to tally connected the ThinkBook Plus.

Even with a Core i5 alternatively than Core i7 CPU, the Gen 3 did good successful our productivity and CPU tests, acold outperforming its predecessor and easy clearing the 4,000 points successful PCMark 10 that bespeak creaseless sailing for mundane apps similar Microsoft Office oregon Google Workspace. It's not a workstation-class CGI rendering oregon video editing machine, but it'll bash those jobs successful a pinch.

Graphics Tests

We trial Windows PCs' graphics with 2 DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Two much tests from GFXBench 5.0, tally offscreen to let for antithetic show resolutions, wring retired OpenGL operations.

Stacked against gaming and workstation rigs with dedicated GPUs, the ThinkBook Plus and its integrated graphics were ne'er going to beryllium game-worthy. Indeed, it didn't truly bash amended than the Gen 2 exemplary with the e-ink surface connected the lid. You tin hide astir rendering engineering oregon architectural models oregon gaming aft hours, though it offers immoderate absorbing features for photograph editing and graphic design.

Battery and Display Tests

We trial laptops' artillery beingness by playing a locally stored 720p video record (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with show brightness astatine 50% and audio measurement astatine 100% until the strategy quits. We marque definite the artillery is afloat charged earlier the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

We besides usage a Datacolor SpyderX Elite show calibration sensor and its bundle to measurement a laptop screen's colour saturation. We grounds what percent of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 colour gamuts oregon palettes the show tin show, and its brightness successful nits (candelas per quadrate meter) astatine 50% and highest settings.

Not surprisingly, a laptop with not 1 but 2 backlit displays delivers comparatively abbreviated artillery life. Even against systems with high-powered processors and discrete GPUs, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 fell down by hours. Granted, this jumbo desktop replacement isn't built for mobility, truthful keeping it mostly plugged successful won't marque you overmuch much stationary than before, but it does mean you'll person to support the charger adjacent astatine manus alternatively of making it done a afloat time of enactment connected a charge.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The 17.3-inch widescreen show offers coagulated colour reproduction and brightness, though arsenic an IPS sheet it lacks the sky-high opposition of OLED screens. It whitethorn not suffice for the astir color-critical publishing tasks, but it looked vivid and ne'er dim successful our testing. Lenovo claims the 2nd surface produces 350 nits of brightness, though it wasn't compatible with our trial equipment; we tin attest that it looked bully from immoderate space and its anti-fingerprint coating was effectual astatine keeping smears and smudges astatine bay.

Verdict: A Great Idea That Needs to Mature

Lenovo's ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 looks astonishing and has existent imaginable for pushing the boundaries of laptop technology, but the chill origin of a dual-display laptop doesn't rather clasp up successful mundane use. We've seen plentifulness of companies effort dual-screen designs, from Apple's ill-received MacBook Pro Touch Bar to the much palmy Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16, but it seems each effort faces challenges successful ergonomics, bundle support, and idiosyncratic adoption. The Gen 3 tablet's right-of-keyboard placement holds it back, and limiting smartphone enactment to the Motorola marque makes it fundamentally a non-starter.

All this means that, contempt coagulated show and the charismatic main display, this isn't the concern laptop to get. Kudos to Lenovo for continuing to effort caller things, but it looks similar the institution volition request astatine slightest different ace astatine it.