As a person who loves laptop more than mobile phone, for a long time, I have obsession with 1kg. In my heart, 1kg notebook can be called the ultimate lightweight. By 2021, laptops weighing less than 1kg on the market are not rare, but there are not as many laptops as ever. However, unlike previous years, the two laptops with a weight of more than 900g launched at the beginning of this year are enough to arouse people's interest.
One is Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 nano, and the other is VAIO Z 2021. The former weighs 907 grams at 13 inches and the latter 958 grams at 14 inches. And the key is that the latter also uses the Intel i7-11375h standard voltage processor, the main frequency is 3.30ghz, and it can reach 5 GHz through turbo boost 3.0. What does that mean? It means that not only the low-voltage and light-weight Ben has entered the range of 1kg, but now even the performance Ben has come to the 1kg club.
The reason why the performance is difficult to be light and thin is that in the face of 35W TDP CPU, passive cooling or small fan can't suppress the heat, which will eventually lead to frequency reduction and make it difficult to give full play to the performance of the hardware. Therefore, it is necessary to make the fan bigger and stronger on the motherboard, and lay heat pipes to help heat dissipation. These new accessories not only occupy space, but also increase the weight. For a long time, it is difficult to have both performance and lightweight. The other side of the topic of 1kg club is the notebook material War: in order to make the notebook light and thin, manufacturers have made no less efforts in material than in performance upgrading. Before that, we have discussed "mobile phone color war" and "the evolution history of mobile phone material". In mobile phones, material is often used to serve color, texture, signal and charging mode. These factors together determine the unified solution of high-end computers with metal frame and glass back cover as the mainstream. On the laptop, the material of the body has a different orientation: it needs to be strong enough to protect the fragile screen and motherboard. It also needs to be light enough to take care of the equally vulnerable shoulders and lumbar spine.
For a long time, the material of notebook was dominated by plastic, just as plastic dominated the material of mobile phone body. From Toshiba t1100 to IBM convertible 5140, the original masterpieces of notebooks, to many middle and low-end student notebooks, plastic has never faded out of the vision of engineers and users. After all, plastic is cheap, light, plastic, easy to process, and has good strength and flexibility. It's not too much to say that it's the best tame material. However, the shortcomings of plastic will also be magnified in the notebook. For example, if you want to achieve a certain strength, the thickness of plastic is considerable. Compared with metal and other materials, the thermal conductivity of plastic is poor, which is not conducive to heat dissipation. Also, it is difficult to make a good texture, so in the high-end notebook a side, there is basically no chance to appear. In the flagship lightweight book, which reflects the manufacturing and design level of each company, the war on materials officially started.
In this war, aluminum alloy is as common as the AK-47 made in Russia. In 2008, jobs took out the first generation MacBook Air from the kraft paper bag, which had enough shocking lightness and texture at that time. However, the original MacBook Air was not the first notebook computer to use aluminum alloy. After all, Apple has used aluminum alloy in the powerbook G4 since 2003, while the earlier powerbook G4 used expensive titanium alloy. The first generation of MacBook Air is probably the first time that Apple tried the aluminum alloy CNC integrated molding process on the computer, and then officially announced this process on the second generation of MacBook Pro. Until now, almost all Apple products are related to the aluminum alloy and CNC process.
Another company that has learned something about the processing technology of aluminum alloy in notebook is Dell. In its product line XPS, the main body material has always been aluminum alloy: 6000 series aluminum metal combined with CNC integrated molding technology, which is the same as apple, but slightly different is the polishing and cutting process of some details. HP's flagship spectre series, including asus's high-end lightweight zenbook, also have a preference for aluminum. In fact, zenbook used Corning gorilla glass on the a side of the notebook for some time before, but after playing this episode, ASUS returned to the theme of aluminum alloy. Compared with plastic, aluminum alloy is undoubtedly more suitable for lightweight materials. Basically, plastic has some advantages, and it is even stronger and more textured. Even so, aluminum alloy can only be said to be excellent, but it is not the ultimate, because in 1kg club, there is almost no aluminum alloy notebook. Aluminum alloy with certain strength has such a contradiction: it is light enough, but it is still a little heavy. The general 6000 series aluminum alloy (6061-T651) has a specific gravity of 2.70 g / cm3, which is much lighter than the steel with a specific gravity of 7.8 g / cm3. However, if you want to enter the 1kg club, this proportion is still a little more. So engineers thought of other materials: magnesium alloys. Magnesium is lighter than aluminum. Using magnesium as alloy substrate can obtain lighter weight under certain strength. Generally speaking, the proportion of magnesium alloy (magnesium aluminum alloy) is about 1.80 g / cm? Which is two-thirds of aluminum alloy. Using a large amount of magnesium alloy in the fuselage material can effectively reduce the weight of notebook.
For example, HP's elite Dragonfly 13.3-inch is just within the weight range of 1kg because of the use of magnesium alloy materials. Similarly, the 14 inch version of the 11 generation i5 LG gram, weighing 999g, also uses a new material called carbon magnesium alloy (scientific name is magnesium based carbon nanotube reinforced composites). It can be predicted that more notebooks will use magnesium alloy in the future. In fact, it is very simple to distinguish magnesium alloy from aluminum alloy. Generally speaking, aluminum alloy will have strong metal texture and luster, while magnesium alloy will look more like plastic, so it is difficult to make a bright effect. For example, surface book also uses part of magnesium alloy, which has the feeling of keeping a low profile. Many people mistakenly think that LG gram uses plastic materials.
Almost as long as MacBook opened the aluminum alloy technology tree, VAIO on the other side opened another technology tree: carbon fiber materials. The specific gravity of carbon fiber material is similar to that of magnesium aluminum alloy, ranging from 1.50 g / cm ~ 3 to 2.00 g / cm ~ 3, but the strength is one order of magnitude higher, and there is no metal fatigue, and the chemical properties are very stable. Although carbon fiber material has been famous for its advanced and high-end products, it has been used in laptops for more than ten years. The two brands mentioned at the beginning of this article are VAIO and ThinkPad. Ten years ago, VAIO was able to make a lightweight carbon fiber version of about 1kg, while ThinkPad X1 later simply named its main model ThinkPad X1 carbon. Until this year, the two brands produced their own Masterpieces: VAIO Z 2021 and ThinkPad X1 nano. Just as the processing technology of aluminum alloy and magnesium alloy has made great progress in the past decade, in fact, the processing technology of carbon fiber composites has also made progress, and VAIO is still continuing this technology tree. Generally speaking, in fact, most of the notebooks that use carbon fiber only use carbon fiber materials on the a side, such as ThinkPad X1 carbon and ThinkPad X1 nano. There are also cases where Dell xps13 uses carbon fiber materials on the C side. Why don't they use more? Is it reluctant? In fact, it can't be done. Because carbon fiber material is too hard and rigid, it is difficult to be made into three-dimensional and curved surface, which is easy to achieve in plastics, thermoplastics, aluminum alloy die casting or CNC, but it is difficult for strong fiber. However, in the VAIO Z 2021 new model, VAIO has achieved that all sides of the fuselage are made of carbon fiber material, that is, three-dimensional molding of carbon fiber fuselage.
But in fact, from one or two sides of carbon fiber materials to three-dimensional forming four sides of carbon fiber fuselage, the middle is a span. At the beginning, VAIO did not consider doing this on this computer. It only considered using carbon fiber on the A and D sides, and then changed it into four sides. However, a new problem has arisen. If carbon fiber is only used on four sides and plastic is used for transition in other places, it is just "using solid materials, not solid shapes". So VAIO is very tangled internally. After all, the Japanese style is gradual, but only using carbon fiber on two or four sides is not convincing enough. The final result of the company's discussion is that for the sake of fans, innovation and challenge, the company decided to try to make solid materials into solid shapes. Therefore, in VAIO Z 2021, engineers integrate the top and the frame, and bend the front part of the palm rest to the bottom, making each part more solid and lightweight by forming a three-dimensional shape. Of course, this also has to use the rolling process similar to metal forming (by applying pressure on the metal plate, extrusion forming processing technology). Correctly speaking, it is not extrusion, but the method of putting the stretched carbon fiber along the core into the interior. Finally, the application of four dimensional carbon fiber materials can be more than 100 grams lighter than traditional materials, just to make up for the weight pressure brought by the increase of fans and heat pipes. Finally, the weight of 958 grams can be achieved in a 14 inch standard pressure processor. At this point, I'm always talking about the influence of materials on the weight and strength of notebook, which is somewhat straight thinking.
On another material line, the use of logs, bamboo and leather is an aesthetic story. Some classic or beautiful products have been produced, but they are still works of the minority. The high price of natural materials and the difficulty of scale make them difficult to be used in large-scale industrial products such as laptops. The only constant is that the notebook material war will not stop, there will always be lighter and stronger materials. Maybe in a few years, the 1kg club will be crowded.
