They use an interlocking design based on magnets

Jan 5, 2015 08:33 GMT  ·  By

Laptops are pretty versatile all on their own, but there are plenty of situations where they can be found wanting, especially on the road when you're far removed from any power sockets or Internet links. Lenovo has just created a new way to deal with that.

Laptop accessories aren't really something new, since they've existed for almost as long as laptops themselves. However, they haven't exactly shown much consistency either.

Which is to say, everyone with a stake in this market launches something or other whenever mood strikes them, or something seems to be trendy.

They also don't usually bother applying a certain design philosophy to them, which has led to laptop owners having auxiliary devices that look nothing like each other, and also take a lot of space when in use.

Lenovo sought to eliminate clutter and still offer all benefits by creating the ThinkPad Stack.

Lenovo ThinkPad Stack

ThinkPad is the brand name Lenovo uses to refer to its professional and business series of laptops. The ones you're more likely to use for document and database work than games.

The ThinkPad Stack add-on series is currently composed of a 10,000 mAh battery pack, an external hard disk drive of 1 TB (featuring USB 3.0 connection), an LTE data hotspot, and a Bluetooth speaker.

All of them can interlock, forming one single stack by means of a magnetic attachment system. It's not just the look that benefits from this, but also power delivery: every stack only needs one connection to a power socket or laptop USB port.

In theory, you could stack all of them on top of the battery and have them work off that energy, and the impact won't be all that high, since external HDDs and all the other items don't need nearly as much power as a whole laptop, even put together. Pogo pins are used to interlink the devices and share energy.

Availability and pricing

The tags are actually pretty high, since Lenovo is betting on you being willing to pay a bit more for the convenience of having less clutter and needing fewer cables to use all the gadgets.

The 10,000mAh battery pack is tagged at $50, the 1TB USB 3.0 hard drive at $200, the Bluetooth speaker at $90, and the LTE data hotspot bears a price of $200. In Europe, you can expect the same number of Euro to be needed for a buy, or at least three thirds if exchange rates actually do matter, unlikely though it is.

Lenovo ThinkPad Stack accessories, how to connect them
Lenovo ThinkPad Stack accessories, how to connect them

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Lenovo ThinkPad Stack accessories
Lenovo ThinkPad Stack accessories, how to connect them
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