Lenovo’s newest ThinkBook laptop ‘unrolls’ for extra screen space

Lenovo’s folding laptop concept debuted a few years ago. Now it’s real and ready for prime time. Dubbed the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, this futuristic laptop with a rollable and expandable screen will go on sale in the first quarter of 2025.

The ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 costs around $3,500 and is in line with existing Lenovo models. Yoga Book 9iwhich debuted in 2023 with a pair of screens connected together. But the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable puts one screen behind the other, and the rear one can slide out, so instead of replacing the keyboard with a single screen, the Rollable retains Lenovo’s keyboard design. It’s a solid compromise on both sides.

In compact mode, the Rollable offers a fairly standard 120Hz OLED display with 400 nits of brightness and 100 percent DCI-P3 color accuracy that measures 14 inches diagonally. But when unfolded, the display expands to approximately 16.7 inches diagonally. This essentially turns the standard landscape mode into portrait mode. If you’ve ever used portrait display mode, you know that it can be used to either display a long document vertically, or split into two or three landscape windows. The latter is likely due to how you’ll use the Gen 6 Rollable.

What’s even more convenient is that Lenovo has anticipated that you’ll be using the screen this way, and so has made these new virtual windows available for sharing. In other words, if you want to share your screen during a Zoom or Teams call, you’ll be able to simply share that extra created space without the need for an external monitor, Lenovo says.

Under the hood, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable is more traditional. Inside is a Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) chip that promises exceptional battery life even with the extra screen. Lenovo hasn’t released full dimensions, but lists the “minimum” dimensions as 11.92 x 9.06 x 0.74 inches. The laptop weighs 3.73 pounds with a 66Wh internal battery, which is moderately heavy for a professional/business laptop.

The specs also seem relatively traditional, with up to 32GB of LPDDR5x RAM (8,533 MT/s) and up to 1TB of PCIe storage. On the inside, Lenovo has included support for Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 and a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, as well as a 5MP webcam. Lenovo wants the laptop to meet MIL-STD-810H drop test requirements, but says the device is still being tested.

Lenovo will ship the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable with Windows 11 Pro, but without the vPro chipset, meaning it’s a pro-grade device. Its eventual sales will determine whether this rollable screen will be a feature that sticks around for future generations or will be forgotten as a gimmick that will be phased out in favor of more traditional displays.