Lenovo Shows Off Some Unusual Laptop Prototypes
Journalists love a good technology prototype. These exciting experiments break the monotony of covering the same incremental updates day after day. They also have a downside: no matter how attractive they are, there is no guarantee that they will ever actually hit the market.
This is why covering them can be a little tricky, as it can be difficult to decide how much attention to give to a product that consumers may never see. Luckily, Lenovo did deliver on one of its previous promises at this year’s CES by showing off a rollable laptop that’s slated for release in 2025. Now the company has three additional concepts it’s showing off at Mobile World Congress, all of which are arguably just as cool.
Folding version of the CES folding screen
First up is the ThinkBook Flip AI PC, which can be seen as a more affordable version of the CES traveling laptop. Instead of having part of the screen hidden inside the laptop and unfolding like a scroll, this laptop’s screen folds over the top half of the device, extending across both sides of the lid. Using your hands, you can rotate it to create an especially tall vertical display, or alternatively, mirror the front of the screen and the back for presentations. Or you can use the laptop in tablet mode when it is closed. Sure, it’s similar to existing devices like the Yoga Book 9i , but unlike them, the screen is solid and the keyboard is built into the device.
This approach has its pros and cons. Because there’s no need to accommodate a rotating mechanism, the Flip AI PC can actually stand slightly taller than a foldable laptop, but it’s also a bit heavier, so you can’t use the screen fully extended at a steep angle without extra support.
Detachable monitors for laptops
Advanced laptop displays also include Magic Bay Dual Display and 2nd Display laptop accessories. Technically, this isn’t the first time Lenovo has shown off the concept of Magic Bay, an existing technology that allows certain accessories to attach to pins on the back of some ThinkBook laptops. They’ve even included secondary displays in the past, but this year’s ideas are definitely more sophisticated.
Starting with a smaller size, the Magic Bay 2nd Display is an 8-inch vertical screen that complements the (non-touchscreen) laptop with a tablet companion. It’s similar to the 10-inch horizontal bar above your laptop screen that Lenovo showed off at last year’s CES, and coincidentally resembles my husband’s desktop setup. As convenient as it may seem (it even has a hinge for an adjustable angle), it is however overshadowed by Lenovo’s other Magic Bay display concept.
The dual Magic Bay display turns your laptop into a workstation with three monitors and additional 13.3-inch screens on either side of the device, with a 120Hz refresh rate on both. At 2.6 pounds, it’s quite heavy, so it comes with a built-in stand. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen an idea like this , but when I saw it in person, I was impressed by how much more intuitive the connection process seemed compared to current third-party alternatives.
Solar powered laptop
In addition to screens, there is also an experimental solar-powered laptop that can be charged by sunlight called the Yoga Solar PC. It works through a solar cell built into the back of the laptop’s lid, which Lenovo says has a “solar energy conversion rate of over 24%” and can charge enough to play one hour of video for about 20 minutes in direct sunlight. I didn’t get to see it in action because I was in a dark room while Lenovo demoed it, but I can say that the solar technology doesn’t seem to have too much of an impact on the form factor. In my opinion, it was very thin and the company claims it is 0.6 inches thick and weighs 2.69 pounds. If that’s still too much for you, Lenovo also showed off the Solar Power Kit for Yoga concept, which is a standard battery that connects to a removable USB-C solar panel (I haven’t seen one in person).
Evolution of earlier concepts
While I got to see (most of) the above concepts in person, the company has also made a few iterative changes to earlier ideas and has revealed that it’s prototyping its own version of competing devices. These include a glasses-free 3D ThinkBook, similar to devices Asus and Acer already have on the market, as well as an AI companion robot called Tiko that can be connected to laptops via Magic Bay.
For added functionality, the Tiko Pro is also in development, a small horizontal Magic Bay display that combines the benefits of a second display with AI-powered widgets. Again, we’ve seen versions of these either from competitors or at Lenovo’s previous concept announcements, but they’re still worth keeping an eye on.
Slightly more interesting is the hybrid 24-inch curved monitor, which can supposedly display 3D images while showing 2D assets without any loss of resolution, although this will need to be seen with your own eyes to really be appreciated and I’ve yet to get my hands on it.
Using artificial intelligence on non-AI computers
Finally, there are tools for implementing AI on non-AI computers. Lenovo says it is experimenting with two dedicated neural processing units, or NPUs, that can be connected to existing PCs via a USB drive or monitor. Working as an external graphics card, the Lenovo AI Stick contains a 32TOPS NPU that can be connected to a computer without an NPU via Thunderbolt to allow it to run LLM and AI graphics tools locally. It can only run on the laptop’s own power, but Lenovo says you can also plug it in at the same time for better performance.
Meanwhile, AI Display with NPU Inside does pretty much the same thing, but instead of incorporating the NPU into a hub-like structure, it builds it right into your monitor. This has the added benefit that the screen can physically rotate, rise and tilt to follow your movements, but like most monitors, it’s much bulkier and needs to be permanently plugged into the wall. Lenovo also says it’s working on an “AI Ring” that will bring gesture-based control to spatial computing applications, although the company didn’t go into detail.
That’s all about Lenovo MWC concepts. It’s a pretty broad spectrum. Again, none of these are guaranteed to make it to market, but that means they’ll be a little weirder than your average product announcement. Personally, I’d love to get my hands on the dual Magic Bay display, and I can see how the AI Stick would be useful for developers. Meanwhile, the company also announced a number of chip upgrades for its existing ThinkPad, ThinkBook, IdeaPad and Yoga laptops, which will start hitting the market with the new Yoga 7 2-in-1 and IdeaPad Slim 3x this month.