For a standard laptop firm, Lenovo by no means fails to make a splash at CES, no matter whether or not the experimental merchandise are literally sensible to make use of.
This 12 months, the corporate has not one however two laptops with rollable OLED screens, one in every of which is a gaming laptop computer that may increase its show horizontally, including an additional eight inches of display actual property—all with the press of only a single key.
You by no means knew you wanted a display that would try this, but it surely’s precisely the sort of oddball tech CES is all about.
Rolling Out
{Photograph}: Luke Larsen
{Photograph}: Luke Larsen
The primary rollable experiment this 12 months is probably the most daring, the Legion Professional Rollable Idea. It’s a 16-inch gaming laptop computer with a display that may increase horizontally to a 21.5-inch “Tactical” mode, or all the way in which as much as a 24-inch “Area” mode. Let’s be actual: a display a lot wider than the laptop computer housing it appears wacky. And it requires the laptop computer lid to be comically thick.
However with the recognition of ultrawide exterior screens for gaming, it does make a certain quantity of sense. A 24-inch display coming from the footprint of a 16-inch laptop computer is fairly superior particularly should you’re somebody who desires to take their gaming laptop computer on the go, whether or not whereas touring and even simply from one a part of your home to a different. Just like the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable OLED laptop computer that got here out final 12 months, the total OLED display is hidden till triggered to unroll with a key press. On this case, the laptop computer makes use of two motors that unrolls the display in each instructions concurrently, providing you with that ultrawide facet ratio when absolutely expanded. Past that, it is constructed on the chassis of a Legion Professional 7i, so in principle a laptop computer like this may characteristic high-end parts much like what’s in that mannequin, like RTX 5090 graphics and the newest Intel processors.
Going Up
Lenovo has additionally introduced the ThinkPad Rollable XD Idea, which iterates on its earlier rollable design that expands the display vertically. It nonetheless begins with smaller OLED show (this time a 13.3-inch display) and will be expanded as much as 16 inches with one keystroke. That is an much more dramatic transformation than final 12 months’s ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, which begins at a 14-inch measurement earlier than rising.
Quite than hiding the additional display actual property rolled up underneath the hinge, this new idea offers you employ of it on the lid. Lenovo calls this a “world-facing” display, but it surely’s not clear precisely what the use case for this extra show space could be. The demo unit had some placeholder widgets however nothing that functioned but.
This isn’t Lenovo’s first exploration of placing screens on the lid, however to this point they’ve been always-on, digital-ink screens that solely sip energy and do not tax the battery an excessive amount of. I do just like the look of this design higher, particularly having the ability to see the display wrap across the prime. The issue is that it requires the webcam to sit down over on the facet, sort of like on an iPad. Undoubtedly not a great spot for video calls.
Each of those rolling-screen computer systems are mere ideas at this level, however Lenovo has a observe document of really releasing a few of these flashy tech ideas.
Lenovo can also be saying the ThinkBook Plus Gen 7 Auto Twist. This was an idea we first noticed a number of years in the past, which makes use of a motorized hinge to twist the display round in both course. This permits the gadget to observe you round a room throughout a video name and even rework into pill mode simply by utilizing a voice command. It nonetheless looks like a little bit of a piece in progress, but it surely exhibits that these proof-of-concept tasks are extra than simply novelties.
