Lenovo Solar PC concept feels like a device whose time has come
You may be surprised to learn that The first laptop with built -in solar panels is nearly 15 years old. But for me, the bigger shock is that with all recent progress in photovoltaic cells, manufacturers did not review this idea more often. But in MWC 2025, Lenovo changes this with its concept of yoga sunny computer.
Weighing 2.6 pounds and less than 0.6 inches thick, the concept of a yoga solar computer is essentially the same size as the standard 14-inch mussels. And since its main design is not as different from Lenovo’s standard yoga family, it also does not deal with specifications. It has an OLED display, up to 32 GB RAM, a decent size 50.2 WHR battery and even a 2MP IR webcam for use with Windows Hello.
However, all these components are not as important as the solar cells built into its lid. Lenovo says the panels use back contact cell technology so that its mounting brackets and lattice lines can be placed at the rear of the cells. This allows the panels to offer up to 24 percent solar conversion, which is quite good, as this corresponds to the efficiency you get from very high quality high -end solar systems. In addition, the computer also maintains a dynamic solar tracking to automatically adjust the cell settings to maximize the amount of energy it can collect.
Lenovo says it means that yoga the solar computer can generate enough juice to play an hour of videos in just 20 minutes in the sun. But what may be more impressive is that even when the laptop is indoors, it can still harvest a power of only 0.3 watts of light to help supplement its battery. Finally, to help you understand how much power is collected, Lenovo created an order app to track how much light the panels absorb.
Unfortunately, Lenovo has no plans to turn this concept into a complete commercial device. But after playing around, I was pleasantly surprised to see how firm and healthy his chassis was. Unlike many prototype devices, the concept of a yoga solar computer does not feel as much technological compared to other notebooks on sale today. Its PV cells sit safely behind a sheet of glass (or possibly plastic, Lenovo would not confirm who) while adding a slightly distinctive visual sense.
However, the biggest obstacle (and probably a big reason we have not seen more laptops like this) is that for people who want to use solar panels to load their devices, it is probably easier and more versatile to rely on a separate sunny massif instead of something embedded in the jad. Nevertheless, Lenovo’s Yoga is a surprisingly glowing concept that I would like to see more attention in the future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/the-lenovo-slar-conar-concept-a- Feels-a-device-chos-Has -com-2300223.
English