Dreams of wireless power and charging have been around since the days of Nikola Tesla. But in the last few years, Qi charging has become common on phones and earbuds, smartwatches and even the occasional mouse. And now Lenovo is here to add wireless charging to your laptop, with the appropriately named Go Wireless Charging Kit.
As part of a new Lenovo Go line of accessories that also includes cork-adorned ergonomic keyboards and mice, the Go Wireless Kit is comprised of two main pieces. There's a moderately sized brushed nickel charging pad, and a wireless charging strip with two pogo pins on the bottom where the power gets transferred from the pad to your laptop. Lenovo says the charing happens with 93% efficiency, which hopefully means there will be very little heat generated in the process.
The charging strip plugs into an available USB-C charging port and sticks to the bottom of your laptop via an adhesive strip. While the charging strip is fairly thin (3.2mm), and could actually help your laptop keep cool by lifting the back end up a bit for better airflow, Lenovo also made it easily removable for those times when you'll be away from the charging pad and don't want the extra bulk. What actually gets stuck to the bottom of your laptop is a very slim plastic strip, which the charging section slides onto and off of fairly easily. So you don't need to keep it on your laptop all the time.
With the charging strip attached and plugged in to your USB-C port though, charging your laptop is as easy as placing it on the charging pad so that the two pogo pins on the strip make contact. The company says the kit should work with most 13-14-inch up to 65 watts with USB-C charging ports (Windows, Mac OS and Linux support is listed). Press materials for the kit say touchscreen laptops aren't supported. But a Lenovo press representative told us the primary reason for the absence of official support for touch laptops is that tapping and swiping on your laptop's display could move one of the pins off the pad and disrupt charging. So as long as you don't hulk out with your pointer finger while tapping and swiping, using this with a touch-enabled laptop will probably be fine.
Hopefully, if the Wireless Charging Kit catches on, Lenovo will eventually integrate the charging strip directly into future notebooks for a more streamlined look (also so you won't have to sacrifice a USB port). But for those who like the idea of wireless laptop charging who can't wait, Lenovo says the Go Wireless Charging Kit will start at $139.99 and should be available in October.
