Everyone’s obsessed with higher-resolution webcams right now. But at a certain point, you just don’t have enough space in that top bezel for a higher-resolution camera.
That’s where Lenovo’s latest laptop experiment comes in, the ThinkBook 16p Gen 4. It has a decent 1080p webcam, sure, but you can also attach a modular 4K webcam right on top via some pogo pins. That’s courtesy of what Lenovo calls the “Magic Bay,” a series of pogo pins on the top of the lid that allows for modular add-ons, such as that 4K webcam.
Taking it one step further, Lenovo can even take the integrated webcam and the 4K webcam into a single, combined stream for the best possible quality. One other nifty feature of the Magic Bay webcam is rotating it back around so that it’s world-facing. From there, you have access to both the integrated camera and world-facing, allowing you to stream both at the same time.
I can only think of a few very specific scenarios where that might be useful, such as showing a whiteboard (which the ThinkBook 16p can actually detect and digitize) — but it could certainly come in handy.
While the high-resolution webcam is a very practical addition, the idea of a magnetic attachment that can snap onto the top of your laptop is too good for just one accessory. So, Lenovo is also offering two other options, the Magic Bay Light and the Magic Bay LTE modem. Both are fairly self-explanatory, offering different ways to augment your experience in the way a good modular attachment should.
Those Magic Bay attachments are neat, and they’re certainly the main draw of the ThinkBook 16p Gen 4. Because beyond that, this laptop has a lot in common with the previous model, the ThinkBook 16p Gen 3. It’s a larger business laptop, meant for a person who needs some extra performance. It comes with H-series 13th-gen Intel processors, next-gen RTX 40-series graphics, and up to a 3.2K 120Hz display.
In addition to the ThinkBook Plus Twist and the Yoga Book 9i, Lenovo brought all its experimental guns to CES this year, and I love to see the adventurous spirit of these new laptops.
The ThinkBook 16p Gen 4 is expected to be available in May 2023 at a starting price of $1,349.
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