Lenovo’s Leaked Extendable Laptop Is Exactly What I’ve Been Waiting For

It seems that an unintended leak has revealed that Lenovo is making its concept rollable laptop a reality, and this could not come a minute too soon if you ask me. I’ve long held that rollable screen technology is much more exciting than the foldable variety, and if things work out well, this could be the future of laptop screens.

I’ve Been Asking for Extendable Displays for Years

According to Leakmail, Lenovo’s 6th-generation ThinkBook laptop is expected to debut at CES in January 2025 sporting this very sci-fi vertical rollable screen.

You can use it like a regular laptop, or just pull it upwards and soon have a double-stack of screen goodness for some proper productivity. Now, this is a leak and a rumor, so nothing is confirmed. However, rollable prototypes were everywhere at CES 2021 and it’s not at all unreasonable to expect retail products in 2025. Especially since Lenovo literally showed this very concept off in 2022.

Ever since I saw those prototypes and large rollable TVs, I’ve been asking for small rollable screens. The idea of having a portable monitor tube that rolls out to 27-inches would be a game-changer for a laptop warrior like myself, and I really do think foldables are a gimmick, with rollable tablets and screens being a more elegant and useful solution.

Folding Was Never the Best Trick

My beef with folding screens is that they are limited in how useful they can be. The folding device that makes the most sense to me personally is the Samsung Z Flip, and my wife seems very happy with her Z Flip 6 as a daily driver.

The thing is, a phone that folds out to be two phones in size isn’t that useful. You can make a triple fold of course, and be almost up to small tablet size, but the complexity and cost are unlikely to make that mainstream. Meanwhile, something the size of a normal phone that can be stretched to be as big as a tablet would be quite appealing to me. You still have moving parts, but a rolling mechanism with a gentle curve is preferable to folding if you ask me.

I’ve Been Using Portable Screens for Almost a Decade

Ever since I’ve been expected to work on a laptop, I’ve found the lack of screen real estate a bother. All the work I have ever done involved having two windows side-by-side. One with information I need, and another with the document I’m working on. Splitting a laptop screen in two is cramped, and switching between two windows constantly in full screen is a big old productivity killer, and mentally tiring to boot.

My solution has always been a portable monitor of some sort. Mainly, I’ve used my iPad as a second screen. Either as its own device with a browser, or using apps like AirDisplay and later when I switched to a Mac, I started using the native SideCar feature. I haven’t taken the full-on madness of triple monitor attachments for my laptop, but a single screen just isn’t enough to get serious work done.

This Is the Future of Laptop Displays

I’ve long been eyeing dual-screen laptops, and what Lenovo is doing here is perhaps the most practical attempt yet. Of course, as a Mac user, it will probably be another ten years before Apple attempts this, as they are only now rumored to be looking at foldable tech (via The Verge) for their own devices, while companies like Samsung are six generations into it.

I hope this is a real product, and I hope it runs out to work well, because expandable screens like these are what I think the future of mobile computing will be, and it might even make the need for large desktop screens much less than it is today. I can’t wait for CES 2025!