The first ever Windows foldable is due this summer for $2499, and Lenovo has gone all out to prove that the ThinkPad X1 Fold won’t follow in Samsung’s footsteps
Foldable phones have been grabbing headphones for so long that they almost feel like old news, but folding PCs have gotten a lot less attention.
That makes a certain amount of sense – computers haven’t made the same transition to full-screen devices that phones have, and regular laptops have technically covered folding pretty well for a decade or two anyway. That won’t stop companies from wading in and doing their best anyway, and the first to actually bring a foldable PC to market looks to be Lenovo with the ThinkPad X1 Fold.
We got the chance to play with it at CES 2020 to find out whether Lenovo is ready to raise, or if it’s time to fold.
Price and availability
The X1 Fold is due out in summer 2020 – which is still pretty vague – and will cost the princely sum of $2,499. That’s undeniably an awful lot of money, but with foldable phones like the Galaxy Fold and Motorola Razr hovering around $2000 themselves, dropping two and a half grand on a PC-sized equivalent begins to sound almost reasonable.
Design and build: A Fold that won’t fail
If there’s one thing that Lenovo is keen to push with the X1 Fold, it’s essentially that it doesn’t want to be associated with Samsung’s phone of almost-the-same-name.
That made headlines for all the wrong reasons when it launched, promptly broke, and had to be re-launched a few months later. By contrast, Lenovo’s message is clear: this thing is sturdy, it’s safe, and it’ll last.
That’s part of why it’s a ThinkPad (Lenovo’s business line) and not a Yoga (the consumer side of the business). ThinkPads are designed for durability, and so the engineering team was able to leverage that expertise here.
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