Imagine college students sitting around the campus lawn, chatting with friends and working on essays, all while their laptop gets power from the sun to recharge. That’s a future Lenovo is working towards if its latest concept PC becomes a reality.
This week, at the annual Mobile World Congress tech event in Barcelona, Lenovo unveiled a slew of new Yoga and ThinkPad devices. One device in particular immediately caught our eye: the new Lenovo Yoga Solar PC Concept. This laptop has some of the most efficient solar panel arrays available built into the lid, which can pull power from the sun (even in low-light conditions) and keep the battery topped off.
Lenovo Solar Laptop: What to Know and How It Works
The all-new Yoga Solar PC is a proof-of-concept (PoC) laptop with cutting-edge solar panel technology. On the inside, it’s similar to many other laptops from the manufacturer, meaning it’ll have plenty of power for all your daily tasks. However, on the outside, it’s completely unique.
I know what you’re thinking. Solar panels aren’t all that efficient or realistic, and I agree. Thankfully, the Lenovo Yoga Solar PC incorporates new ‘Back Contact Cell’ panel technology, which works differently from your average cheap solar panels. Back Contact Cells move the internal mounting brackets, hardware, and gridlines to the back of the solar cells rather than the front. This small change maximizes absorption, netting a solar efficiency rating of roughly 24%. According to Lenovo, these are some of the best in the industry.
So, whether you’re working indoors or outdoors, the Solar PC is built for any situation and can draw on that light to power the internal battery and keep its gorgeous 14-inch OLED display going. Lenovo claims that its new Yoga Solar PC can absorb and convert solar energy enough that, in direct sunlight, 20 minutes will charge the battery enough for up to one hour of video playback and even longer when you’re doing light tasks.
20 minutes in the sun will power up the Lenovo Yoga Solar PC for up to 1 hour of video playback.
I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty impressive. You can sit and view YouTube videos or write an essay while relaxing on the patio, and the battery will keep itself charged. More importantly, even in low-light conditions, the system is efficient enough to draw a little power. Lenovo mentioned that in a low-light environment, the Yoga Solar PC can keep an idle laptop battery at the same percentage—meaning it won’t slowly drain like a normal laptop.
Part of the magic, at least according to Lenovo, is its fancy “Dynamic Solar Tracking” system, which measures the solar panel’s input current and voltage and then adjusts accordingly. The system can switch to solar-first energy usage, adjusting the charger’s settings to prioritize sending solar power to the system. As a result, the laptop conserves battery power. Basically, no matter how much (or how little) sun it gets, the system is constantly making changes for optimal power usage and consumption.
Lenovo Yoga Solar PC Specs
The Lenovo Yoga Solar PoC laptop is quite capable in the hardware department. It sports a 14-inch DCI-P3 OLED display in an ultra-sleek 15 mm-thin frame and weighs just 1.22kg. Inside, you’ll enjoy Intel Core Ultra processors with up to 32GB of memory, 1TB of storage, and four speakers for booming audio. Additionally, the Lenovo Yoga Solar PC has four microphones for clear video chats or conferences on the 2M IR camera and three USB-C (USB4) ports, all powered by a 50.2 Wh battery—well, and the sun, of course.
This entire concept sounds pretty neat, but it’s obviously something I’d love to try in the real world to see how it holds up. My first thought is heat; as we all know, heat is an enemy in computing. Also, I don’t know many people sitting in direct sunlight working on a laptop. That said, the solar panels are on the lid behind the screen, separated from the CPU and internal components, so it shouldn’t alter internal temps enough to throttle performance.
We’ll watch for more details and report back once we know more. For now, this is nothing more than a neat concept that I wouldn’t mind taking for a spin on my patio.
Source: Lenovo
