When it comes to wireless charging, friends familiar with the consumer electronics market should be familiar with it, in the field of mobile phones, wireless charging has become the standard for most flagship mobile phones. For example, the iPhone we are familiar with, from the iPhone 8 began to be equipped with wireless charging function, breaking the finger has been five years ago, as for the other camp of wireless charging mobile phones can even be traced back to 2009, that is, thirteen years ago.
The development of wireless charging in the field of mobile phones has only begun to accelerate in the past two years, from 15W to 100W in only two years, and the charging speed has caught up with wired charging. Seeing the rapid development of wireless charging in the mobile phone camp, as a heavy laptop user, Xiao Lei is curious about another thing: why is there no sound in the wireless charging of laptops?
Soon the market gave Xiao Lei the answer, Lenovo brought us a number of new laptop products at CES 2022, including a ThinkBook 13x Gen 2 that supports wireless charging, and directly in one step to support 65W fast wireless charging.
Although it is not the first product in the notebook market to support wireless charging, it may be the first product to reach the true "usable" level from a commercial perspective.
Wireless is the future
It is reported that the ThinkBook 13x Gen 2 released by Lenovo is a superbook that focuses on mobile office in terms of positioning, which is simply a product with thin and light and endurance as the selling point, not performance as the selling point, so its own requirements for charging power are not high, and the fast charging of 65W is enough to meet the needs.
Let's first take a look at the ThinkBook 13x Gen 2, the whole machine weighs only 1.22KG and supports 180 degree flat, equipped with a 13.3-inch 2.5K screen and Intel's 12th generation Core U-series processor, which is basically a common thin and light commercial office notebook configuration.
In terms of interfaces, because the fuselage size is small and the design is thin and light, Lenovo only configures two Thunderbolt 4 full-featured interfaces and a 3.5mm audio interface, which is directly benchmarked against Apple's MacBook Air from the perspective of the number of interfaces, and the number of interfaces of the latter is also a design problem that has been criticized by users for a long time.
As a rule of thumb, the ThinkBook 13x Gen 2 can actually use only one interface, because the other interface must be used as a charging interface, for the user not only need to carry additional docking station, but also the docking station must also support as many interfaces as possible, otherwise no second interface can support docking station access. If put in the past, after the launch of this product, it will basically be criticized by netizens, angrily denouncing it as the product of Lenovo's "design regression".
However, if you add wireless charging, then the result is different, the most intuitive effect is that there is no longer a Thunderbolt 4 interface, users can use two interfaces to cope with their own external equipment needs. Although from the perspective of Xiao Lei's use, two are actually far from enough, but at least better than the situation where only one interface is available, when one of the interfaces is occupied by the docking station, the other interface can be used at any time to connect professional monitors or graphics card docking stations.
Next look at the wireless charging module, from the Lenovo official product picture, the wireless charging module is mainly divided into two parts, of which the main part is covered with silver-white metal material and divided into twelve areas, for the ThinkBook 13x Gen 2 to provide 65W wireless charging support. Another separate area is wireless charging for other mobile devices, supporting Qi wireless charging protocol with a maximum power of 10W.
In Xiao Lei's view, this additional mobile device charging area can only be said to be better than nothing, barely meeting the wireless charging needs of headphones and smart watches, and the other is the iPhone, because most of the other Android phones use private wireless charging protocols, even if the Qi protocol is supported, the 10W charging power can not be quickly charged into the power, only suitable for daily to keep the phone power not falling.
The length of the entire wireless charging module is 44cm, the width is 10.5cm, the thickness is only 4.5mm, the ultra-thin design allows it to support only a Type-C charging interface, without any redundant interface can be used, the input side Lenovo is equipped with a 100W PD charger.
From the design point of view, the silver-white area of the entire charging module just fully covers the bottom of the ThinkBook 13x Gen 2, which is like adding an extra foot to the laptop when it is used, because the thickness is only 4.5mm, so it will not affect the user's use, but can make the keyboard surface have a certain tilt angle, more in line with the use of habits.
At present, Lenovo's official pricing for the ThinkBook 13x Gen 2 is $1099, and the additional purchase of wireless charging modules is $200, which is not expensive from the price point of view, but the specific hardware configuration has not been revealed. Moreover, Lenovo launched an external wireless charging module in June last year, which can make all laptops that support Type-C interface charging
Will wireless charging become standard for thin and light books?
Although dell has introduced laptops that support wireless charging before Lenovo, Dell's Latitude 7285 wireless charging module is even larger than the main body of the computer, which is not easy to carry and will occupy too much desktop space.
Moreover, latitude 7285 is essentially a two-in-one laptop, the main body is just a touch-enabled tablet, want to use the wireless charging function not only need to buy an additional charging module, but also need to buy a peripheral keyboard that supports wireless charging, the price of the two accessories is 50% of the price of the Latitude 7285 body.
The inconvenient wireless charging module coupled with the excessive pricing made the Latitude 7285 attract little attention in the market, and soon the related product line was cut, and the Latitude 7285 had no successor. However, at that time, the wireless charging technology was not perfect, and it was far inferior to the present in terms of power, so the Latitude 7285 was more like an experimental product than a mature commercial product.
For wireless charging to enter the mobile PC market, in fact, XiaoLei is not surprised by this, after all, wireless charging has entered a mature stage in the mobile phone market, and most of the thin and light books even if the need for fast charging is taken into account, the requirements for charging power are actually no different from mobile phones.
According to Xiao Lei's statistics, most of the current thin and light charging power is 65W, and a small number of models that support extremely fast charging are 100W, which is basically equivalent to the charging power of the current flagship mobile phone. From a technical point of view, since it is possible to achieve such high-power wireless charging support under the size of the mobile phone, it should not be difficult to implant a wireless charging module of the same power on a larger and more thermal laptop, at least at the technical level.
Although the technology is not difficult, but the user group's demand for related functions is not high, after all, the frequency of mobile use of the laptop itself is much lower than that of the mobile phone, so plugging in the power supply line in daily use will not cause too much trouble to the use, and there is naturally no urgent need for wireless charging.
However, after the rapid growth of demand for home work and mobile work caused by the lockdown of the epidemic, how to make laptops easier and freer to use has become an urgent need for manufacturers to solve. The environment of working from home is very different from the environment of the office, and many people will often pick up the computer to go to other areas when working from home, especially users with children at home will often choose to work near the area where children play.
With the increase in the demand for home work, the advantages of wireless charging are also reflected, one is that users do not need to repeatedly plug and unplug the charging cable, pick up the computer can leave directly, and do not have to worry about continuous consumption of computer battery life because there is no connection to the charging cable. In addition, wireless charging can further reduce the number of cables on the desktop, allowing users to get a cleaner, cleaner desktop, and do not need to worry about the charging cable becoming a safety hazard in the room.
On the other hand, for business laptops that are moving in a lighter and thinner direction, the low thickness of the fuselage often means the shrinkage of the fuselage interface, how to use all the valuable interfaces has become a headache for manufacturers and users, and wireless charging also means that users can get an additional full-featured interface.
Obviously, wireless charging is not just needed for the mobile PC market, but it can bring a better experience to users. And from the price of ThinkBook 13x Gen 2, the cost of this technology is not high, so from the perspective of technical difficulty, cost and popularity difficulty, wireless charging does not have obvious difficulties in the field of mobile PCs.
Therefore, Xiao Lei predicts that in the near future, wireless charging may become the standard function of high-end thin and light books, and some desks may be embedded in the wireless charging module, when the office only needs to put the laptop in the corresponding area, you can automatically enter the charging mode to meet the needs of long-term work, discussion and meeting.
Will wireless charging become one of the considerations when choosing thin and light books in the future? You can leave your opinion in the comments section.