Lenovo debuts ThinkPad P40 Yoga to take on Surface Book

Lenovo unveiled several new mobile workstations and the ThinkStation P310 desktop workstation with Intel's sixth generation Skylake processor and Nvidia Quadro graphics. The ThinkPad P50s and ThinkPad P40 Yoga come with Intel's Core i7 processor, while the ThinkStation P310 ships with Intel's Xeon processor.

With the Yoga branding, the ThinkPad P40 Yoga is a convertible laptop with a 360-degree rotating screen. Designed for digital artists, users can configure the resolution with up to a 2,560 x 1,440 panel, and the screen comes Wacom Active ES technology for use with a digitizer. The screen supports up to 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity, but the Pen Pro is an optional accessory for the convertible.

The system can be configured with up to 16GB RAM, a 512 solid state drive for storage and Nvidia Quadro M500M graphics. The ThinkPad P40 Yoga is Mil-SPEC tested for durability, and the notebook comes with Lenovo's Lift 'n Lock keyboard, which locks the keyboard in laptop mode.

The form factor, inking support and inclusion of discrete graphics make the ThinkPad P40 Yoga a natural competitor to Microsoft's Surface Book.

Lenovo ThinkPad P50s

The ThinkPad P50s is a slimmer mobile workstation in Lenovo's P series, complementing the existing ThinkPad P50 and P70 notebooks. The workstation weighs 4.9 pounds (2.2kg) and measures 15 x 10.2 x 0.92 inches (380.6 x 258.2 x 23.3mm).

The P50s features a 3K resolution display, Nvidia Quadro M500M GPU, up to 32GB RAM and up to 1TB HDD or 512GB SSD drives. Battery life is estimated at 17 hours with Lenovo's Power Bridge battery technology.

The P50s comes with three USB 3.0, single HDMI 1.4, single Mini DisplayPort 1.2, Ethernet connector, docking connector, microphone and headphone jack, Smart Card reader and SDXC memory card reader.

ThinkStation P310

Equipped with Intel's Xeon processor, Lenovo is billing the ThinKStation P310 as a workstation at the price of a desktop. The P310 is available in either a tower or small form factor desktop form factor. The PC can be configured with Intel's Skylake Core i3, i5, i7 or Xeon E3-1200 v5 processor. Memory tops at 64GB DDR4 with four slots.

The small form factor version of the P310 can be configured with up to two Nvidia NVS Quadro K1200 graphics cards, while the larger tower form factor can accommodate an Nvidia NVS Quadro M4000 graphics card.

The small form factor measures 4 x 15.5 x 13.3 inches (101.6 x 394.5 x 337.8mm), while the larger tower comes in at 6.9 x 16.8 x 14.8 inches (175.3 x 426 x 376mm). Both configurations come with plenty of ports for connectivity, including six USB 3.0, 2 USB 2.0, serial, Firewire, eSATA, audio input, audio output, microphone, SD card reader and 29-in-1 Media Card Reader.

The ThinkPad P40 Yoga, ThinkPad P50s and ThinkStation P310 will be available in the first quarter of 2016. Pricing for the ThinkPad P40 Yoga starts at $1,399 (£927, AU$1,908, the ThinkPad P50s starts at $1,299 (£861, AU$1,772) and the ThinkStation P310 starts at $729 (£483, AU$994).