I tried out Lenovo’s new rollable laptop at CES, and it’s one Windows PC I’d splurge on

Lenovo revealed an unexpected new laptop alongside its fleet of new devices at CES 2025: a 14-inch laptop with a “rollable” screen that extends upwards to 16 inches, and it performs better than I initially thought so.

The ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 looks like a normal 14-inch device on the surface, but press a button on the keyboard and the screen starts growing upwards. When fully extended, the screen measures 16.7 inches, which doesn’t sound like much, but Lenovo claims you gain about 50% in screen real estate.

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This is quite comparable to working on an external monitor, as I was able to overlay two equally sized browser windows on top of each other during the demonstration. Working on a portrait-oriented monitor isn’t everyone’s preference (unlike a landscape orientation), but many users prefer it, especially coders and editors who work with long vertical text windows.

I should mention that it’s not like a foldable phone; There is no curvature or gap in the screen, which is the first thing I thought of when I saw it. The screen sits on a rolling mechanism that stores the extra inches under the keyboard when not extended, making the whole thing a seamless surface.

The screen itself looks great, to boot. It’s a 120Hz OLED display that reaches 400 nits of brightness. There’s a clear benefit to having more screen real estate on demand, and the amount you gain here is large enough to justify its purpose (and potentially its cost, we’ll get to that in a minute). But there are certainly some logistical concerns.

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The first thing that worried me was that having such a large screen would make the device unstable and heavy. However, with the extended screen, it doesn’t feel precarious. The bottom half of the device is on the bulky side and holds it firmly in place on whatever surface it sits on. Weighing 3.7 pounds, it’s not Lenovo’s lightest laptop, but all things considered, even that isn’t bad.

However, when the screen is fully extended, closing the laptop is difficult. You have a closed clamshell with an active display protruding behind the keyboard, and it’s certainly not portable in this state.

The obvious solution is to simply remember to lower the screen before packing it, but someone somewhere will inevitably throw it in a bag in this state and damage the exposed screen in the process. For this reason, I would recommend that the screen automatically return to the retracted state if it detects that the clamshell is closed.

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The process of extending the screen is as simple as pressing a button on the keyboard, but it also responds to a hand gesture. Holding your palm in front of the device and then raising or lowering it will activate the screen to perform one of these actions, which could be useful if you’re using it as a laptop for presentations.

Lenovo first launched this device two years ago at CES as a prototype model, but it is now in the works as a fully realized product, which is expected to be commercially available as early as the first quarter of 2025. This transformation from idea to reality is all that CES stands for. and Lenovo strives here to show itself not only as an organization with revolutionary R&D, but also as an organization capable of turning ideas into reality.

As for its intended user, it is definitely aimed at a professional consumer who needs a device with an additional screen for presentations and multitasking. Programmers will appreciate the portrait style

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Under the hood, this is after all a ThinkBook with an Intel Core Ultra processor, an Intel Arc GPU, and Wi-Fi 7. For connectivity, it only has two USB-C ports , which seems a bit restrictive, but at least you know one of them won’t be for your external monitor.

Finally, let’s mention the price. Lenovo says the suggested retail price will start at $3,499, which relegates it to the high end of the spectrum. Essentially, you just have to be committed to the concept to make it worth it, and the benefits of an additional on-demand mobile monitor should outweigh simply slotting your laptop into a fixed display.

For remote and hybrid workers, however, this laptop solves a problem, eliminating the need to carry a portable monitor and reducing the space you take up in the process. Taking this thing to a coffee shop might, of course, garner stares, but all that extra screen real estate will be worth it.