For decades, the word ‘laptop’ meant one thing: a sturdy rectangular screen attached to a keyboard. And for many years, this worked. But it’s 2025 now, and we’re living in an era where foldable and sliding phones are no longer science fiction. Naturally, the question arises, what’s next for laptops? As it turns out, laptops seem to be entering their own design revolution. And not enough people are talking about it.
Brands are reimagining the familiar clamshell into something far more flexible, bold, and futuristic. The next-generation laptops are bending, rolling, flipping and in some cases, attempting to defy the laws of physics.
Performance still matters, of course, but what people want today is personality. A laptop should fit into your life the way a watch or a pair of shoes does. It should say something about you. And the companies that make them have noticed. From Las Vegas to Barcelona, prototypes and production models are getting stranger, smarter and far more flexible than ever before.
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At CES and MWC, earlier this year, tech journalists found themselves face-to-face with devices that looked more like science-fiction props than tools for work. Screens that unroll like scrolls. Dual panels that tilt, detach or stand upright. Massive displays that fold in half and slide into backpacks. The message was clear: the laptop of the future won’t just sit on your desk. It will reshape itself around you.
So what does that future look like? Let’s take a closer look at some of the most ambitious designs that will make anyone go ‘wow’.
The moment Lenovo lifted the lid on the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, the crowd knew they were seeing something special. On the surface, it looks like an ordinary 14-inch notebook, until you press a button. The display begins to rise, expanding vertically into a 16.7-inch portrait panel. It’s as if your laptop just took a deep breath and stretched.
In a matter of seconds, a standard work laptop transformed into something resembling a mini monitor. You could see nearly 50% more content, including entire documents, long code windows, or spreadsheets, all at once. It’s a practical trick disguised as a party trick. And when you’re done, the screen quietly rolls back into place, returning to its compact form.
Under this futuristic motion sits serious hardware: Intel’s 14th-gen Lunar Lake CPUs, up to 32 GB of LPDDR5x RAM, and Intel Xe2 graphics. There is also Wi-Fi 7, Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 5MP IR webcam, and a premium aluminium body weighing 1.68 kg. Sure, the laptop is heavier than a MacBook Air, but you get a device that grows on demand, quite literally.
Lenovo’s prototype is still early-stage, but it signals something important: the screen doesn’t have to stay fixed. It can adapt to your needs, just like the devices we now hold in our pockets.
Asus has been playing with the idea of dual displays for years, and the 2025 Zenbook Duo feels like the company’s most confident version yet. The second OLED panel sits above the keyboard and tilts up slightly for comfort, changing how you multitask. Imagine editing a photo on one screen while watching a tutorial on the other, or chatting with friends while streaming a show. It’s an entirely different rhythm of computing.
The new model gets a kickstand built into the hinge and a detachable keyboard that lets you use it like a portable dual-monitor setup. Both 14-inch screens are OLED, 120Hz, and bursting with colour. Under the hood, Intel’s latest Ultra 7 and Ultra 9 chips power it all, with up to 32 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD. There’s a hefty 75 Wh battery too, which helps balance out those two displays.
Asus is also bringing AI into the mix with on-device NPU processing that enables Copilot+ features for creative workflows. It’s not a gimmick anymore. This is a laptop that feels designed for modern creators who live in multiple windows at once.
If you’ve ever wished your laptop could open like an actual book, Lenovo’s Yoga Book 9i Gen 10 might be your dream machine. Previewed at CES 2025, you get two full-sized OLED touchscreens here that can fold, stack or sit side by side. The physical keyboard is optional, snapping magnetically onto the bottom panel when needed.
This layout unlocks creative flexibility. You can use it like a digital notebook, prop it into a tent shape for presentations, or fold it into a tall dual-screen mode for editing and research. Lenovo even built in a rotating soundbar hinge with Dolby Atmos speakers, so no matter how you position it, the audio remains crisp and forward-facing.
For 2025, Lenovo has upgraded everything inside. There’s now an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H processor, 32 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD. The screens have grown to 14 inches each, with 2.8K resolution and 120Hz refresh rates. The 88 Wh battery is larger than before, yet the entire device weighs just 1.22 kg. It’s light, bold and unmistakably futuristic.
Huawei’s MateBook Fold takes the foldable concept from smartphones and applies it to a full-sized laptop. The result is astonishing. Unfold it and you get an enormous 18-inch OLED display with 3300×2200 resolution. Fold it down the middle, and the bottom half turns into a 13-inch laptop view with a detachable keyboard that magnetically clicks into place.
This is effectively three devices in one. A huge screen for designers or binge-watchers. A compact laptop for work. And a book-like tablet for reading or sketching. Harmony OS 5 runs the show, supporting Android-style apps, while 32 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage ensure it performs like a flagship.
Despite its size, the MateBook Fold is surprisingly portable at just 1.16 kg without the keyboard and 1.45 kg with it attached. Huawei’s engineering has made it thinner than most traditional laptops, and though availability outside China remains uncertain, it’s proof that foldables are ready to go mainstream.
At MWC 2025, Lenovo unveiled the ThinkBook Flip, a concept that feels more like a design experiment than a product. Picture an 18.1-inch OLED panel that folds vertically. When open, it becomes a towering portrait display. When flipped back, the upper half turns into a rear-facing screen for the person sitting across from you.
You can imagine showing slides to a colleague while you take notes, or previewing a video while someone else watches the final cut in real time. It’s both absurd and genius. There’s even a built-in kickstand to hold it upright when in this reversed setup.
No one knows if this device will ever be sold, and Lenovo has admitted it’s still purely conceptual. But ideas like these keep pushing the industry forward and remind us that a laptop doesn’t have to just be a rectangle anymore.
Looking at these designs side by side, it’s clear that the era of predictable laptops is fading. The next generation of machines won’t just open and close. They’ll flex, fold, roll and adapt. For creators, that means more space to work. For professionals, better multitasking. For everyday users, simply more fun.
Of course, there are challenges. Moving parts can fail, foldable screens can crease, and rollable mechanisms can jam. But that’s the trade-off of innovation. Every big leap in technology begins with a few wobbly first steps.
What’s undeniable is that we’ve entered a phase where laptop design is driven by imagination rather than just hardware specs. So the next time you open your laptop, take a moment to look at its hinge. That simple motion you’ve repeated thousands of times is being rewritten by the world’s top engineers, and the future laptop might not have a hinge at all. It might roll up like a scroll, stand like a book, or fold into shapes we haven’t even seen yet.
With that being said, one thing’s certain: the clamshell has had a good run. But the age of the shapeshifting laptop has just begun.