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The Verge
03-08-2025
- The Verge
Lenovo's rollable laptop is the coolest computer I've used all year
Part of me still can't believe it, but Lenovo did the thing: it took a bonkers concept for a laptop with a rollable screen and built the tech into something you can actually own and use like a normal computer. Except, as conventional as the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 can be, it's far from a normal computer. It's a $3,300 laptop with a screen that expands from 14 inches to 16.7 inches at the push of a button. Oh, and it's actually good. Not just good, but very good. I still can't believe it. The expanding screen is genuinely useful, and it makes the ThinkBook by far one of the coolest and most futuristic-looking laptops I've ever used. But, as with most new technologies, being at the bleeding edge is costly. And as you might expect for a laptop that physically gets taller, there are some growing pains, too. 7 Verge Score When you first open the ThinkBook Plus, you'll see a square-ish 14 inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and a 2000x1600 resolution. But press a button, and the screen unrolls to a taller 16.7-inches and 2000 x 2350 resolution. (I affectionately call it 'the tallboy.') With the screen extended, it's like working with two stacked 12.4-inch 16:9 displays. It's some of the best single-monitor multitasking I've experienced. The extra vertical space is great for going full-screen in a document, code editor, or spreadsheet, or for split-screening apps without cutting off the sides of the windows. You can get the benefits of a vertical display anywhere, not just in a multi-monitor desk setup. And the ThinkBook itself makes a great vertical sidecar to a big monitor. Tallboy mode even makes video calls more pleasant, since it brings the webcam much closer to eye level. Having the top of the screen higher has also helped relieve a bit of neck pain from staring down at laptops all day. I get improved ergonomics whether I'm working at my desk, a table, or in goblin mode on my floor. I've been using the new ThinkBook Plus full-time for about a week, and I've kept it in 16.7-inch mode almost the entire time, because that's the whole point of this thing. I never get sick of looking at this giant OLED with its punchy colors and strong contrast. It's plastic instead of glass for the sake of flexibility, and it lacks touch support (though that also means less chance of scratching its softer surface with a fingernail or accidentally knocking it over with a tap). But I don't mind any of that, because having so much screen real estate in a laptop this compact and portable was unreal up until now. As with a foldable phone, you can see some creases and ripples in the screen's lower third — the part that rolls up — especially at oblique angles. If I look closely while working on a bright-white document, I can sometimes make out a faint shadowy strip, but I rarely see it, even when staring at that spot. The motorized screen takes about eight seconds to extend or retract, and it's no louder than the fans on an average gaming laptop. People right near you in a quiet space will hear it, but even ambient sounds like a TV in the background easily mask the motor. Lenovo had to go to some lengths to accommodate this screen while keeping the ThinkBook looking and feeling like a normal-ish laptop. Its chassis is aluminum instead of the carbon fiber, magnesium, and plastic found in the ThinkPad X1 Carbon — one of Lenovo's go-to models of productivity / business laptops. That makes the ThinkBook pretty heavy for its size: at 3.72 pounds, it's a whole pound and a half heavier than the X1 Carbon and a pound heavier than a 13-inch MacBook Air. The extra weight is likely necessary to keep the laptop from falling over backward when the screen is extended. The hinge is also very stiff. It takes two hands to pry open the laptop from its closed position, and the hinge doesn't tilt back nearly as far as other laptops to prevent toppling. The limited range of motion is less of a big deal in tall mode, but more noticeable in 14-inch mode. However, I usually put it in 14-inch mode only when it's time to close it up and move it around, so it hasn't bothered me much yet. Despite the laptop's general sturdiness, the screen itself can be a little wobbly, with audible creaks and slight knocking sounds when you're adjusting it. The lid consists of an inner frame and outer frame; the outer frame moves along a track on the edges of the inner frame to expand the lid's footprint and roll the screen upward. The irksome sounds come from where the two lid frames meet in the middle. Because part of the screen is garaged under the keyboard deck, there's no space next to the keyboard for the speakers, so instead they're at the front of the chassis, angled down. They're mediocre for a $3,300 laptop, and the sound is often obscured by your wrists. The other audible quirk is the ThinkBook's 'you're doing it wrong' alarm: If you start closing the lid with the screen extended, or you move the screen while it's rolling, the laptop emits a high-pitched tone. It's the most 90s-motherboard-ass thing I've heard in a long time, but I find its needling sound oddly charming. The rest of the laptop is solid, as you'd hope for a $3,300 machine. It has a haptic trackpad (hallelujah). Despite being slightly small, it beats the heck out of all the Lenovo mechanical trackpads I've tried, rivaling Apple's in precision and feel. It's a great counterpart to the keyboard, which is excellent as usual for Lenovo, with a great tactile feel and good key travel. The built-in mic sounds good, and that high-climbing webcam renders a fairly sharp image. It handles mixed or difficult lighting well, while capturing you at a more pleasing angle. (Look, it's okay not to want your webcam to accentuate double chins or give people a view up your nostrils.) It's a shame it only has two Thunderbolt 4 ports, but bigger port crimes have been committed elsewhere, and at least there's a headphone jack. Lenovo ships the ThinkBook Plus with its own Workspace app to help with multitasking on the oddly proportioned display. It offers quick access to pinnable widgets, apps, and even enabling a virtual display for a picture-in-picture experience — if you're so inclined . You can choose to have Workspace auto-launch when you expand the screen, and there's even a dedicated key for it. But I found it more troublesome than helpful, and I encountered bugs when using Workspace with multiple virtual desktops, ranging from glitching my wallpaper to preventing me from four-finger swiping between desktops. Instead, I've just been using Windows 11's native window management, and I've been pleasantly surprised by how well it works on this shapeshifting screen. I encountered a one-off bug where the taskbar randomly disappeared, but it was solved by a full restart. Performance-wise, the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V in the ThinkBook lines up with other laptops we've tested with the same chip. It's fast for everyday tasks and productivity apps, and it's about as power efficient as other models with much smaller, non-OLED screens. I could easily last nine hours or longer on a charge with the default sleep / power settings, getting me through a full day of work in mixed usage (Google Docs, Slack, Signal chat, lots of Chrome tabs, and even a 30-minute video call and equally long audio call). And that whole time I rarely heard its fan spin up or felt it heat up. On another day, I stretched it to nearly eight full hours with the screen kept on nearly the whole time in tall mode. Fun fact: draining the battery to below five percent activates a countdown timer for the screen to automatically roll down and stay down until it turns off or you plug in. So you shouldn't get stuck with the screen extended and no way to pack it up. Not bad, Lenovo. Not bad. $3,300 can get you a lot of other excellent laptops (three great $1,000 laptops, even), but none of them have this extending display. It's one of only a few ways to get more screen in a conventionally sized laptop. You can get a dual-screen laptop like the Yoga Book 9i or Asus Zenbook Duo, or a folding-screen laptop like the ThinkPad X1 Fold , or opt for some kind of portable monitor. But as much as I dig those, a dual-screen or folding-screen setup is so cumbersome by comparison. You're not just strolling into a coffee shop and hitting a button to get more screen, you're setting up camp with your Franken-multi-monitor-laptop and its peripherals. The ThinkBook Plus has seemed pretty durable in my time with it. I even had it rattling around in a backpack on a 500-mile road trip, and it was fine. Lenovo claims the screen is rated for 30,000 hinge openings / closings and 20,000 rolls up and down, but you just don't have those concerns with regular laptops. As much as I love using this rollable laptop, I'll always be a little wary about longevity and what a screen repair may cost if the worst ever happens (Lenovo did not answer my questions about repair costs by the time of publication). The ThinkBook Plus rollable is a genuinely cool idea, and a great laptop. I hope the display tech continues to evolve and we see more wild ideas like this become a reality. Or, if Lenovo delivers on its other recent concept laptop idea, the ThinkBook Flip, maybe we can get a similar tall-monitor experience without the added heft and cost of motors. This could be the start of a rolling-screen revolution. Or it could just be a niche product for deep-pocketed folks who want to feel like they're living in the future. Sadly, one of these realities is much more likely for now, until the tech gets cheap enough to trickle down to mainstream laptops. But damn am I happy this thing is out in the real world, even if spotting one at a random cafe will feel like a unicorn sighting. Lenovo is one of the only laptop manufacturers that turns its weird concepts into actual products, and I hope it keeps pushing — getting cheaper, quirkier, or ideally both. Price: $3,299 Display: 14-inch (2000 x 1600, 5:4 aspect ratio) to 16.7-inch (2000 x 2350, 8:9 aspect ratio) 120Hz flexible OLED (no touch support) CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 258V RAM: 32GB LPDDR5X Storage: 1TB M.2 2242 SSD Webcam: 5-megapixel fixed focus, with privacy shutter Biometrics: IR camera for Windows Hello face unlock, fingerprint reader in power button Connectivity: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Ports: 2x Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 40Gbps with DisplayPort 2.1 and PD 3.1, 3.5mm combo audio jack Weight: 3.72 pounds Dimensions: 11.95 x 9.08 x 0.78 inches Battery: 66Wh Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Antonio G. Di Benedetto Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Gadgets Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Laptop Reviews Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. 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Phone Arena
18-06-2025
- Phone Arena
Finally! Lenovo rollable laptop goes on sale after a wild engineering rollercoaster
It's been a minute since we last heard about Lenovo's rollable laptop, but the wait is (almost) over. The ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, the first of its kind with a vertically expanding screen, now has an official price and release date. It goes on sale June 19 starting at $3,499. Yeah, that is a steep price – but you are also getting something that has never been done before. This laptop takes the whole portability vs productivity struggle and flips it on its head. Built in collaboration with Intel, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 comes with a screen that can literally grow in size – from 14 inches up to 16.7 inches – with a simple hand gesture or a button press. When it is in compact mode, you get a slick 14-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, 400 nits of brightness, full DCI-P3 color coverage and a 16:10 aspect ratio. But once you roll it out, that same screen stretches to 16.7 inches and shifts to a portrait-style view, giving you more vertical real estate to play with. Whether you want one massive workspace or two stacked windows, it is designed to adapt to your workflow. The ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 is a result of Intel-Lenovo engineering. According to Intel, building this thing took two years of development and a lot of problem-solving. One major hurdle? Fitting in the two tiny motors that power the rolling screen. These motors displaced other key components – like the circuit board and battery – which had to be redesigned from the ground up. The rollable screen itself uses a plastic-like OLED material, similar to what you'd find on foldable smartphones. Lenovo says it was tested to survive 30,000 lid open/closes and 20,000 screen rolls, so it is not just a fragile concept piece. And there were plenty of behind-the-scenes tech hurdles to figure out: How do you power down the hidden screen section when it's rolled in? How do you keep things cool when that extra screen gets hot while tucked inside? And how do you make the screen transition seamless, with no lag, weird stretching, or stutter? The answer? – Zheng Jiong, Intel's senior director of Customer Engineering, June 2025 This laptop clearly isn't for everyone – but for the right crowd, it could be a game-changer. Lenovo and Intel say it's built for road warriors and anyone tired of carrying around a second monitor. And there are real use cases here. Spreadsheets go from showing 39 lines of data to 66 when unrolled. Coders get more vertical space for lines of code. And if you are multitasking on the go, two 16:9 windows stacked in portrait mode is way more efficient than flipping between tabs. Even apps like Instagram and TikTok just look better in a taller view. Powering all this innovation is the Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, backed by up to 32 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD. There's also Microsoft Copilot+ support built-in, along with Lenovo's own AI Now assistant, which runs on-device using local large language models – so you can stay productive even when offline. Connectivity-wise, you get two Thunderbolt 4 ports, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. The battery is 66Whr, which should offer a decent run time, though don't expect an all-day battery with the screen fully rolled out. With specs like this, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable isn't just about the cool screen – it's built for serious users. The Core Ultra series, especially the Ultra 7, should handle multitasking like a champ. Whether you're browsing, juggling multiple tabs, or working in Office apps, the experience should be fast and smooth. It is also powerful enough for photo and video editing – even up to 4K – thanks to Intel Arc graphics and that big chunk of RAM. With 32 GB onboard, you should be able to run memory-hungry apps, handle massive files or keep tons of windows open without your laptop breaking a sweat. Secure your connection now at a bargain price! We may earn a commission if you make a purchase Check Out The Offer
WIRED
02-03-2025
- WIRED
Lenovo's Latest Laptop Concept Has a Screen That Can Flip and Fold
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.
