PowerBridge Solutions TWO-CK-16 Dual in-Wall Cable Management for Wall-Mount TVs, 16' PowerConnect Cable

Product Information

Beginning with the Haswell series of Ultrabooks, Lenovo put out a massive redesign of all of their ThinkPad lines. This was the most radical shift in their laptops to date. With that shift came the arrival of “Power Bridge” — a new type of dual battery system that included an internal and external rear battery device. Instead of 94Wh, the rear battery went up to 72Wh, and the internal battery capacity was only 23.5Wh — for a total of 94Wh of capacity, Lenovo was able to fit everything into a significantly smaller footprint. We likely have Apple to thank for this one. What started off as a massively hated inconvenience may have led to the expedition of USB-C adoption and the current generation of USB C power delivery options. While The Kaby Lake refresh of ThinkPads was the most uneventful in a long time (barring the TP25 reveal later in the year), it did introduce one very important feature — USB C power delivery charging. As of the T470 line, Lenovo offered the ability to select between your standard A/C square plug and a USB C adapter that charged just as fast as the normal option. This meant that you had the choice to ditch your A/C adapter and instead opt for a smaller adapter that was cross-compatible with your other devices, such as newer phones that also utilized USB C ports over the outdated and fragile Micro USB. First seen in the X230s, the Power Bridge technology is basically a combination of a non-removable internal battery and a removable external battery. This feature is controlled by a Lenovo-branded Microchip Technology power management controller, which is generally identified as the ThinkEngine chip.

With the introduction of Kaby Lake-R, the coveted Quad Core ULV line that had been announced nearly a year before, Lenovo decided to up the ante and throw two USB C ports into most ThinkPads, and while doing so decided that the X280, which had the Power Bridge system since its introduction, no longer needed it. Instead, the X280 has two built in batteries, both ~24Wh, leading to just 48WH of total capacity— half of what the previous generation was capable of. The removal of this feature allowed Lenovo to finally add the tapered look to the 12 inch line and reduce its footprint dramatically, leaving just three current generation ThinkPads looking square and supporting Power Bridge — the T480, T580, and P52s. While this technically halved “configurable” capacity from a whopping 188Wh in previous generations to 95.5Wh (96Wh in later generations), it allowed one to carry many more rear 72Wh batteries within the same physical footprint — effectively maximizing usability in the Ultrabook form factor. It was yet another power related engineering marvel Lenovo pioneered, and it debuted on a number of the Haswell Ultrabook ThinkPads — the X240, T440, and T440s all came with the technology. At the time, Lenovo did not see it fit to release a 15 inch Ultrabook form factor laptop, so the T540 was never made, and the 15 inch -p and W-series laptops have never had Power Bridge. With their tall, thin structure, flat-panel TVs are very susceptible to tipping over, which can cause property damage, personal injury or even death. As the statistics below show, tipping TVs are a big problem. A TV can fall with the force of thousands of pounds. That is 10 times more powerful than being hit by a NFL lineman.

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While it does not actually hide the TV power cord inside the wall, PowerBridge has been engineered to meet National Electric Code and meets strict UL product safety testing standards. As the battery charging and discharging behavior is controlled by the ThinkEngine chip, it cannot be modified by the operating system or through any means of software control. This is similar to how the Ultrabay batteries worked in the older models.