Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

A look at the Lenovo Yoga Book. This look concentrates on typing on the Halo Keyboard. Next up, let’s try writing with a pen.

Lenovo may have reinvented the portable computer. We’ve come a long way since the days of the KayPro CPM lug-able computer. Lenovo’s Yoga book is thin. See the first photo showing the thickness compared to an Apple MacBook Air and a paper Moleskin notebook (sorry for the orientation).

The Lenovo Yoga Book between an Apple MacBook Air and a Moleskine notebook

The key to the thin computer is the keyboard. Lenovo calls it their Halo Keyboard. It is a flat black piece of material. When activated, keys illuminate. (see second photo).

The Lenovo Yoga Book showing the illuminated Halo Keyboard

This is a fascinating piece of hardware. There are no ridges on the edges of the “keys” or any physical features to let you know that your fingers are on or off the keys.

Flat. Thin. Great.

But can you type on it? Because if you can’t type on it, you might as well toss it away and use the basic tablet virtual keyboard, which I despise as a writer.

Typing Test: Out of the box, I went online and did one of those typing speed tests. I scored 35 words per minute. I then took a test on the same web site on my usual Apple keyboard and scored 65 words per minute. The Halo Keyboard fails out of the box.

Let’s practice a little. After a couple of days of a few practice sessions (about an hour total), I increased my typing score to 50 words per minute on the Lenovo Yoga Book. I have to pay attention, especially to the pinky finger on the left hand (where is the “a”?).

The Halo Keyboard provides good feedback. The obvious feedback is sound. You can be quite annoying to everyone else in the coffee shop by adjusting the sound to 11 and hearing a beep on every touch of the keyboard. The ingenious feature of the Halo Keyboard is the tactile feedback—the entire flat panel vibrates to let you know you have pressed it with enough force to register a keystroke. That works well for me.

Conclusion part 0.1: The Lenovo Yoga Book is the smallest, thinnest, adequate writing machine I have ever touched. The iPad and other tablets work, but with a separate bluetooth keyboard.

The Yoga Book works, and it is practically thin as opposed to thin and theory and thick in practice.

All the Lenovo details are on their web site.