New Windows 11 laptop is like no other - just don’t look at the price

One new PC that looks like something out of Star Trek but in fact will actually be available to purchase soon is the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 - a Windows 11 laptop that has a rollable extending display.

We know what you’re thinking. Why? Well, as the line delivered by Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park goes, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”

Lenovo is no stranger to laptop technology concepts at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, held annually in January. The Chinese firm has shown off rollable displays before, but they have always been strictly concept.

This time, it’s different. The ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 will be available to buy later this year for the cool price of $3,499 in the US. UK availability is unclear at the moment.

Pressing a button on the 14-inch laptop’s keyboard sees motors inside the body under the keyboard kick into gear and roll out the flexible display like a sheet, which reportedly takes about ten seconds. When fully extended into its second position, the screen is a portrait 16.7-inch canvas.

You can also use hand gestures to roll or ... unroll(?) the mechanism.

You can then use this full display as normal or tap another button and get a strip panel of widgets and other information to fill the new gap underneath the original 14-inch landscape section.

Lenovo says the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 is “the world’s first rollable display AI PC”, which is a claim probably made accurate by adding in the words “AI PC”. This term is being used by Windows laptop manufacturers lately including HP and Microsoft to indicate they run Microsoft’s CoPilot AI technology, which acts like a virtual digital assistant. It can collate information from the web and other apps to help you get work done or generate text based content a little like ChatGPT can.

“First showcased as the Lenovo rollable laptop concept two years ago, this innovative device demonstrates Lenovo’s ability to turn forward-thinking concepts into practical, high-performance solutions for business professionals,” Lenovo said.

When extended you should be able to fit two 16x9 windows on top of each other, a little like Express.co.uk ended up doing with the Asus Zenbook Duo last year, which instead of a rolling screen wildly stacks two screens on a hinge.

Away from the showstopping rollable screen, the laptop runs an Intel Core Ultra 7 Series 2 processor, has a decent sized 66Wh battery, 1TB storage, 32GB RAM, two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone jack.

As ever, while the hardware looks amazing, software could be where this laptop falls down if you bought one. Without the buy-in of app and software developers, the extra screen real estate might not be that useful. For those who work in a web browser, the extended state may only serve to show you more of a scrollable page, and we are sceptical about how apps such as Photoshop would react. Gaming in this weird portrait mode is likely also a no-no.