I want one

It seems that all I talk about recently is Mysterion. Well, let’s get back to the other thing this blog does these days: geeking out about tech.

I’ve been thinking recently about getting a new tablet. Currently, the only tablet I have is a 7″ Amazon Fire. Which is great for consuming content, but I was thinking it was time for something with a little more meet.  I don’t intend for this to be a primary productivity device for me. I have a laptop for that, which I’m quite fond of. So the tablet would still be a media consumption device. But I would like it to be at least a little bit more capable of productivity. I now have an official work laptop (a Mac Powerbook that I’m not crazy about–but that’s because I have a bias against Macs), and I don’t feel like I can take two laptops to the office. But I often miss having my personal laptop when I have to stay late or I’m traveling and want to do personal stuff, such as writing. You can get keyboards with plenty of tablet devices, so that seems like it could be the way to go. I also would like something I could get LTE access with, so I’m not always tethered to WiFi.

I was thinking of getting the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, but my cellular provider just stopped offering it, and I’m not sure I can get the cellular version anywhere else. And then I saw this:

That is the Lenovo Yoga Book. It’s internals are nothing to write home about: Atom x5 processor, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB storage. The screen is 1920×1200 LCD (I really want an OLED screen, but that’s not available). Fortunately, it does allow you to add microSD storage up to 128 GB, and it apparently does have  LTE. What’s really interesting is that it has a keyboard–sort of. It’s Halo keyboard is actually a touchpad with haptic feedback. I’m not sure how easy it would be for me to type on, so I wouldn’t want to use this for my primary productivity device, but it could be good enough for those times when I want to spend a little time writing.

What’s most interesting is that the touch keyboard transforms into a writing surface, like a Wacom tablet, that records what you write or draw. I’m not much of an artist myself, but I do like paper notes.

It also comes with the option of either Android or Windows 10. I like Windows 10, or at least prefer it over Windows 8, but Android is better for media consumption, in my opinion. At the very least, Amazon allows you to download videos onto Android, not Windows. For productivity, the one thing I’d really miss with Android is that Scrivener is not available for it–yet. Scrivener is my primary writing tool, and I’d really like to be able to use it when I’m on the go. But the iOS version of Scrivener just released, and I know they’ve been working on the Android version, so I’m hoping that the Android version will be available some time in the next year.

So I’m definitely considering this device. I’ll probably wait for reviews before shelling out $499 for it, though.