I just went hands-on with this solar-powered laptop — and it makes a lot more sense than I thought

The Lenovo Yoga Solar PC Concept has appeared at MWC 2025, styled as the world's first "ultraslim solar-powered PC." And I got to take a first-hand look at it.

In case the name didn't make it obvious, Lenovo has covered the whole outer surface of the laptop's lid with a photovoltaic cover, which can then charge the Yoga's 50.2 Wh battery.

Lenovo claims that the panel has a 24% solar energy conversion rate, putting it on par with typical full-sized solar cells.

Apparently, this figure was achieved by positioning much of the cell's support structure behind it, maximizing the available surface area for light absorption. There's a visible bezel around the edge of the solar panel on the lid of the laptop, but basically all other space is devoted to the actual sunlight-absorbing parts.

The official figures for the Yoga's solar power output say that 20 minutes of sunlight provides the laptop with enough power for an hour of 1080p video playback.

Solar cells' power generation capabilities are obviously dependent on how much light is available at a given moment, but Lenovo claims that even in dim lighting, the laptop will draw enough power to at least keep a steady charge level, using a Dynamic Solar Tracking app to monitor how much power is being generated and make sure it's being used in place of stored battery power.

This seemed to be true, at least using the laptop's built-in tracking. Even indoors, or when I faced the laptop's lid towards a wall, there was still a level of charge being provided by the ambient lighting.

Whether this would be enough when you're actually trying to work from the laptop properly remains to be seen. I don't think Lenovo would have taken kindly to me logging into Google Docs and trying to write this from their limited-run prototype device.

Although this is a concept device, the rest of the Solar PC is quite typical for a Yoga laptop. It runs on an Intel Core Ultra CPU, and can be specced with up to 32GB RAM and 1TB of storage.

Sadly, the Solar PC only has integrated graphics. I guess the power draw of an RTX GPU would be too great to even attempt to power it with solar charging, But it would be awesome if one day you could game in an open meadow without a care.

Continuing the key specs: there's a 14-inch OLED display (which seemed bright enough to use outside without a problem), a quad-speaker and quad mic set-up, and three USB-C ports for your I/O needs.

This is all clad in a Cosmic Blue colorway, although this is only really obvious if you look at the bottom of the laptop or the keyboard deck when open.

Stay charged while touching grass

Standalone solar-powered charging systems are somewhat common, but even the idea of a solar-powered laptop has been tried before. Some quick research brings up the Samsung NC215S solar-powered netbook from 2011, and also the SOL, a durable budget machine designed for developing markets back in 2013.

But it's been over ten years since either of these devices appeared on the market, so Lenovo has the benefit of a decade's worth of advancements in solar generation and laptop chip and display power efficiency in trying to get this idea off the ground again.

As a concept, it's a toss-up whether Lenovo decides to pursue the Yoga Solar PC as a proper product or decides to go about its goal of a laptop usable at any time and powered by reusable energy.

Some concepts are more obviously moonshots, like the foldable ThinkBook "Codename Flip" concept Lenovo also debuted at MWC. But given the basic solar laptop idea has been tried before, and Lenovo is using mostly typical laptop components for the rest of the device, the Yoga Solar PC seems much closer to reality.

It wouldn't take much to make the Yoga Solar PC as a limited run and see if the idea stacks up in the real world, rather than as just a trade show curiosity. And I think it's worth doing, even after my brief experience with the laptop in a hotel courtyard in Barcelona.

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