Lenovo's new big-screen tablets are now (slightly) more portable
Lenovo's been making portable "tabletop" all-in-ones for some time now, but although they run off a battery, it'd be disingenuous to call them "portable": The original 27-inch Horizon PC weighed 17 pounds! Not exactly ideal as a family PC -- not unless little Jimmy has a strict weight lifting regimen, anyway. With that in mind, the company just unveiled two additional models, both of them smaller, lighter and relatively easier to carry around. The more compact of the two is the 19.5-inch Horizon 2s, which weighs just 5.6 pounds -- about the same as some 15-inch laptops. Meanwhile, there's the bigger, more affordable Horizon 2e, which has a 21.5-inch screen and comes in at 10.1 pounds.
Despite weighing nearly twice as much, the battery life is nearly the same: three hours, compared with 2.5 for the 2s. In general, then, you're probably better off with the higher-end model, as it weighs less, but still has a 1080p screen and most of the same specs (a Core i5 processor with your choice of hybrid hard drive). The main boon to the heavier one is that it costs less ($749 versus $949) and comes with a discrete graphics option, if that matters to you. Look for both this fall, with the 2s coming this month, and the 2e following in October.
Finally, on a sort of random note, Lenovo also introduced a single mid-range laptop alongside the two all-in-ones. The Edge 15, as it's called, is a 15-inch laptop with a hinge that folds back into so-called "Stand Mode," but not full-on tablet mode. All told, it falls somewhere between Lenovo's now-famous Yoga line and it's lower-end Flex series, which are also lacking in 360-degree hinges, similar to the Edge 15 we have here. Certainly, the specs are more robust than what you'd find in one of Lenovo's lower-end machines. For the money ($899 and up), you get a 1080p touchscreen, a metal lid, up to 8GB of RAM, your choice of SSDs and hybrid hard drives, and up to a Haswell Core i7 CPU. Look for it early next month at Best Buy.
