Tech

Lenovo's first 5G laptop costs more than a MacBook Pro

The Yoga 5G has no business costing this much.

Craig Wilson / Input

Laptops are suddenly super interesting again. Samsung's Galaxy Chromebook looks like hot fire and Lenovo's just announced the Yoga 5G (for 5G, duh) with up to 24-hours of battery life thanks to Qualcomm's mobile chipset. The 14-inch, fanless laptop supports 5G and works with mmWave and sub-6GHz.

Mobile guts inside — Qualcomm's 8cx chipset is powering this 2-in-1 computer with the company's Adreno 680 GPU giving it some graphics oomph. It's configurable with 8GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage. The display is a full HD resolution touchscreen, there's a fingerprint reader and Dolby Atmos audio. The charging tech is intriguing, too: with the right cable you can charge a phone off it. These specs are fine, but the 8cx platform has yet to prove itself to be versatile; Microsoft's Surface Pro X, which uses a custom version of the 8cx chipset, turned out to be a total dud.

Outrageously priced — CES has no shortage of expensive gadgets that have no right being so pricey. You can add the Yoga 5G to the list because it'll start at $1,499 when it comes out in the U.S. in the spring. 5G in a laptop — in any device really — comes with a hefty premium. Unless you can really take advantage of the newer network, you should wait until prices come down.

How bad do you want 5G?Craig Wilson / Input