lenovo helix 2 lcd panel quotation

For business travelers, every pound carried and every inch of bag space matters. Hence, the increasing popularity of 2-in-1 devices, such as Lenovo"s ThinkPad Helix 2. This 11-inch hybrid features a display that detaches from its keyboard, letting you use it as a tablet or laptop. With an Intel Core-M processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, the Helix 2 also has the kind of power that business users are looking for. Priced at $1,644 as configured (starting at $794), the Helix 2 is a premium hybrid, but its comfort, endurance and handy pen input make it a strong choice for mobile pros.

The original Lenovo Thinkpad Helix was the first Windows 8 hybrid to use a detachable tablet design; the Helix 2 hews closely to its predecessor"s look, complete with an all-black chassis, a great keyboard and the red TrackPoint.

The outer shell of the Helix 2 has a soft-touch matte finish that carries over to the keyboard"s wrist rest and underside. At the upper right corner of the back of the tablet is a ThinkPad emblem with a red light over the "I" that serves as a system status indicator. In the upper left corner is a 5-megapixel camera, and below that is a fingerprint reader.

The front of the Helix 2 houses a 2-megapixel camera above the screen and a touch-sensitive Windows button on the bottom bezel. The Windows button gives a slight vibration whenever it"s pressed, a nice way to confirm that it was activated.

The Helix 2 is made in such a way so that the screen can face the keyboard, but also the other way around. This way, you can use the Helix in what Lenovo calls "Stand" mode (good for presentations), or just fold it flush with the keyboard for "Tablet+" mode. The + in Tablet+ stands for the keyboard dock"s built-in battery, a feature also found in the Portege Z20t and the Venue 11 Pro.

Without its keyboard, the Helix 2 weighs a svelte 1.7 pounds, which is lighter than the original Helix (1.8 pounds) and the Surface Pro 3 (1.76 pounds), but heavier than the Dell Venue 11 Pro 7000 and the Portege Z20t (both are 1.6 pounds). Once you connect the keyboard, however, the Helix 2"s weight increases to 3.65 pounds. That"s lighter than the original Helix (3.8 pounds), but heavier than the Portege Z20t (3.2 pounds), the Surface Pro 3 (2.4 pounds) and the Venue 11 Pro (3.6 pounds).

Somewhat thinner than the original, the Helix 2"s tablet measures 11.85 x 7.57 x 0.37 inches, and 11.85 x 8.39 x 0.79 inches when docked. The Helix 2 is also thinner than the Portege Z20t (12.2 x 8.5 x 0.83 inches), but thicker than the Type Cover-padded Surface Pro 3 (11.45 x 7.8 x 0.56 inches).

At 306 nits, the Helix 2"s display is brighter than the ultraportable average (277 nits), the Portege Z30t (288 nits) and the Surface Pro 3 (298 nits), but was outshone by the Venue 11 Pro (341 nits). The Helix 2"s display also offered excellent viewing angles. I could see the action clearly even at 90-degree angles.

However, the Helix 2"s display performed poorly in our color gamut test; it produced only 69 percent of the sRGB color gamut. That"s better than the Portege Z20t (66.6), but well short of the category average (79 percent), the Surface Pro 3 (97 percent) and the Venue 11 Pro (101.7 percent).

The Helix 2"s shell is made of a mix of aluminum and ABS plastic, which has a very tough and secure feel to it. The keyboard deck and base are also made of ABS, while the strong, hard flap that protects the docking connectors is magnesium aluminide. Also, the Helix 2 has a durable, scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 3 display, and can withstand drops of water.

Targeted at business customers, the Helix 2 has security features to warrant trusting it with sensitive company data. The fingerprint reader on the back of the tablet is tied to the Helix 2"s Trusted Platform Module (TMP 1.2 compliant), which also stores encryption keys, passwords and certificates. Its placement is awkward, but keeping it there allows for use in both tablet and laptop modes. Also, the Core-M Y571 processor has vPro technology for management by IT departments.

The Helix 2 has two pairs of speakers -- one on the rear the tablet and the other on the undercarriage of the keyboard base -- and switches between each depending on whether the tablet is docked or not. In both positions the Helix 2 has enough audio power to fill a small room. Listening to Beyoncé"s "Love on Top," the synths and bass on the low end of the spectrum were sturdy, and her vocals were juicy. However, the higher end sounded muddled.

With highly accurate touch sensors, the Helix 2 responded quickly to 10-finger gestures (such as pinch, zoom and swipe) during our testing. However, the high resolution display on the Helix 2 made small icons (anything in Chrome, for example) difficult to target in desktop mode.

I was impressed with the Helix 2"s ability to capture my handwriting using the included Digitizer Pen. Testing it with the pre-installed Microsoft OneNote, the pen was highly accurate, and switching between drawing and selecting was very intuitive. The Helix 2 also did a great job at ignoring my palm resting on the display as I drew. I only wish there was a place to stow the stylus on the tablet.

Typing on the Helix 2"s keyboard in my lap didn"t feel as comfortable as typing on a hard surface. Because the Helix is top-heavy, its display tipped backward whenever my wrists were not resting on the keyboard base.

Like the rest of its ThinkPad line, the Helix 2"s keyboard has the familiar red TrackPoint between the G, H and B keys, a mouse alternative that continues to be highly accurate. Left-click, right-click and scroll buttons lie along the top of the touchpad.

Measuring 2.5 x 1.5-inches, the touchpad is not that large - it"s 64 percent smaller than the touchpad on the original Helix - but it is still very functional. I found it easy to perform such multi-touch gestures as pinch-to-zoom and rotate, and the touchpad provided ample tactile feedback when clicked. The Helix 2 also supports Windows 8"s touch-based gestures, such as swiping in to switch between apps.

The keyboard includes a USB 3.0 port, a mini DisplayPort, a security lock slot and the Helix 2"s second proprietary power connector, all along the back edge. I would have liked to see the keyboard dock contain an Ethernet port, a useful feature for business users.

Equipped with a 1.2-GHz Intel Core M-5Y71 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, the Helix 2 offers more than enough performance for most business needs. The Helix 2 handled my daily rigors (a few dozen Chrome tabs, streaming audio or video, text editing, and the Evernote, Kindle and Weather Channel apps) without lag. Apps opened and closed quickly, even while Windows Defender was scanning all system files.

On the Geekbench 3 benchmark, which measures a system"s overall performance, the Helix 2 scored 3,517, falling below the 4,567 ultraportable category average. The Helix 2"s score was also below that of the Core i5-powered Surface Pro 3 (5,665), as well as the Core M-powered Portege Z20t (4,341) and the Venue 11 Pro (5,999).

The Helix 2"s SSD duplicated 4.97GB of multimedia files at a rate of 188.5 MBps, which is faster than the category average (181.6), the Venue 11 Pro (130.5 MBps) and the Surface Pro 3 (145.5 MBps). It"s only slower than the Portege Z30t (212 MBps).

The Helix 2 performed nearly as well on the LAPTOP OpenOffice Spreadsheet test, matching 20,000 names to their addresses in 5 minutes and 57 seconds. That"s much faster than the category average (8:31), and just beats out the Portege Z20t (6:01). Still, the Venue 11 Pro (5:05) and the Surface Pro 3 (4:43) finished faster.

With Intel HD Graphics 5300 integrated graphics, the Helix 2 is good for casual gaming, but not for anything more strenuous. On the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited benchmark, this hybrid scored 35,486. That"s below the Venue 11 Pro (48,938) as well as the category average (39,146), but higher than the Portege Z20t (31,388) and the Surface Pro 3 (33,614).

The Helix 2"s score on the 3DMark test didn"t translate to a strong real-world gaming performance. While playing World of Warcraft with the graphics set to auto and the resolution at 1920 x 1080, the Helix 2 scraped out an unplayable 24 frames per second. That"s slower than the Surface Pro 3 (36 fps), as well as the category average (also an unplayable 26.8 fps), but faster than the Portege Z20t (17 fps).

Like some other notebook-tablet hybrids, the Helix 2 includes batteries in both its tablet body and keyboard dock. On the Laptop Mag Battery Test (continuous Web browsing over Wi-Fi at 100 nits of brightness), the tablet"s 35Wh lithium polymer battery and the keyboard dock"s 26Wh lithium polymer battery combined to last for 10 hours. That"s longer than the ultraportable notebook category average battery life (8:17), but well short of the times recorded by the Venue 11 Pro (13:33) and the Portege Z20t (14:37).

The Helix 2"s tablet portion lasted just 7 hours and 6 minutes. That"s shorter than the tablet-only times of the Venue 11 Pro (8:00), the Portege Z20t (7:29) and the Surface Pro 3 (7:27).

After streaming a 15-minute Hulu video, the notebook"s touchpad reached just 73 degrees Fahrenheit, while the G and H keys were 75 degrees. The hottest the Helix 2 got was on the back of the tablet, where it reached only 89 degrees. All of these temperatures are well below what we consider to be too warm (95 degrees), as well as the original Helix, which hit 102 degrees under the same conditions.

Solution Center helps users back up their system, enable virus protection, perform system checkups and more. Lenovo PC Experience provides access to the Helix" system and hardware settings, user guide, system updates and more.

Our $1,644 review unit is the top-of-the-line Helix 2, sporting a 1.2 GHz Intel Core M5Y71-processor, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, the digital pen, the Ultrabook Pro keyboard and a 1080p display.

The starting model also comes with the Ultrabook keyboard dock, which does not feature the secondary battery or TrackPoint, as found in in the Ultrabook Pro keyboard dock. However, it does have a slot for the stylus. If you"re looking to upgrade, the Ultrabook Pro keyboard costs $320 (which is pretty pricey), versus $129 for the Ultrabook keyboard.

With its strong productivity performance, long battery life and useful digital pen, the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 provides much of what business users need. This being Lenovo, the Helix 2 also has one of the best keyboards we"ve used in a tablet hybrid.

Dell"s Venue 11 Pro 7000 has a more colorful display and even longer battery life, but it has a slower SSD and it runs hotter. We give a slight edge to the Toshiba Portege Z20t for its excellent endurance and easier-to-use magnetic latch, but the Helix 2 has a better keyboard. Overall, the Helix 2 should be a great addition to the bag of execs on the go who would like the added bonus of a tablet when they"re travelling, but do not want to sacrifice the experience -- and keyboard -- of a traditional ThinkPad notebook.

When Lenovo first showed us the ThinkPad Helix in January 2013 at CES, they described a two stage CPU that ran at low power in tablet mode and full power when docked. The dock adds cooling via those two fans, helping the tablet to run at higher speeds without overheating. That sounded like an Intel Y series CPU that has two voltages, but as it turns out, the Helix ships with typical Ultrabook U series CPUs. We wonder if Lenovo worked on a Y series version but abandoned it in favor of faster U series CPUs for their high end Windows tablet. That would certainly explain the delay, if they had to go back to the drawing board. At any rate, the good news is that the tablet runs nearly as fast solo as it does when docked. The bad news is that the dock fans tend to be loud and overzealous, often running for the first 30 minutes after a cold boot at medium speed for no apparent reason (the CPU temps are quite cool). The back of the tablet can get hot in the upper right corner when used solo, but ours never got burning hot.

The tablet itself has a few ports: 1 USB 2.0 port (why not 3.0, Lenovo?), a 3.5mm combo audio jack, charging port, mini DisplayPort and a dock connector. The tablet can be inserted into the dock facing forward for use as a laptop or reversed for presentation mode with the display facing away from you as you sit in front of the keyboard. The dock has two connectors so you can insert the tablet facing either front or back. We wonder why Lenovo didn"t go with a single centered bi-directional connector rather than two offset connectors on the dock, but we assume their very talented engineers had their reasons. The tablet"s USB, charging port and mini DisplayPort connector are on the bottom edge, so they"re not accessible when docked. We"re not bothered by that since the dock has two USB 3.0 ports, another mini DisplayPort and a charging port that charges both dock and tablet. All dock ports are on the back edge. The 3.5mm audio jack and tablet volume and power button are accessible when docked. You can use the keyboard to control volume, so the tablet volume controls are there as a convenience when the tablet"s not docked.

As ever, it"s hard to fault Lenovo"s excellent keyboards. For a thin machine the keys have ample travel and tactile feedback, and the smile-shaped keys make it easy to stay on target. Though this is a small Ultrabook at 11.6", I had no trouble typing at my usual quick rate, and the only thing I missed was keyboard backlighting when writing at night in a dim room. The Fn key row controls multimedia, brightness and more, and you"ll need to press the Fn key if you"re using a program that makes use of Fn keys.

Lenovo knows how to make a bright display, and the glossy full HD IPS touch screen has 400 nits of brightness, which is handy for combating sunlight and bright office lights. It"s a colorful and sharp display, but as always with Windows, the desktop icons and text will look tiny unless you enable scaling, which reduces sharpness a bit. At 125% scaling, we found things readable without introducing too much fuzz. Color gamut is good but not top notch like the Sony Vaio Pro 13 or MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Graphic artists will enjoy reasonable color accuracy but we noted that reds appeared slightly orange, which is a typical failing of midrange IPS displays. The Lenovo Think Pad Helix covers 73% of sRGB and 55% of Adobe RGB. Contrast is very good at 912:1, and black levels are good but not stunningly low.

The Wacom pen and digitizer are a must have for those who need greater precision and palm rejection. The tablet"s pressure sensitivity is invaluable for artists who need brush strokes that mimic natural media. The tablet offers solid pen and pressure sensitivity support for modern apps that use the Windows API (Art Rage, One Note 2013 and other sketch programs). For legacy WinTab support in Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter and Paint Tool SAI you"ll need to download Wacom"s Windows 8 drivers from their website. We noted that the Wacom Windows 8 drivers increased pen offset and sometimes the pen only showed activity in the upper left corner, but a reboot fixed that. Will Wacom improve their drivers? We hope so. In the meantime. Art Rage, OneNote 2013, Windows Journal and Manga Studio work well with the default Windows drivers.

The ThinkPad Helix is available with third generation Intel Core i5 and i7 CPUs and Intel HD 4000 graphics. It hurts that fourth generation Intel Haswell CPUs are hitting the market now, but that bears relatively little on performance from an Ultrabook and tablet standpoint since Haswell"s improvements in those arenas pertain more to battery life than improved performance. The good news is that the Helix performs as well as any Ultrabook on the market as of this writing whether in tablet or Ultrabook mode. There"s a 300 point spread in PCMark 7 for tablet vs. docked mode, but that"s not a huge divide and that means the tablet is beefy enough with the Core i5 to handle art, note taking and vertical market apps when undocked. Adobe Photoshop CS6 runs quickly, as does Corel Painter, MS Office 2013 and full HD video streaming. This is a much more powerful tablet than the Intel Atom competitors on the market, including Lenovo"s own ThinkPad Tablet 2. There"s no waiting for programs to launch, Windows Updates to download or moderately complex Excel spreadsheets to run matches. In terms of computing performance, the i5 model is roughly comparable to the Microsoft Surface Pro, and the i7 exceeds it by about 5 to 7%. The Helix has a RAM advantage since it"s available with 8 gigs of RAM instead of Surface Pro"s 4 gigs, for those who use RAM intensive applications like virtual machines. As of this writing, you can only get 8 gigs of RAM if you opt for the Core i7 model.

The tablet is available with 4 or 8 gigs of DDR3L 1333MHz RAM and SSD drives in various capacities. The CPU, RAM and SSD are in the tablet section, and it"s not easy to take apart, so I"d treat it as a sealed unit and order it with the RAM and SSD you want rather than planning do it yourself upgrades later. How do you take it apart? You"ll have to study Lenovo"s service manual for the Helix and then remove the LCD by prying many plastic tabs on the top, left and right sides. Once inside, you"ll have access to the battery, mSATA drive slot and wireless card(s). RAM is soldered to the motherboard and is not upgradable.

The tablet has a 3 cell, 42Wh Lithium Ion polymer battery and the dock has a 4 cell, 28Wh battery. Lenovo claims up to 6 hours use time for the tablet and up to 10 hours for the combo. In our tests, the tablet averaged 5 hours with WiFi on, brightness at a very ample 50% in a mix of MS Office, web, email, social networking and 45 minutes of streaming HD video via Amazon Prime. The tablet and dock together averaged from 7 to 9 hours depending on how much streaming HD video and video editing were thrown into the mix. When working in MS Office and doing email, we reached the 9 hour mark and when we threw 1.75 hours of HD video streaming intot the mix, we managed 7 hours. Digital drawing and note taking require relatively modest power, and we had no trouble getting 5 hours for note taking and 4.5 hours for drawing with the pen in Art Rage and Photoshop CS6.

The dock"s secondary battery appears in the Windows desktop taskbar separate from the tablet battery, so you can monitor the tablet and dock battery levels individually. The Helix uses the dock battery first before draining the tablet"s battery. That"s just the way we like it so we can count on maximum tablet battery power when we grab it on the go.

The Lenovo ThinkPad Helix is a versatile, powerful and well built transformer tablet-Ultrabook. It has the computing performance to handle Adobe Photoshop, software development, RAW photo editing and more and the Wacom digitizer with pen sets it apart from touch-only tablets. We adore the excellent keyboard and solid touchpad, as well as the secondary battery in the dock. We wish it had a backlit keyboard, but that"s not a deal breaker. However, the lack of Intel Haswell CPUs is a nail in the coffin since it would bring better battery life and cooler temperatures. And for the premium price, we expect the latest tech inside. The high price tag is discouraging, and given the $1,679 to $2,200 price range, we can only recommend it to those who need and can afford the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix"s unique compliment of features. But if Lenovo drops the price a few hundred dollars, the Helix would be on our short list.

The Chinese company “Lenovo” has been experimental and revolutionary from the moment Windows 8 got here out, and has worked hard to take advantage of Microsoft’s touch focused OS.

The Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 continues this trend with a travel friendly tablet that may be converted into a totally functioning ultrabook utilizing a keyboard attachment.

The Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 is a complete made from 2 halves. The notebook itself consists of a tablet display and a keyboard dock that the display screen plugs into.

The tablet half of the system appears like somebody simply chopped off a notebook display screen. Its lower edges are fairly hard, offering a visual cue for the user when they are able to dock to the rest of the system. Decked out in a matte black plastic, the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 tablet half acts as the brains of the operation. Contained inside it are all the things that make the package work like an audio jack, processors and storage.

On the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 tablet back is a standard ThinkPad logo, 2 speakers, a fingerprint reader and a 5 MP camera for capturing memories and including pictures to notes. On the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 edges are a headset jack, volume rockers, mini HDMI port and a single USB 3.0 port. An embedded line wraps around the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 tablet half, giving the sea of black a hint of design. A red ring across the camera lens within the upper left corner offers something on your eyes to focus on.

On the front of the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 is a 11.6 inch FHD display, embedded in a rather massive bezel.  There is a power button and a devoted screen rotation lock button too, which may be very handy.

This half of the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 suits into one of Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 keyboards with a snap and are disconnected from them with a easy button press. Lenovo hopes that the usual Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 Ultrabook Keyboard will work for many users and that the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 Ultrabook Pro Keyboard will set productivity-minded users up for very productive night and days.

The 11.6 inch FHD display screen has the standard 1920×1080 resolution that is out there on most laptops. The display seems good, and web, videos, and the occasional low-end sport look sharp. There are advanced display screen settings for colour saturation, brightness, contrast, and so forth. The brightness controls are very robust though, you really would not need to tweak them too much or else the display screen gets washed out fairly quickly. Documents and different productivity applications look good.

Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 contains Intel Core 5Y71 processor and 8GB RAM. Lenovo’s website permits users to configure the machine with much less storage and 4GB RAM. Though its Intel HD 5300 Graphics are not a real substitute for a dedicated graphics card, nobody however gamers will notice. Each app masses fast, each program performed fine. 3D games like Star Trek On-line are not one for the Best looking, however this is not a dedicated gaming machine.

You may store games, apps and just about anything else on the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 built-in SSDs. With the 256 GB SSD that completely balances store space and pace. Those stereo speakers on the back of the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 tablet half are Dolby Stereo Speakers and so they sound terrific, however lack bass.

The Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 is running Windows 8.1, although it’s out there for the Windows 10 update as soon as that’s out there here within the weeks. Windows 8.1 acts as you’d anticipate that it’d. Lenovo contains a few of their own software on the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2, together with SHAREit, SECUREit, SYNCit, SNAPit, and SEEit.

Like the remainder of its ThinkPad line, the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 keyboard has the familiar red TrackPoint between the G, H and B keys, a mouse alternative that continues to be highly accurate. Left click, right click and scroll buttons lie alongside the top of the touchpad.

Measuring 2.5 x 1.5-inches, the touchpad isn’t that enormous – it is 64% smaller than the touchpad on the original Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 – however it’s still very functional. It simple to perform such multi touch gestures as pinch to zoom and rotate, and the touchpad supplied ample tactile feedback when clicked. The Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 additionally supports Windows 8 touch based gestures, similar to swiping in to switch between applications.

The Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 additionally comes with an Active stylus on the low end models, with a Digitizer Pen within the high end model, providing 256 levels of pressure sensitivity, although this may be purchased individually on Lenovo’s website.

The  Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 itself has a score of 8 hours battery life, and you may eke out an additional 4 hours (12 hours total) with the Ultrabook Pro keyboard included battery. The device ought to definitely get you through a whole work day without any problem. In my testing I averaged between 7 hours and just under 8 hours on the tablet. The keyboard will clearly extend that battery life, and you may simply use the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 while plugged in, extending battery life even additional.

The Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 performed pretty nicely when benchmarked on Sunspider, Kraken and PCMark 8. The device scored 438.7 ms on Sunspider and 2,167.5 ms on Kraken, where a lower rating is preferential.

The ThinkPad Helix scored 2,700 work and 1,906 conventional on PCMark 8, which checks how the gadget features in specific user cases, and where a better rating is best.

The scores are pretty impressive and put the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 a cut above most other convertibles. For instance, the Microsoft Surface 3 scored 1,571 work and 1,282 conventional on PCMark 8, 556.6 ms on Sunspider and 3,950.2 ms on Kraken.

The Intel integrated graphics imply that the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 is not a serious gaming machine, however it’s greater than powerful enough for office and productivity duties and we did not notice any serious efficiency issues.

If a tablet for business use is what you want, however you would not thoughts one that you could additionally use as a regular computer when docked, then the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2 is a sweet offering.

CES is mostly just one hellacious blur. Here’s a gadget, and another gadget, and a hooker, and a gadget, and hey do you want to know about my Kickstarter? At CES 2013, laptops were particularly hard to keep track of; everywhere you looked, a manufacturer had some novel way for you to spend $1,000 on a Windows 8 ultrabook.

Through all the chaos, the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix somehow stood out. The detachable tablet / laptop hybrid had it all: full-powered Windows 8 with an impressive spec sheet, two batteries that together promised huge longevity, and the possibility of using one device capably as tablet, laptop, and more. It even had a fan in its dock that would let you automatically overclock its processor — the Helix sounded like a power-user’s dream. It was due in February, and I wasn’t the only one excited about it.

Now it’s June, and the Helix is finally here. It still offers everything it promised, and I’ve been waiting a long time to get my hands on it. But the market’s changed: there’s a new breed of Intel processors, a crowded market of detachable devices that haven’t exactly taken the world by storm, and an as-yet unsettled debate over what a Windows 8 PC should look like.

Late or not, the Helix might still have a chance. The $1,679.99 Helix prices itself out of the low-end market, but can it be the premium Windows laptop we’ve been waiting for?

The Helix looks like someone took apart a laptop, handed someone else all the pieces, and said “make a laptop.” The resulting construction is mostly right — all the key parts are in the right place, unlike whoever did this experiment at Acer — but the Helix feels to me like someone put a couple of screws in the wrong place, glued a few things a little too tightly, and maybe lost a couple of pieces along the way.

For starters, the Helix is chunky. A 1.8-pound tablet that docks into a two-pound dock with a keyboard and trackpad, it’s heavy without being eye-raisingly so, but it doesn’t wear its weight well. When it’s docked it’s really top-heavy — that means it’s hard to open with one hand, and it’s easy to tip over or rock on its hinge if you tap the screen too hard. It’s also thicker than I’d imagined an 11.6-inch ultrabook might be, at half an inch for the tablet and 0.8 inches for the whole kit — Lenovo clearly picked the kitchen sink approach rather than the sleek one.

Both Helix halves are matte black with red accents, made of the same vaguely rubbery carbon fiber as the ThinkPad Carbon X1. They connect via the single most insane, convoluted, complex hinge I’ve ever seen. It connects in six places, a mix of steadying holes and connecting ports. You have to line the tablet up just so, and use two supports to guide it down onto the dock. Don’t try to move the hinge without the tablet in it, either — it takes near-superhuman strength, and feels like you’re about to snap the part off the dock.

The rest of the tablet’s bottom is full of ports that become completely inaccessible when you dock the device. There are two USB ports on the back of the dock, along with a MiniDisplay port; there’s a USB 2.0 port and another MiniDisplay on the tablet itself, plus SD and SIM card slots.

The hinge does at least give the Helix some Yoga-like flexibility. You can put the tablet in the dock in either direction, so you can have the screen facing away from you in a sort of presentation mode. You can also lie it down flat with the screen facing outward, though at that point you’re really just turning your tablet into a heavier tablet. Add all that to the fact that you can just press an awkwardly extruding button on the left side and detach the tablet from the base, and the Helix is probably the most versatile Lenovo ultrabook yet.

From the X1 Carbonto the Yoga 13, Lenovo clearly knows how to build simple, minimal, classy laptops, and yet from the same company comes this mess of exposed screws, awkwardly located rubber feet, and a seam on the base I could pretty easily pry apart. The whole laptop is a mish-mash of odd angles and asymmetrical designs, which feels particularly odd coming from Lenovo. There’s no excuse for this, and no reason for it — building a sturdy, docking hinge can’t be hard enough that everything else goes by the wayside. Lenovo didn’t even get the hinge completely right, either: I constantly tried to push the screen back further, because its normal angle forces you to slouch a bit to see it head-on.

It’s an ambitious design, and obviously a difficult one to do well. But Lenovo didn’t do it well. And that’s not the only place the Helix doesn’t hold up, either.

The 11.6-inch screen on the Helix is a beautiful, 1080p IPS panel that gives whites the slightest gray tint but otherwise looks fantastic. Viewing angles are great, colors are accurate, touch response is excellent, and everything is tack-sharp. But it runs into some of the same issues as the Sony VAIO Pro, where pixel density actually becomes a problem — cramming this many pixels into such a small space makes almost everything too small, from webpages to app icons. Anything from the Windows Store looks fine, but everything else scales wrong.

The bundled digitizer pen, which slots into the top left corner of the tablet, seems to be a tacit admission on Lenovo’s part that the high resolution is a problem. And it does help: it has the same hovering preview features as the Surface Pro, and makes finding tiny touch targets much easier. But it’s otherwise a pretty basic pen, and it’s not a good enough solution anyway.

All you need to know about the Helix’s keyboard is that it’s a ThinkPad. From the slightly curved, concave keys to the red TrackPoint nub in the middle, it’s every bit as good as always — springy, rich with function keys, and even roomier than I’d expect from an 11.6-inch device. The only sacrifice to size is the crowded arrow keys, but I can get over that. Lenovo makes the best Windows keyboards, and that hasn’t changed here, even if I can’t believe it’s not backlit.

The trackpad, too, is at the top of its class. It’s smooth and glassy, and impressively responsive – though two-finger scrolling can be a little jumpy at times. Lenovo’s tweaked its ThinkPad formula a bit: instead of having two buttons at the top for TrackPoint users to click with, the trackpad is now much bigger, and all its corners are clickable. It’s better-looking, and more usable besides; I don’t mind the TrackPoint so much here, because at least it’s easy to ignore.

Of course, the normal Windows trackpad problems still apply. The Helix’s cursor has a weird habit of freezing, and some gestures can be unresponsive — Lenovo makes good trackpads, but here, as with the resolution, Microsoft needs to help.

On day one, the Helix is already outdated. Even as Intel’s new Haswell chips ship with promises of better performance and incredible battery life, the Helix ships with a 1.8GHz Core i5 Ivy Bridge processor, along with 4GB of RAM and between 128GB and 256GB of solid-state storage. It also comes with a fairly clean version of Windows 8, marred only by Lenovo’s series of business-minded apps and a whole lot of Intel and Norton popups.

Performance is solid, and the Helix powers everything from the Windows 8 interface to relatively heavy apps with ease. It’s easily among the most capable Windows tablets I’ve used, rivaled only by the Surface Pro; it’s even better when it’s docked, because the built-in fan in the dock allows the Helix to overclock its processor and run even faster. I didn’t notice the bump most of the time, but definitely felt the difference between running a heavy app like Adobe Illustrator in tablet vs. laptop modes.

But Haswell promises another bump, particularly with graphics — that’s important future-proofing, and might also mean the Helix, which is currently completely incapable of playing any kind of graphically intensive games, could do a little better. Haswell chips are clearly the future, and though I’m sure there’s a Helix coming with Intel’s new chip inside, right now the device feels old from the minute it comes out of the box.

When it does get a Haswell upgrade, battery life is going to be ridiculous. Even now, the Helix scored eight hours and eight minutes on the Verge Battery Test, which cycles through a series of websites and images with brightness set to 65 percent — that’s a rare number for an Ivy Bridge machine. It’s also with both parts connected; the tablet alone lasted five hours and five minutes, which is a really low result compared to the iPad but is sadly par for the Windows 8 tablet course. If Lenovo can figure out how to double the Helix’s battery life the way Apple doubled the MacBook Air’s, it’s going to be insane.

On one hand, there’s really nothing like the Helix. It works well as a tablet and a laptop, has solid battery life, and offers a mix of power and versatility I haven’t really seen from a device this size. It’s like the Surface Pro with a better, sturdier keyboard and better battery life — maybe that’s enough for some people. But it’s not for me. $1,679.99 can buy you a lot of laptop from almost any manufacturer, and it’s too high a price to pay for too little attention to detail here. I want a device that is sleek and beautiful, equally laptop and tablet, not a jumble of parts designed to awkwardly mash the two devices together.

The worst part? Lenovo clearly knows how to make a nice laptop, and even a good laptop this versatile. If you want a tablet that is also a laptop, the IdeaPad Yoga 13 and 11 have great keyboards and trackpads, and they pair them with a design that doesn’t look hacked together in a garage. As a laptop, the ThinkPad Carbon X1 is thinner, lighter, and better in almost every respect.

I was expecting another Lenovo stylus like the one included with the Thinkpad Yoga (above top), but I was pleased to find that the Helix 2 includes a full-sized pen comparable to the Surface Pro 2 pen (third from top). The barrel is a bit narrower than I prefer, but it"s very adequate for most uses. It ships with one Wacom flex nib, such as is found on the Fujitsu T-5000.

The digitizer on my Helix 2 works exceptionally well. I can draw all the way to the edges, I have no problem accessing the corner menus or the close gadgets and the pen-cursor alignment is uniform throughout the screen. This is the first Wacom Windows tablet I"ve owned that has worked so well out of the box. My Helix 2 shipped with driver version 7.1.3-9 installed and I"ve decided not to update it until offered the option directly by Lenovo (if that ever happens). The latest driver on the Wacom US site is 7.2.0-10, but if it"s not broken, why fix it?

Drawing on the tablet is a wonderful experience. Unlike my Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga, the Helix 2 screen does not have a screen protector, but the pen"s Flex nib offers all the grip that I need. Of course, the Helix 2 is compatible with all Wacom Tablet PC pens and I tested mine with the Bamboo Stylus Feel, Fujitsu T-5000 and many others with equally excellent results.

Pressure response is outstanding. (Sorry N-Trig/Microsoft, but there is still a recognizable improvement moving from a 256-level device to 1024 or beyond.)

I"ve tested the Helix 2 with the desktop applications Clip Studio Paint, Photoshop CC 2014 and Sketchbook Pro 7 and the apps Fresh Paint and Sketchable. The lower-end 5Y10 processor never broke a sweat. A major advantage of the Core M (formerly known as Broadwell) generation of chips is that they allow fanless designs. My Helix 2 has never heated up even while running graphics intensive benchmarks and the silent operation is welcome too.

If you"ve been waiting for a Wacom-equipped successor to the Surface Pro 2, the Helix 2 comes very close to being that device. It certainly offers more of a true tablet form factor than the SP2. It"s significantly thinner and lighter and doesn"t throw off heat.

On the other hand, there"s something cheap-feeling about the Lenovo. The back is smooth and cool to the touch, but there are a few unsightly stickers and an unidentifiable protuberance by the SD slot that can be uncomfortable to hold. The hardware controls like the volume button are too close to the body and shallow, making them very difficult to distinguish from the USB and SD port covers. There is a sharp edge all around the tablet where the front panel comes in contact with the rest of the body that is less than ideal. The docking holes at the bottom of the display are also uncomfortable to the grip.

The docking mechanism itself is somewhat finicky. You have to align the tablet "just so" for it to send power to the keyboard. It"s also very easy for the screen to detach from the keyboard if you attempt to carry the Helix 2 while in the laptop mode.

Lenovo should offer a standalone version of the Helix 2 priced around $800 to compete more directly with the Surface Pro 3 i3 model. Although the 11.6-inch, 16:9 HD display is not as nice as the SP3"s 12.5-inch, 3:2 high-res display, it"s close enough that Wacom aficionados would want to carefully consider the Helix 2.

But for now, the Helix 2 is simply over-priced. My advice is to wait until the new year when the Ultrabook Pro Keyboard is available and run the price/performance comparison again.

It was more than two years ago that Lenovo launched the promising ThinkPad Helix, a detachable tablet-laptop hybrid that offered decent performance, lengthy battery life, and a slew of useful business-centric features. The ability to use the Helix as either a tablet or a laptop, each quite portable, made it a great alternative to the flexible Yoga Ultrabook line for the worker on the go.

And so the new Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2014/Core M was born. It uses the same name as its predecessor, and largely the same feature set, but Lenovo claims it"s now 15% slimmer and will last several hours longer on battery. It"s also much cheaper, with Lenovo shaving over $500 off the price of the original to help it become a more affordable and compelling option.

Aside from design changes and an upgrade to Core M, a lot of the ThinkPad Helix"s hardware remains the same. On the front you get the same 11.6-inch 1080p display, and internally up to 8 GB of RAM and up to 256 GB of solid state storage. The battery has shrunk to 35 Wh (from 42 Wh) without affecting rated battery life at all.

The design of the ThinkPad Helix isn"t very inspiring, though I can"t say I"m surprised considering it carries the ThinkPad brand. It"s not the prettiest tablet going around, featuring a mostly grey and black design that keeps it firmly in the realm of business users. The focus has clearly been on keeping the build functional, with a slew of ports, flaps and buttons you wouldn"t often see on other devices.

The 11.6-inch display sits in the center of the front panel with reasonably-sized bezels, allowing you to hold the tablet portion of the Helix without accidentally touching the screen. If you look closely you"ll realize this isn"t a standard rounded rectangle, with sharper corners on the bottom edge than the top so it doesn"t look strange while seated in either of the two keyboard docks.

On the front, the display is protected by smooth and swooshable glossy scratchproof glass, which extends over the bezels to a small plastic rim. This black plastic then joins a cheapish grey piece of plastic that wraps around the edges and top of the tablet, providing a housing for all the ports and the wireless radios. The back panel is made of a similarly-colored metal, possibly aluminium, which feels nice but fails to provide a premium look.

While not necessarily a complaint I had about the design of the ThinkPad Helix, it should be noted that it"s not the thinnest or lightest tablet going around. A lot of this is down to the sheer size of the display, which keeps the device to a rather hefty 795 grams; certainly heavier than is comfortable for single-handed use. At 9.6mm thin it"s not ground-breaking in terms of thickness, but is able to facilitate a very handy feature.

That feature is a full-sized USB 3.0 port underneath a flap on the Helix tablet"s right-hand edge. Few tablets include a full-sized USB port, despite how useful it is to have a port that you can attach storage and peripherals to without needing an adapter. And when you do need an adapter, it"ll be for useful functionality such as Ethernet: Lenovo includes a USB-to-Ethernet adapter in the box of some Helix models.

A second flap is located just above the flap containing the USB port, underneath which you"ll find both a micro-SIM slot (in supported devices) and a microSD card slot. Also along this side is the 3.5mm audio jack, volume buttons, and a micro-HDMI port for directly connecting to external displays. Along the left edge is a single port that is used for charging the Helix through a proprietary connector. Power and rotation lock buttons are found on the right side of the top edge in a relatively easy to reach location.

While most of the Helix tablet"s edges are curved to an extent, the bottom edge is largely flat to accommodate a series of connectors that allow it to dock into the supported keyboards. There are four holes for alignment, several magnets, a selection of gold contacts and a physical connector. The physical connector is reserved for the Ultrabook Pro keyboard with its HDMI out port, while the contacts are used for the basic keyboard.

The back of the tablet features a camera lens, which at least on my review unit was slightly misaligned with the actual camera module beneath. Along the bottom of the back panel you"ll find two stereo speakers, which unfortunately fire away from your ears, but are good in terms of their volume output.

There"s also a fingerprint sensor located near the right-hand ports on the back of the tablet. It"s an odd black rectangle that"s not well integrated with the rest of the Helix"s design, but with a quick swipe over the curved sensor it works very well. It"s actually placed in a great location for swiping while using the tablet (or laptop for that matter) in landscape mode, and because of that, it has a very short learning curve.

There are three ThinkPad Helix variants listed on Lenovo"s site. The "low-end" variant comes with a dual-core, four-thread Intel Core M-5Y10c, which has a maximum clock frequency of 2GHz. The other two pricier models have a faster Core M-5Y71, with a base frequency of 1.2GHz, but in Turbo Mode, this goes up to 2.9GHz, a high clock speed for a tablet.

8GB of memory comes as standard in all models, as does a 1920 x 1080 display, which Lenovo touts as capable of 400-nit brightness. As I was sent a high-end model with a Core M-5Y71, it came with an Intel HD5300 integrated graphics chip, which isn"t quite the performer the HD5500 is (that"s what you get with Intel Core i5 processors as seen on, for example, the ThinkPad Yoga 12).

There are multiple batteries, one in the dock, one in the tablet itself, with two power connectors to charge either separately. They behave as you might expect. The primary battery is in the tablet itself. When connected, the dock charges the tablet, and if it is left disconnected from a power source, it"s the dock"s battery that powers the Helix – and obviously when you remove the tablet, then it"s using its own battery.

The Helix also comes with an Active stylus on the low-end models, with a Digitizer Pen in the high-end model, offering 256 levels of pressure sensitivity, although this can be purchased separately on Lenovo"s site.

The Helix is not quite the most powerful tablet around, as it"s pipped to the finish line by a few other models, including the aforementioned Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 12, but it"s still a great performer. As with most high-end x86 tablets, expect just about any software you might use on a laptop to run perfectly well on the Helix.

I also used a Spyder4 Colorimeter to test the display against Lenovo"s claims. The result of the uncalibrated brightness test came out slightly lower than the quoted 400 nits, with a result of 361, but this is still good. sRGB coverage of 78% and Adobe coverage of 58% aren"t up there with standalone colour-accurate PC monitors or high-end laptops such as HP"s DreamColor display, but these results are still more than reasonable.Lenovo ThinkPad Helix (2015): Price Comparison