Lenovo has also made two other cases, with the QuickShot acting as the Lenovo equivalent for the Apple Smart Cover, complete with magnets to let it cover the back, a section to flip down to let you use the camera with it on, and a fold over stand for watching movies.
The other case is Lenovo’s Protector, which takes a more ruggedised approach to give players like Panasonic a run for their money, with that last case even supporting a hand mount at the back for easy holding while in the field.
But there’s another accessory likely to grab the attention of computer users who don’t just work in the field, but also have a home or office to call their own.
This accessory is the ThinkPad Tablet dock ($149), and it’s basically a small brick of plastic that acts as both charger and port replicator, providing a way of quickly turning that 10 inch tablet into a desktop when you need it.
Like other docks, you simply place the tablet in the crevice provided, the dock connecting to the ThinkPad 10 via the proprietary short connector, which not only charges the laptop, but provides more inputs, including a Gigabit Ethernet port, a single stereo headphone and microphone headset 3.5mm jack, three USB 3.0 ports, and a lone HDMI port to plug in a monitor.
Between the keyboard dock and the desktop dock, the ThinkPad 10 manages to be one of the first tablets that feels like a real device that you can take between locations. No longer are you forced to carry a big laptop to and from work, and you don’t even have to work solely on that little tablet or laptop screen.
With the Lenovo ThinkPad 10, you can work in the field with the keyboard dock, turning the tablet into a sub-notebook, and then bring it back to the office and work on a big screen, say a 24 or 27 inch display with a larger keyboard attached. It’s a tablet that encourages you to work from lots of places, and it’s a pretty good effort altogether.
Beyond the accessories that make the Lenovo ThinkPad 10 feel like more of a computer, you’ll find a solid battery life, providing around nine hours of real world use, which is pretty impressive. That’s with the keyboard attached, so you might even be able to pull out a little more without it.
Size isn’t bad either, reminding us of the Surface Pro 2. By itself, the tablet is thin and light, but paired with the tablet keyboard dock, the size and thickness is reminiscent of Microsoft’s 10 inch Windows 8 machine, which is easy to carry, if not a wee bit chunky.
But the lack of ports will disappoint some, with only one USB port to speak of on the unit, located under a flap on the left edge of the tablet. Unfortunately, it’s only a USB 2.0 port, a bit of a let down when you consider that USB 3.0 pretty much comes with everything now, since it’s the new standard.
Also missing in action is support for the latest wireless technology, 802.11ac. You’ll find all the other typical connections here, with 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0, but there is no support for what essentially amounts to the Gigabit WiFi connection known as 802.11ac.
Conclusion
While it’s a little on the exy side, Lenovo’s ThinkPad 10 is one of the best ultra-portable Windows machines we’ve seen yet, offering a slim design, great screen, and some accessories that really let you bridge the gap between laptop, desktop, and that tablet you prefer to carry.
