Lenovo unveils the world’s first rollable display laptop, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, at CES 2025
After a few years of development, the world’s first rollable display laptop, the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, was finally unveiled this week at CES 2025.
The laptop, which can switch from a 14-inch landscape display to a 16.7-inch vertical display at the touch of a button, was first shown as a concept device two years ago, but has now made the transition to production for 2025.
The laptop is powered by the Intel Core Ultra 200V series (up to a Core Ultra 7) and also features up to 32 GB of LPDDR5x memory and up to 1 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD storage. As a Lunar Lake-powered laptop, it also features Intel Xe2 graphics, making it a good, lightweight choice for graphic designers who do a lot of work on portrait documents.
Add Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity, 2 x 2W Harman/Kardon speakers and a dual microphone array with 5MP IR webcam, and you have more than a niche laptop with a cool gimmick, but a powerful mobile workstation machine for professional users.
That said, the laptop’s rollable display is the show-stealer here, and anyone who values a vertical display, such as software engineers or business users who work with a lot of documents, will be hard-pressed to find another laptop can be found, such as the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 rollable.
The ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable is not only a cool form factor, but it is also truly functional in a way that other laptops can’t offer.
The clamshell laptop form factor is one of those designs that I had considered a “solved problem.” If you want a portable computer, this is the best way to design it, with a display that folds down onto the keyboard.
And since the keyboard layout is also a solved problem, laptops are usually stuck with a landscape orientation, with older displays having a 4:3 ratio being the highest they could practically be.
For anyone who needs or wants a vertical orientation for their laptop, you’ve been out of luck and forced to rely on portable monitors, which isn’t 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 (Foldable Laptops with Display is a perfect example).
And while dual-screen laptops do exist, they’re somewhat hampered by the extra peripherals needed to make them work, like a wireless keyboard and a folding stand to keep them upright. However, with the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable you have everything in one complete device, meaning you don’t have to worry about losing anything you need to make everything work.
One thing the new laptop introduces that we haven’t had to worry about since we ditched HDD laptops with spinning drives is the introduction of moving mechanical parts, which can wear out over time.
A rollable display laptop isn’t great if the motor that rolls out the display breaks and now you can’t roll it up (or down, if you’re really unlucky), but by the time that happens it might be time to upgrade the laptop anyway, and there may be many more rollable display laptops on the market to choose from.