Lenovo's Latest Laptop Concept Has a Screen That Can Flip and Fold

WIRED

02-03-2025

At Mobile World Congress 2025, the company also teased a solar-powered laptop and an accessory that adds two extra screens to your portable PC. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu; Getty Images
If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED
At every major tradeshow, Lenovo walks in with a bevy of updates to its product lines. A new CPU here, a new AI feature there. But the company also almost always has a wacky new concept to show off, like last year's transparent laptop, and some of these end up as very real products you can buy—like the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 it showed off at CES 2025 and its rollable OLED screen.
At Mobile World Congress 2025, held in Barcelona, Lenovo swaggered in again with several new laptop concepts to show off. The highlights are a solar-powered laptop, a laptop with a screen that flips and folds, and an attachment that lets you turn one laptop screen into three for maximum productivity. Here's what they're like. The ThinkBook Flip
Much like the laptop with a rollable OLED display arriving later this year, the point of Lenovo's ThinkBook Flip concept is to give you more vertical space when you're at your computer. The most immediate benefit I saw from this wasn't the fact that I had a massive 18.1-inch portrait screen in front of me—it was that I didn't have to crane my neck as much when staring at the display. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
This is essentially a 13-inch laptop, but the rest of the flexible touchscreen OLED display folds over the top of the lid. That means when the machine is closed, you still get a small screen to view, turning it into a tablet. Open up the laptop and you can use it with a 13-inch screen. You can even mirror the screen that's facing you to the outward part that's facing away, which allows the person across from you to see what you're doing (if you're presenting something, for example).
You manually flip this screen up to turn it into an 18.1-inch behemoth with a 4:6 aspect ratio. You can have an app fill up the entire screen, or split apps to make use of the screen real estate. As someone who uses multiple screens every day to be productive, the taller screen will certainly be helpful to have two full-size browser windows on top of each other. The only flaw I noticed was that the top part of the screen tends to lean forward a bit, though Lenovo assured me this was just an early concept preproduction model and that other versions are sturdier.'
Also interesting is the Smart ForcePad trackpad, which has a three-layer illuminated dashboard—you can cycle through these layers to access specific keys. One layer is the numeric keys, for example, and another layer is the media controls.
The whole machine is 16.9 inches thick, slightly more than a MacBook Pro. Sadly, Lenovo didn't say if it's considering to turn this concept into reality, though it did say this model is specifically powered by Intel's Core Ultra 7 chip with 32 GB of RAM. Yoga Solar PC
If your laptop tends to sit closed at your desk when you're not using it, you might appreciate Lenovo's next concept—the Yoga Solar PC. It has solar panels embedded on the lid and Lenovo says it delivers more than 24 percent solar energy conversion rate, which it claims is better than the industry average. That seems to track as EnergySage reports the current average is 21.4 percent. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
This means that when the Yoga Solar PC is sitting closed on a desk, it can juice itself up—no wires needed. It can recharge in ambient lighting, though you'll get better results with natural light. Lenovo says its 'Back Contact Cell' technology moves the mounting brackets and gridlines of the solar panel to the back, maximizing light absorption. This is also paired with the Dynamic Solar Tracking system, which supposedly measures the solar panels' current and voltage to prioritize sending solar power to the system. Twenty minutes in the sun will net you up to one hour of video playback, and it can even generate some power in low light, sustaining the battery when the PC is idle.
This isn't the world's first solar-powered laptop—that would be the Samsung NC215S from 2011—but because Lenovo's Yoga Solar PC is 15 millimeters thin, the company is going ahead and calling it the 'world's first ultraslim solar-powered PC.' Magic Bay
Finally, we get to Lenovo's accessory concepts. These accessories leverage the company's modular Magic Bay ecosystem, which currently exists for ThinkBook laptops. Right now, you can attach various accessories like a webcam or a 4G hotspot to the Magic Bay, which is situated at the center top of the laptop's lid. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
But the new concepts are all about adding more displays. There's the Magic Bay Dual Display Concept, which adds two 13.3-inch 2.8K 120-Hz LCD screens flanking around your ThinkBook's primary screen. A kickstand on the back makes sure the weight of the accessory doesn't pull your laptop screen the other way. This concept is hardly new—portable monitors that attach to the laptop have been around for some time, though their popularity has skyrocketed recently. Lenovo's solution folds down so that it's fairly thin when you stow it.
There's also the Magic Bay 2nd Display Concept, which is a much smaller 8-inch screen designed for placing a messaging app or getting quick access to productivity tools. It's cute and tiny, and perhaps much more sensible for frequent flyers—you won't piss off your seatmate when you pull this out on the flight.
Lenovo made several other announcements at the show, like its new ThinkPad X13 Gen 6, which is one of its lightest laptops at just 2.05 pounds (0.933 kilograms). I held this in my hand and it did not feel like I was holding a laptop at all. The company also says its new T-series laptops, which include the likes of the 2-in-1 ThinkPad T14s and T16, are more repairable than ever with replaceable batteries.