This new Lenovo rollable PC concept could be the future of laptops
A regular laptop that extends the display with the press of a button
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Rollable, not foldable
📜 Lenovo has a new rollable PC concept
📺 The display extends vertically from the base
⬆️ It effectively gives you a second display vertically aligned and can be dropped or raised with the touch of a button
💻 It’s a concept but it could easily be a fully working laptop
Foldable phones are all the rage at Mobile World Congress this year and Samsung has proven that there is a major market for foldable phones with its Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4, which were launched last year. However, foldable PCs have yet to achieve the same mainstream focus and appeal.
Lenovo has launched two foldable PCs in the past, but neither has captured the wallets and imagination of consumers like Samsung’s foldable smartphones. However, Lenovo’s new concept PC could be the answer, thanks to its rollable display that extends and retracts with the click of a button.
With a button on the side of the laptop, or using a remote, the display rolls out vertically to become as large as a tablet in portrait mode. It’s unclear whether this is how it will be integrated into the final product, but it’s a great concept that fixes some of the biggest issues with foldable devices.
Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Fold is a great showcase of how we could use a foldable PC, but it’s big and bulky as it has a book-like form factor. The rollable concept PC is thin and light, yet still retains the ability to have a larger display when you need it. Unlike a foldable PC which has a full-size display, the rollable concept seemingly allows you to “hide” much of the display when it’s not in use.
When would something like this concept actually be useful? Most likely, it would be for large-format presentations, scrolling long websites or social feeds, and for times when you need two displays on the go (but instead of horizontally aligned, they would be vertically aligned). In fact, the latter is arguably the most useful use case for this – instead of needing to carry a secondary portable display, a rollable display like this effectively gives you the screen real estate of a second display, but all built into one device.
It’s worth noting that this is just a concept device, and there’s no guarantee that this will hit the market. However, I saw Lenovo’s foldable concept PC two years ago and this rollable PC is considerably more polished, which leads me to hope that it won’t be long before we see a rollable PC on the market.
I’m super excited about the future of PCs, especially with companies like Lenovo attempting to use new display technology to create unique form factors. Would you buy a laptop with a rollable display like this?