Lenovo ThinkPad Twist

Long before the iPad, Galaxy Note, or Nook HD, a tablet was usually a Windows device that spent most of its time set up as a traditional clamshell laptop, but could also twist or swivel its display around to form a touch screen slate. Lenovo and HP were two of the only PC makers that kept this style of Windows laptop/tablet convertible alive during those fallow pre-iPad years, with systems such as the S10-2 and TX2.
In the post-Windows-8 world, however, tablets, hybrids, and convertibles are all over the place, and range from the sliding-screen Sony Vaio Duo, to the flip-screen Dell XPS 12, to the folding Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga. One thing we haven't seen a lot of is that more traditional swiveling laptop screen design, which rotates on a center hinge and folds down into a tablet.

That makes the Lenovo ThinkPad Twist a bit of a throwback, using a center-hinge, swiveling-screen design that will be familiar to anyone who used or shopped for a Windows tablet pre-2010. It's not as slick-looking as the new convertibles from Dell or Toshiba, but it's a design that business users may be more familiar (and feel more comfortable) with. You still get that rock-solid ThinkPad construction, along with an IPS screen, and Lenovo's usual suite of biz-friendly configuration and support software.
For $899 in this Core i5 configuration, it's about as high-quality as you're likely to find in this price range. Consumers more interested in snazzy looks will feel like this is a laptop that dropped through a wormhole from at least a few years ago, but business users who won't settle for anything less than a ThinkPad can get that full experience, plus touch and Windows 8 at the same time.
500GB 7,200rpm + 24GB mSATA SSDSystem weight / Weight with AC adapter
Design, features, and display
Lenovo has moved beyond the once-monolithic single ThinkPad brand. The company makes casual, consumer-focused IdeaPad laptops, and a budget line called Essential. Within ThinkPad, there's also the Edge line, which takes a traditional button-down ThinkPad and adds some more modern flair, such as a flat-topped island-style keyboard and a buttonless clickpad, along with a generally slimmer and sharper design.
The Twist feels like one of the sharper-looking ThinkPad Edge laptops, although the "Edge" name is not being used in this case. It has slightly rounded corners, a thin top lid (despite the touch-screen hardware), and the more modern-looking flat-topped keyboard that's slowly working its way into more and more Lenovo products of all sorts.
The matte-black finish works for any office environment, but at 0.8 inch thick, it's not going to look clunky at the coffee shop (that said, it's still not a head-turner like the Acer Aspire S7 or Lenovo's own Yoga ultrabook).

The defining physical characteristic of the Twist is its center screen hinge. The display rotates horizontally 180 degrees via that hinge, and ends up with the screen pointing out from the back of the laptop. As seen in other convertibles, that's actually a useful position by itself, especially for sharing content with a small audience. I could see calling up a chart or table at a meeting, then rotating the screen around to show everyone else in the room, or putting on a movie and being able to watch it without the keyboard in the way. I generally refer to this reversed view as a kiosk mode.
From there, the lid can be folded back so that it covers the keyboard, just as if the lid were closed, but with the screen pointing out. It's not a design we see too often any more, but before Windows 8, it was the default for PC-based tablets and convertible laptops. Many of the more recent convertible/hybrid examples we've seen have screens that pop off to form a standalone tablet, fold back a full 360 degrees (leaving the keyboard exposed as the back surface of the tablet), or even slide up and over the keyboard like a slider-style phone.
The hinge on the Twist feels firm and reliable, which is especially important as it's a single stress point that must withstand a lot of wear and tear. Previous Lenovo convertibles have proven reliable in my experience and the hinge here shouldn't be any different. A tiny arrow shows you which way to twist from the clamshell starting point -- a little care is called for, twist the wrong way and bad things could happen. Lenovo used to make a convertible with a center hinge that rotated both ways, I'd love to see something like that again.
Folded down into tablet mode, the Twist is one of the better Windows 8 examples I've seen to date. The overall chassis still feels slim (albeit in a different category altogether than the iPad or Surface), with very fast, accurate touch response -- although touch response has been excellent on nearly every touch screen Windows 8 system we've tested.
One off note was the accelerometer that is supposed to rotate the display when you flip the tablet around or hold it in portrait mode. It was sometimes too sensitive, other times not sensitive enough, and occasionally the screen image would rotate 90 degrees while the laptop was just sitting in its traditional clamshell mode, after which it took much twisting and rotating to coax it back to normal. It's a problem I've had with several other Windows 8 machines, but not to this degree.

The island-style keyboard is top-notch, a product of years of Lenovo R&D. The signature that differentiates it from other similar keyboards is the slightly convex lower edge of each key, which bows out slightly to make for fewer missed key strokes. The buttonless clickpad is also excellent, and one of the more responsive Windows 8 touch pads I've tried. Here I'll make an obligatory mention of the keyboard tray real estate wasted by the set of mouse buttons positioned above the clickpad that work with the trackpoint nestled between the G, H, and B keys. If you haven't stopped using a trackpoint by now, you're probably not going to. And if you haven't started, you probably never will.
The display itself is covered by edge-to-edge glass, which gives it an upscale look and feel. The 12.5-inch screen has a native resolution of 1,366x768 pixels, which is lower than many of the premium Windows 8 touch-screen systems we've seen, but not out of the question for $899. It's an IPS display, which means it'll look good even from extreme off-axis viewing angles; this is especially important when in tablet mode.
Stereo speakers, combo headphone/mic jackStereo speakers, headphone/microphone jacksEthernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, optional WWANEthernet (via dongle), 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Connections, performance, and battery life
For a 12.5-inch laptop that also has to fit in a touch screen, the Twist is pretty well-appointed when it comes to connections. You'll need adapters for video output, but the next time someone says you can't build a full-size Ethernet jack into a thin convertible laptop, show them this.
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