Lenovo Qira AI Review: The Proactive Agentic AI for 2026

The Gift of Time: Why Lenovo’s Qira AI is the Real Story of CES

They say you can't buy time, but at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, Lenovo made a multi-billion dollar bet that they can at least help you find some. As a product journalist, I’ve sat through enough keynote speeches to become naturally immune to the word innovation. We are constantly promised that the next gadget will change our lives, only to find it’s just a faster way to check email.

However, standing under the glow of The Sphere as Lenovo unveiled Qira, something felt different. Qira isn't just another chatbot designed to write haikus or summarize articles. It is a system-level AI assistant designed to live across your Lenovo laptops and Motorola phones with a singular, terrifyingly ambitious goal: to act on your behalf.

Moving From Asking to Acting

The current generation of AI is reactive. You ask it a question, and it gives you an answer. Lenovo is trying to flip that script. Qira is built to be proactive. In the demo, the AI didn't wait to be told that a meeting was running late; it recognized the traffic delay on the user's phone, checked the laptop’s calendar, and offered to send a pre-written, polite apology to the attendees before the user even realized they were behind schedule.

This is the gift of time. By handling the logistical friction of our digital lives, Qira aims to reclaim those lost minutes spent shuffling tabs, managing calendars, and digging for files. Because Lenovo is the world’s largest PC maker, they aren’t just building an app that sits on top of Windows; they are weaving this intelligence into the hardware itself.

The Hardware: Where Qira Lives

If you are looking to gift this "proactive future," you can’t exactly wrap an AI in a box. You have to look at the "vessels" Lenovo has prepared. For the 2026 season, three specific product lines stand out as the primary homes for Qira’s evolution.

The Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition: This is the flagship for Qira’s personal side. The Aura Edition is designed for the creative who needs the laptop to understand their context. It features Smart Modes that adjust everything from distraction-free settings to power consumption based on what Qira senses you are doing. It’s the most "human" laptop in their current lineup.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13: For the professional, this is the gold standard. When Qira acts on behalf of a user here, it’s about security and efficiency—summarizing missed Teams calls or organizing research into actionable briefs. It’s a workhorse that finally has a brain to match its brawn.

The Motorola Razr Plus: This is where the cross-device promise of Qira shines. Because Qira lives on both the phone and the PC, your Razr can act as a remote sensor or a secondary interface for the AI. If you're gifting a Razr this year, you’re giving a device that will increasingly feel like a personal concierge in the pocket.

Who Is This For?

Choosing a high-end tech gift requires understanding the recipient’s specific brand of chaos. Here is how I’d categorize the Qira-ready recipients:

The Chaos Coordinator: This is the person managing a high-stakes job and a high-energy family. They need the AI that sends the "I’m running five minutes late" text or automatically organizes the family vacation photos. The Gift: Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition.

The Power Professional: They live in spreadsheets and slide decks. They don't want a "fun" AI; they want a productivity multiplier that finds that one PDF from three months ago in seconds. The Gift: ThinkPad X1 Carbon.

The Early Adopter: The person who wants the future today and isn’t afraid of a little beta-testing. They want the sleekest hardware and the smartest software. The Gift: Motorola Razr Plus.

The Trust Factor

Of course, any AI that acts on your behalf raises immediate red flags. If Qira is going to send emails or manage my schedule, I need to know it isn’t hallucinating an appointment with my boss at 3:00 AM.

Lenovo has a steep hill to climb regarding privacy and control. They’ve stated that Qira focuses on "Personal AI," meaning much of the processing is intended to stay on the device rather than the cloud. But as a gift-giver, you should be aware that this is a "version 1.0" relationship. There will be a learning curve, and there will be moments where the AI’s initiative feels more like an intrusion than an assist. Trust is earned, not programmed, and we’ll be watching closely to see if Qira respects the boundaries of its users.

The Verdict: An AI-Ready Strategy for Gifting

So, is a Qira-enabled device a must-buy right now?

If you are buying a laptop or phone solely for the AI, I’d still suggest a breath of caution. We are in the early days of "Agentic AI," and the software is still catching up to the marketing. However, Lenovo’s current hardware is so strong that you aren’t really taking a risk.

If you buy a Yoga Slim or a ThinkPad X1 Carbon today, you are getting one of the best pieces of hardware on the market, period. The fact that it is "AI-ready" and likely the first in line to receive the full Qira suite is a massive, free bonus.

Think of it this way: You aren't just gifting a laptop; you're gifting a seat at the table for the next era of computing. If you have someone on your list who values their time above all else, putting them in the Lenovo/Motorola ecosystem right now is the smartest move you can make. Just remind them to keep an eye on their "sent" folder—at least for the first few weeks while Qira is still learning the ropes.