I saw the Lenovo rollable laptop at CES, and it's wild
If you want to double your screen real estate with the push of a button, this is the laptop for you
💻 Lenovo just announced a rollable laptop - and it’s actually going on sale
⎚ Called the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, it can expand to 16.7 inches with the push of a button
👾 It’s otherwise a pretty normal laptop with all the latest specs
💰 There’s a hefty price tag that comes with it
I saw one of the coolest laptops I’ve ever seen at CES 2025. I was invited to Lenovo’s early preview of its newest products, and one of them is the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable. While it might seem like a normal 14-inch laptop at first, push one button and watch it grow to 16.7 inches, giving you extra room to work. The product is based on a concept from a couple of years ago that Lenovo was working on, and it’s now available as an actual product.
ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable hands-on
I picked up the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable for the first time at my demo and immediately noticed its extra thickness and heft. It makes sense that a machine like this would be thicker than your average laptop; after all, it has to store a huge chunk of OLED screen in the base when you aren’t using it.
Open the laptop and you’ll find that the “14-inch” screen has huge bezels around it, especially compared to the new Yoga Slim 9i. But it’s worth dealing with the uglier look when you tap the special Function button in the top row. Give it a hit and you’ll watch the display get taller, stretching all the way to 16.7 inches when measured diagonally.
This gives you significantly more display area to work with when multitasking, coding, creating content, and more. I can immediately tell that this design will be hugely beneficial for my line of work where I’m writing all the time, editing photos, and organizing layouts to go live on TheShortcut.com.
To expand the screen, you can either tap the Function button at the top of the keyboard or perform a hand gesture by facing your palm in front of the camera and moving up or down. The laptop responded marginally well in a few demos I witnessed, but that was done with pre-production software.
What struck me was how slow the expanding motion seemed. While I don’t expect it to happen instantaneously, it seemed to take a few beats before the screen was ready to use. I guess that’s why the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable plays what’s basically hold music while it expands. (The music also helps mask the sound of the motors.)
Lenovo equips the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable with a new ThinkBook Workspace feature that automatically enables split-screen and gives you a few widgets and shortcuts to frequently used apps. You can also fire up a virtual, floating monitor on the screen which can be helpful for managing multiple desktops at once.
Other than the crazy 120Hz OLED rollable display (which looks gorgeous, by the way), the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable is a pretty ordinary 2025 laptop. It comes with the latest Intel Core Ultra processors, Wi-Fi 7, up to 32GB of RAM, up to 1TB of storage, a 66Wh battery, a couple Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a fingerprint reader.
The normal-feeling specs aren’t the reason you’d buy this laptop, of course. It’s all in the name of the design, and so far, I dig it. I feel like I would have the display expanded during most of my time with the laptop, but if you’re in a particularly crammed environment, I can see where the 14-inch size works. It’s a lot more conducive to manage than something like the Yoga Book 9i, which is a pain to lug around but gives you a ton of screen real estate.
I’m excited to get my hands on the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable and use it full time for a review. If you’re eyeing this puppy up for yourself, it’s going to set you back $3,499, which is quite steep but makes sense for new technology like this. Lenovo says the laptop will go on sale in the first quarter of 2025.
Max Buondonno is an editor at The Shortcut. He’s been reporting on the latest consumer technology since 2015, with his work featured on CNN Underscored, ZDNET, How-To Geek, XDA, TheStreet, and more. Follow him on X @LegendaryScoop.