The market for dedicated tablets based on mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS is in decline, but the same can't be said for 2-in-1 detachable Windows PCs. These hybrid tablet/laptop systems offer an additional level of utility that standalone tablets don't provide, and best of all, they don't force consumers on a budget to choose one form factor over the other.

Microsoft envisioned this very scenario playing out when it introduced Windows 8 and later its first Surface tablets. Now we have Windows 10 and newer generation Surface models that are much improved from the original, along with alternative options from Microsoft's hardware partners. One of the more interesting of those is Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Tablet...