After a couple of years of development, the world’s first rollable display laptop, the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, was finally unveiled at CES 2025 this week.
The laptop, which can go from a 14-inch horizontal screen to a 16.7-inch vertical one with the push of a button, was first shown two years ago as a concept device, but has now transitioned into production by 2025.
Equipped with the Intel Core Ultra 200V series (up to Core Ultra 7), the laptop will also feature up to 32GB of LPDDR5x memory and up to 1TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD storage. As a Lunar Lake-powered laptop, it will also feature Intel Xe2 graphics, making it a good, lightweight option for graphic designers who work a lot on vertical documents.
Add Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity, 2x2W Harman/Kardon speakers, and a dual microphone array with 5MP IR webcam, and you have more than just a niche laptop with a cool gimmick, but a powerful workstation. mobile work for professional users.
That said, the rollable screen aspect of the laptop is what steals the show here, and anyone who values a vertical screen, such as software engineers or business users who work with a lot of documents, will be hard-pressed to find another laptop like the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 rollable.
More than just an attractive form factor, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable is actually functional in a way that other laptops can’t be.
The foldable laptop form factor is one of those designs that I consider a “problem solved.” If you want a laptop, this is the best way to design it, with a screen that folds over the keyboard.
And since keyboard layout is also a solved problem, laptops mostly have a landscape orientation, with older 4:3 ratio displays being the tallest they’ve practically ever been.
Anyone who needs or wants a portrait orientation for their laptop has been out of luck and has been forced to rely on portable monitors, which is not an ideal solution for portability.
However, with the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, you really have an innovation that addresses this specific need, making it much more functional than many other concept-to-production designs I’ve seen in laptops over the years (notebooks with folding being a perfect example).
And while dual-screen laptops do exist, they are somewhat hampered by the additional peripherals needed to make them work, such as a wireless keyboard and a folding stand to keep them upright. However, with the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, you get everything in one complete unit, meaning you won’t have to worry about losing anything you need to keep everything running.
Of course, one thing the new laptop introduces that we haven’t had to worry about since we got rid of the spinning disk HDD laptops is the introduction of moving mechanical parts, which can wear out over time.
A laptop with a roll-up screen isn’t great if the motor that deploys the screen breaks and now you can’t roll it up (or down, if you’re really unlucky), but when that happens, it might be time to upgrade the computer. laptop anyway and you may have many more rollable screen laptops on the market to choose from.
