I played the piano, lost a strange game involving multiplying insects (don’t ask) and then showed my considerable skill at losing by being heavily defeated at an excellent multiplayer game in the mould of Guitar Hero. Who needs dancing girls, cocktails or casinos?

The reason is a piece of innovation that’s bound to be copied quicker than the speed of my colleagues’ ears pricking up at the sound of dancing girls: a folding arm.

In this instance, a video is worth at least a thousand words:

The rest of the spec is almost irrelevant. Yes, it’s got a 27in display, an Intel Core processor, Nvidia GeForce graphics and up to 1TB of storage – but what matters is that arm!

Perhaps that simplifies it a little bit. Another key technical inclusion is support for ten-point multitouch. That means you can play sophisticated games with multiple players, plus any number of other applications: photo and video editing, maps, music creation to name but a few.

And it isn’t just for home use: the A720 would be absolutely perfect as a “front of office” PC for a trendy company. The A720 will be released with Windows 7, but the version I played with was running Windows 8 Developer, and it’s undoubtedly the best showpiece yet for Microsoft’s forthcoming OS.

Then we come to the Android TV

Now this one is a little more of a concept piece; it’s a 55in TV that will be released in China this year, along with a 42in version, and it looks terrific.

Its headline feature is that it runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich, and Lenovo has done some clever interface work – as seen by the photo.

Nor is it just a pretty face, with some equally clever work going into the remote. Want to perform a search? Then speak into it. Want to swipe left or right? Then sweep away with your finger using the remote’s built-in touch-sensitive area.

There’s also a 5-megapixel camera to bring in some interaction, and the inevitable tickbox of 3D.

Unfortunately the Lenovo rep was guarding the remote quite closely, so I couldn’t actually play with this one. But if and when this machine arrives in the PC Pro Labs, I’ll be asking for first dibs.

You might ask, “so what?” And that’s a fair argument. I’ve never heard an iPhone 4 owner moan about the speed of the interface, or anyone who’s bought a recent Android phone for that matter.

But there is something psychologically satisfying about using a phone that jumps in response to commands; going back to my usual phone afterwards, things seemed to be in slow motion.

There are practical benefits too. Watch the clip below and you’ll see how well the K800 copes with complicated HD video.

HD here means 720p, with the 4.5in display having a 1,280 x 720 resolution. This makes the video look crisp, but with the addition of an Intel Wireless Display adapter (WiDi for short) you can even watch movies directly on your TV; no wires required.

This phone also includes an 8-megapixel camera capable of shooting HD footage, but the limitations of the small lens and sensor were obvious in my test shots; then again, light conditions in the Lenovo stand at CES weren’t exactly favourable.

Other things to note about the K800 itself: it’s not the world’s most attractive design, with a square-jawed black finish and none of the slimness we’ve come to expect from modern phones, and it includes all the wireless radios you could ever hope for – including WCDMA HSPA+ for 21Mbits/sec downloads.

To a large extent, this is all moot: unless you happen to live in China, you won’t be able to buy the K800 (and even then you’ll have to wait until sometime between April and June). It should be seen, more than anything, as proof of the ability to squeeze an Intel Atom processor into such a tiny chassis.

So let’s get to the specs. Inside there’s a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z2460 CPU with 512KB of Level 2 cache; this is Intel’s Medfield smartphone platform, which has been long talked about but never previously seen in a proper product.

Note there’s just a single core inside the Z2460, with dual-core Medfield chips likely to debut in Motorola phones later this year. Nevertheless, according to benchmarks performed by Anandtech, this is a darn quick phone: a third quicker than the Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, and almost 20% faster in BrowserMark.

To put that into perspective, the Galaxy Nexus was previously the fastest phone Anandtech had tested, including the Apple iPhone 4S.

According to Intel, it’s also highly competitive when it comes to power consumption:

If those power graphs are to be believed (and we’ll hold off on that until we see some Medfield-based phones that we can actually battery test), the K800 is a definite victory for Intel, and a signal to ARM that it won’t have things all its own way in the coming years.

And going back to the question I asked right at the start – why does this matter? Because it opens up big possibilities for phones of the future, as they edge closer and closer to being what we used to call computers.

In a city where a woman stood on a street corner dressed as Catwoman didn’t even bat the eyelids of passers-by, it can be pretty hard to grab people’s attention. But Lenovo achieved that feat at CES today, by sending out someone to test drive its new Ultrabook – on the roof of a stretch Hummer.

You might think driving around with a man sat using a laptop on the roof of the car would attract the attention of the local constabulary, and you’d be right…

Except the policeman tailing the Hummer wasn’t pulling the driver over for recklessly endangering his passenger, he was providing a police escort. Only in Vegas.

First up is this:

The key here is the port on the left, namely Thunderbolt. We expect this to be a big theme of CES 2012, with the weight of the industry moving behind the inevitable successor to USB.

And so it should. To quote Lenovo, Thunderbolt allows you to “transfer a full-length HD move in less than 30 seconds and back up a year of continuous MP3 playback in just over 10 minutes.”

Intel’s Ivy Bridge architecture will also make its debut with the S430, with our Lenovo spokesman making it clear that this would be one of the flagship products at the time of launch.

This helps the 14in S430 to shed some weight and girth compared to the ThinkPad S420, which it replaces. The main stats are “under 4lb” and “less than 20mm thick” according to our insider, which is quite respectable for a machine that includes either a DVD burner or a second hard drive.

The other enhancements are less eye-catching but welcome nonetheless. Keyboard junkies will appreciate the larger cursor keys and what Lenovo claims to be a quieter click. This latter aspect was rather difficult to judge in a crowded hall, but the keyboard itself was enjoyable to type on.

Lenovo also includes a number of technologies to improve speech recognition and voice-over-IP performance, including dual-array microphones and software enhancements.

It adds up to a tasty sounding laptop that should pack decent performance (a separate graphics chip will be included for those after-hours games) and enormous battery life.

As ever, the proof will come when we get a chance to test the S430 in our Labs.

While other manufacturers have been focusing on tablets and phones at this year’s IFA trade show, Lenovo has also chosen to introduce its IdeaPad U300s – one of the first examples of Intel’s Ultrabook concept we’ve seen.

And with the promise of serious processing power in a slender 14.9mm thick chassis, this latest addition to the IdeaPad range is a bona-fide stunner.

It can’t quite match the likes of Samsung’s 9 Series or Apple’s Macbook Air 13in for lust-inducing slenderness, but it’s still utterly gorgeous. That 14.9mm thick chassis weighs in at just 1.3kg, yet, thanks to the all-aluminium construction, feels far from insubstantial.

There’s a little flex when you really tug at the seams, but not much: the base feels taut, and the lid looks to afford the display a considerable amount of protection.

The attention to detail in Lenovo’s design is impressive. Lenovo claims that the U300s is crafted from a single sheet of aluminium, which is then sandblasted and anodised to make it tougher and more scratch-resistant.

Then there’s the noticeable lack of vents in the U300s’ gently curved base: instead, Lenovo keeps the Core i5 and Core i7 processors cool by virtue of a discrete vent on the left-hand edge and maintains cool-running by using a “breathable” keyboard, which allows air to circulate through the gaps between the keys.

Any fears such novelties might affect usability swiftly prove unfounded. The scrabble-tile keyboard has a light, crisp feel, and the glass touchpad beneath it behaved brilliantly during our snatched moments with the U300s. Just like Apple’s Macbooks, the glass gives a lovely smooth, solid feel under the finger, and left- and right-clicks were recognised reliable despite the lack of discrete buttons.

Lenovo has done a great job of giving the U300s a classy, uncluttered look, but there’s still enough connectivity where it matters. There’s a single USB 3 port alongside an HDMI output, and a USB 2 port on the opposite edge.

We didn’t have enough time to give the glossy 13.3in display anything more than a cursory look, but the brightness levels were impressive and colour reproduction was punchy. One thing’s for sure, it looks better than the decidedly average LCD in Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 ultraportable.

The seam-free chassis does of course mean that Lenovo has had to opt for a non-replaceable battery, but the claims of eight hour battery life in MobileMark 2007’s Productivity test give us some hope. In tandem with Lenovo’s excellent RapidCharge technology – which charges the battery to 50% capacity in just 30 minutes – the U300s is looking very promising indeed.

A keen price further bolsters the IdeaPad U300s’ appeal. Models sporting low-voltage 1.6GHz Core i5-2647M and 1.8Ghz Core i7-2677M processors will see the light of day towards the end of October, and our contact suggested a model sporting the low-voltage 1.6GHz Core i5-2647M processor, 4GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD would be available for around 999 Euros, which looks to severely undercut the likes of Samsung’s Series 9 900X3A.

Lenovo looks to be onto a winner with the U300s. With build quality and ergonomics reminiscent of a ThinkPad, and looks that can rival Apple’s best, it heralds an exciting future for Intel’s Ultrabook concept. The ultraportable is dead; long live the Ultrabook.

It’s already made its stateside debut, but over in good ol’ Blighty Lenovo has finally shown off its latest business ultraportable, the 13.3in ThinkPad X1.

From the off, it’s an unmistakeably classic ThinkPad. A sea of smooth matte black – magnesium alloy top and bottom – stretches all around, interrupted only by the occasional flash of red. It’s seriously slim, too, measuring just 17mm thick and adding a claimed 1.7kg to your laptop bag.

All the ThinkPad hallmarks are in place. The trackpoint glares from the centre of a backlit Scrabble-tile keyboard whose concave keys have travel and feel in abundance. Even though the multitouch pad integrates the mouse buttons into its bottom edge, they too deliver a quality feel with every click.

Display-wise, we’re not convinced by the rumours that Lenovo were going to employ a premium IPS panel. With a fair amount of contrast shift evident in the its vertical viewing angles, this looks more like a decent TN to our eyes. Still, it’s good enough: it didn’t look to offer the natural colours of a Macbook Pro, but strong contrast puts it well ahead of the disappointing panel on Sony’s VAIO S Series. Brightness hits a claimed 350cd/m2 and cranking the ThinkPad X1’s display up to maximum was enough to make us believe that figure.

The decision to employ a layer of Gorilla Glass left us conflicted, however. While the extra resilience is welcome, the glossy reflective finish isn’t. Even under the fairly dim lighting of last night’s event, you can see the lights glaring back in the picture above. And the 1,366 x 768 pixel resolution? That’s downright disappointing – given a choice, we’d have the 1,440 x 900 resolution of the old X301 back in a flash.

Still, the toughened display is well in keeping with Lenovo’s design brief. At 1.7kg, there’s no question the X1 is a slightly chunky ultraportable, but it feels like one that’ll survive years, rather than months, on the road. A fingerprint reader and TPM 1.3 chip deliver the data security you’d expect from a proper business portable, and the hard-disk drop sensor and spill-proof keyboard (you can see the drain hole in the picture below) help guard against physical disasters.

Performance and connectivity sees the ThinkPad X1 play its trump cards. Sandy Bridge takes pride of place, and there’s no recourse to the low-voltage variants: it’s a 2.5GHz Core i5-2520M. Lenovo’s employed the full-fat Intel vPro chipset, too, with all of its remote manageability benefits. All the usual ports and connectors line up sensibly at the laptop’s rear - there’s an SD card reader, one USB 3 and one USB 2 port, eSATA, Mini-DisplayPort and HDMI - and Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band 802.11n and optional integrated 3G tick every networking box going.

Lenovo claims five hours of battery life from the lithium-ion cell, with the optional battery slice doubling that to the ten-hour mark. That’s a mite underwhelming, but with Lenovo’s RapidCharge battery technology charging each battery to 80% capacity in just 30 minutes, the X1 looks like it’ll have the chops to survive the longest working days.

While it is genuinely impressive to see how much Lenovo’s managed to pack into the X1, it comes at a price that’ll make a serious dent in anyone’s IT budget. Insight UK have the X1 on pre-order with a Core i5-2520M, 4GB RAM and 250GB hard drive for £1,226 inc VAT, and the top-end 160GB SSD and 8GB RAM model reaching £1,663 inc VAT. One thing’s for certain: with Sony’s similarly priced VAIO Z Series due for an imminent relaunch, and the ThinkPad X1 slated to start shipping in June, this isn’t going to be the only premium ultraportable vying for a piece of your IT spend in the upcoming months.

We’re looking to squeeze a final review unit out of our Lenovo contacts in the next couple of weeks, so keep your eyes peeled for the definitive PC Pro verdict.

Right now it’s in prototype stage, but everyone at Lenovo I spoke to appeared convinced that it will hit production in good time for its slated summer 2010 launch. While details such as exact specification and colours are yet to be finalised, what has been decided is the crucial mechanism for removing the screen.

As can be seen, the key – as such – is the catch shown here. Slide it along to the right, and the two holders that keep the screen firmly in place within the plastic shell withdraw, at which point the screen can be easily removed. Using the prototype, the process was still a little clumsy (and note that you really need two hands to keep the shell steady whilst you move the catch), but this should be smoothed out with the final version.

What’s rather clever is that, even though the tablet uses a completely different operating system, if you were browsing a particular website in the supplied Windows 7 before removing the screen then that same website will be shown on the tablet. So, if you wanted to carry on browsing in the sitting room but don’t want to carry the whole laptop with you, you can!

It does bring to mind the sad case of the Smart Displays Microsoft attempted to popularise way back in 2003 – indeed, you can read our damning verdict on the Philips DesXcape 150DM on this very site – but whereas we called the 150DM “overweight, over-priced and over-hyped”, the IdeaPad should cost little more than a standard laptop. And the screen weighs less than 1kg.

Lenovo has clearly put a lot of work into the tablet’s operating system, namely Skylight (this will also power the new Lenovo Skylight Smartbook). The small yellow circle you see in the picture above can be dragged in an intuitive manner in any direction you choose, and in doing so make one of the boxes bigger: say, if you want to focus in on the photos. As you approach the edge of the screen, it snaps to full-window view.

This isn’t a capacitive screen, so there’s no pinching to zoom for instance, but I found it responsive in use. Even now, around six months before launch, it’s a usable interface, and it comes complete with an on-screen keyboard for when you do need to enter text.

The danger for any hybrid device, however, is that it succumbs to the old cliché of becoming a jack of all trades and master of none – and certainly there are some weaknesses to the IdeaPad U1 as a laptop. It’s inevitably going to be heavier than similarly specified laptops (there’s an Intel CULV processor inside), and you will of course pay more; there’s no confirmed pricing yet, but I was assured the cost will be less than $1,000.

While that’s not a bad price when you consider that you’re essentially buying two devices in one – if you plug the base into a monitor with the screen in use elsewhere, it will still work perfectly happily – I wasn’t stunned by the IdeaPad U1 as a laptop. The keyboard (and remember this was a prototype, so the quality may change when it comes to final release) was spongy to type on, and the screen less bright and vivid than the non-touchscreen displays found on other Lenovo laptops.

Then again, as a tablet it’s actually rather nice. It’s thin, light and stylish, and it’s impressive that it supports both 802.11n and 3G. For browsing the web from the sofa, and checking feeds such as Twitter, Facebook or the latest stocks, it certainly fits the bill.

I remain unconvinced by just how many people really need or want tablets, especially when smartphones are becoming so very smart, but as a piece of innovation it’s impossible not to be impressed by the IdeaPad U1 (if you want to see it in action, you can also view our video first look).

But that’s just my opinion. The real question is, would you buy one?

Lenovo’s surprise announcement of “LePhone” will send a few shockwaves around the ever-changing smartphone world, and having had a chance to hold the device in my hands it looks much more likely to last the distance than the Google Nexus One.

For starters, it’s gorgeous. Certainly it’s the first smartphone I’ve seen that makes the iPhone look a little ordinary, with its 12mm depth and shiny finish putting it one step ahead of Apple’s offering.

While it could be accused of taking a few too many cues from the iPhone – both in the shape of the device, the clean design and a familiar icon-based list of apps when you move away from the Home screen – Lenovo has added a number of new features that make it far more than a poor man’s iPhone.

The key to these differences is the nine-pin connector that sits along the left-hand side of the device (don’t worry, you won’t see this in general use: a plastic cover snaps over it). This allows people to add peripherals, and Lenovo has already developed a docking station, complete with extra battery, a keyboard and speakers.

A keyboard was on show (though not available for testing), and it doesn’t take a genius to work out how to slip the LePhone in to convert it into a clamshell “handheld” that has more than a hint of the Psion 3 series:

The software is very interesting too. Though the prototype on show was based on Google Android 1.6, our Lenovo insider suggested the final version of LePhone would be running Android 2.

As can be seen from the on-screen view in the photo here, Lenovo has been busy customising Android to its own whims. The screen shown is based around your contact: you then choose whether to email or phone them, or send an IM or SMS.

Lenovo has also put the accelerometer to good use. If you’re reading a web page that stretches past the screen, for instance, you can press a button on the right-hand side of LePhone and then tilt it: the page will roll in whichever direction gravity dictates. It might be a bit gimmicky, but it looks impressive in action.

The sample did feel like an early release, with some juddering between screens. And I’m a little concerned that the battery size has been compromised to keep the depth so tiny (even if, as Lenovo points out, you can replace it… unlike a certain other phone).

But in the end my only real concern is how long it will be before we in Europe get our hands on LePhone. The first release – coming “very soon” I was assured – will be in China alone. That means it’s unlikely we’ll see LePhone on these shores before summer, and it’s entirely possible we’ll have to wait until the autumn or even (heaven forbid) the beginning of next year. With so much competition, can Lenovo afford to wait that long?

The deathly pace of keyboard evolution is actually a barrier to progress, according to HP vice president Phil McKinley, who I met last week. “The keyboard is still a hugely intimidating factor for users,” he told me, referring especially to users in developing countries who haven’t grown up with computers. “It still has a System Request and Break key on the keyboard. When was the last time you touched the Break key?” he asked.

I honestly can’t remember.  If I’m being truthful, I didn’t even know what it did until I just looked it up on Wikipedia. It is, apparently, a carry-over from the days of teletype machines, used (literally) to give operators a break from the noise of the clattering mechanism. Nowadays, the Break/Pause key is largely used to interrupt the flow of data pouring out of the BIOS. Does this indisputably niche feature still warrant its own key? Or could that precious keyboard real estate be put to better use?

HP’s clearly been giving it some thought. It showed us a hush-hush computer that I’m not allowed to talk about just yet, which replaces all the function keys (F1, F2 etc) with actual functions, such as volume up/down and screen brightness. The old function keys have been relegated to secondary status, only available when you hold down the Fn key first, which could be a pain in the rump if you’ve grown accustomed to refreshing your web browser with F5.

Lenovo’s been revamping its keyboards too. The company reportedly installed keystroke logging software on the PCs of 30 employees, and discovered that they were using the small Escape and Delete keys about 700 times each week. So the company’s decided to make both keys double size on its new keyboards, and is also considering doing away with the rarely-used CAPS LOCK key, which is bad news for The Sun headline writers and shouty teenagers on internet forums.

What other keys could be done away with? I personally never touch the Context Menu key (the one with the cursor and the drop down menu picture, normally found between the Ctrl and cursor keys) or the Windows key, but I’d be interested to hear your views. And what would you replace them with? You never know, we might actually have a PC Pro Keyboard by the end of this!

It’s a new part that’s only been used by Acer up until now, in its netbooks and A-Listed Aspire Revo R3600.

That ambitious claim comes courtesy of Matt Wuebbling, a senior manager in Nvidia’s notebook division, who’ll understandably talk up the chances of his own product in the face of endless scepticism. However, having been hands-on with Lenovo’s latest offering and seeing the Ion in action, we’ve seen plenty of evidence to support his claims.

Our own testing on the Acer Aspire Revo has shown that Blu-ray playback can be handled with barely a whimper from the Ion, as most of the work is shifted onto the GPU – a trick that was repeated by the new S12 – and accomplished far easier than the old Intel integrated parts, which delivered results that were almost always too juddery to be watchable.

Video encoding had been added to the S12’s box of tricks: the ION-powered machine encoded a 1080p movie trailer for smartphone playback in approximately four minutes, with an Atom-powered equivalent struggling through the same task in almost 15 minutes.

It’s clear that the Ideapad will have more power than most of its Atom-equipped netbook rivals, then, and we’re pleased to report that the rest of the package looks just as solid.

Intel’s Atom N270 processor partners with the GeForce 9400M graphics chip and, in a break away from most of its netbook rivals, 2GB of RAM is included rather than one, which should make the operating system that little bit more responsive.

There’s also HSDPA and a 320GB hard disk, so connectivity and storage looks to be about as good as we’ve seen from any netbook, and the native resolution of 1,280 x 800 is larger than most netbooks on the market today.

The chassis felt rock-solid, too, with the wrist-rest showing no flex at all and the back of the screen barely twisting as we tugged at its glossy rear. The keyboard felt just as comfortable as those included with Samsung’s A-Listed NC10 and NC20, and was sat above a responsive trackpad with an excellent pair of buttons.

In fact, Wuebbling’s prediction seems to be coming true: the netbook does seem to be turning into a notebook: this one, for instance, sports Nvidia’s more powerful components, plenty of storage and RAM, a notebook-sized screen resolution and build quality that shames many laptops that cost twice as much.

If Lenovo can provide this specification at a reasonable price – say, near the £326 you’d be paying for a Samsung NC20 – then the Ideapad S12 could be a contender. We’ll let you know when the S12 arrives at the PC Pro Labs and it gets the full review treatment.