GoKawiilTaking a shotgun approach to IFA, Lenovo announced a slew of systems on Thursday aimed at every market segment. There are new Yoga laptops and convertibles based on Nvidia’s RTX Spark CPU to take on Apple’s MacBook Pro for creatives. For the less creative but still productive, it added to its stable of corporate ThinkBook laptops and ThinkCentre desktops. It also had a couple of proofs-of-concept because Lenovo can’t show up to a conference without at least one prototype with a rollable, expandable display.
For students and other budget buyers, Lenovo introduced a new affordable and colorful IdeaPad Vibe laptop series that’s meant to compete with Apple’s budget MacBook Neo. For the more stationary, Lenovo offers the equally colorful IdeaCentre all-in-one PC to woo would-be Apple iMac buyers. And for creatives who want to sketch and draw on a tablet other than an iPad, Lenovo has second-gen updates to its two Yoga Tabs, complete with an improved pen.
Vibe check
The smash hit that is the MacBook Neo has caused a ripple effect across the industry, with PC makers racing to release budget Windows laptops with the same appealing mix as the Neo: premium look and feel, high-resolution display, long battery life and, sure, a few fun colors. Dell has released not one but two laptops to compete with the Neo, and now Lenovo has followed suit with the IdeaPad Vibe.
On the surface, the Vibe checks most of the Neo’s boxes. Not surprisingly, it starts at the same price as the Neo, at $700. When I asked Lenovo it if would get the same $100 student discount Apple offers for the Neo, the company told me it isn’t offering a student discount for it. Instead, the ever-revolving sales pricing it offers on all of its laptops should eventually land on the Vibe. So, we’ll need to stay tuned to see if the Vibe can hit $600 or even less.
Unfortunately, that $700 Vibe starts off with a meager 8GB of memory and undersized 256GB SSD. That’s no different than what you get with the baseline Neo, but 8GB of RAM goes a lot farther when you’re running MacOS than Windows 11. Lenovo offers 16GB, 24GB and 32GB memory upgrades for the Vibe, but be prepared for prices to quickly escalate; RAMageddon is real. The same goes for the storage, whether you choose the 512GB or 1TB upgrade. I worry that any good vibes will disappear as the cost surpasses or even starts to approach $1,000.
Perhaps a splash of color can help forestall any hard feelings. Lenovo offers the Vibe in seven creatively labeled colors: chill blue, moody blue, zen green, spicy gold, radiant coral, dreamy violet and lowkey grey. The keyboard is color matched to the rest of the laptop, and you can purchase a second keyboard and swap out individual keycaps if you want to mix and match, adding, say, some spicy gold keys to a radiant coral body or vice versa or some other color combination that’s so appealing to you that you’ll spring for a second keyboard.
The Vibe offers more colors than the Neo and is also far more configurable. Lenovo offers the Vibe in two sizes, and each is available with a choice of processor. You have a choice of a 14-inch or 15-inch display, each with IPS and OLED options. And you can choose between an AMD Ryzen AI 400 series or a Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip.
The 14-inch baseline display is a standard 1,920×1,200-pixel, 60Hz non-touch IPS panel. The 14-inch OLED upgrade won’t come with a bump in resolution but should offer smoother scrolling and movement on the screen with its 120Hz refresh rate. The 15-inch model also starts off with a standard non-touch IPS display, and the OLED option will offer a 2.2K resolution.
Strangely, only the Snapdragon X-based model comes with an all-metal build. If you choose AMD, you’ll need to accept a plastic bottom panel, which is a Vibe demerit when it’s up against the all-metal MacBook Neo and Dell XPS 13. Both Vibe versions are upgradeable, the AMD model more so. It has a pair of RAM slots so you can add more memory; the Qualcomm model’s memory is soldered on. And each has two M.2 slots so you can expand the storage.
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