Lenovo’s Solar PC Concept Uses The Power Of The Sun To Charge

Today, Lenovo announced a concept laptop that comes with a flexible display, but it’s actually got another concept to show off during Mobile World Congress with the Yoga Solar Concept PC. Much like the ThinkBook Flip AI PC that leaked last month, the Yoga Solar PC concept popped up briefly in a few leaked images.

As the name suggests, this is a laptop with built-in solar panels that can charge it up. Of course, to get the most out of that feature, it’ll be better off in direct sunlight. If you’re the type of person to make use of the time you have to be productive no matter where you are, then this would be the perfect laptop. It incorporates a solar panel in the lid that has over a 24% solar conversion rate. Lenovo says this is one of the highest in the industry, and it should allow the laptop to charge up in a reasonable amount of time.

However, it would likely still be considerably slower than plugging it in. As this is just a concept, though, that’s neither here nor there.

You can get 1 hour of use with the Lenovo Yoga Solar PC in just 20 minutes

With a laptop that incorporates solar panels, you’re probably wondering how useful that really is. Well, that all depends on how often you find yourself in sunny weather. But from the technical standpoint of this laptop, Lenovo says that in just 20 minutes of the solar panels taking in sunlight, you’d get about an hour of video playback time. So you’re looking at three hours of that by charging the laptop for an hour.

That’s pretty good in a pinch if you just need enough juice to do a few things. Or you could opt to leave it out in the sun all day while you do other stuff and have a fully charged laptop by the time you come back to get it. We got some hands-on time with the laptop at the event, and the solar charging appears to work pretty well.

The solar panels do their job even in low-light conditions

Lenovo says that it was able to achieve the rate of solar conversion that it did by using “Back Contact Cell” technology. Essentially, this allows for maximizing solar absorption. So you end up with that 20-minute timer to get 1 hour of use. Lenovo says this technology also allows the solar panels to do their job even if the lighting conditions are lower. Although, it does work at a slower pace and isn’t feeding the laptop as much juice.

According to the company, it’s just enough power to sustain the laptop’s charge while idling. That means it’s probably not enough to keep it charged with heavy use. But it’s still ultimately better than no charge capabilities at all.