Lenovo ThinkBook Plus
While you might have predicted the arrival of more foldable PCs and dual-screen laptops, I bet you didn’t see the ThinkBook Plus coming. If there was one laptop that split crowds down the middle more than any other, it was Lenovo’s wacky ultra-wide laptop with a secondary 8-inch panel embedded next to the keyboard.
Lenovo typically keeps its business products buttoned up, but it seems like some engineers got bored during lockdown and wanted to have some fun. The resulting laptop is one of the oddest things shown at CES—a 17.3-inch laptop with an extra-wide 21:10 display and what is essentially an 8-inch tablet positioned vertically to the right of the keyboard.
The thing looks bonkers, but Lenovo came up with some compelling reasons for such awkwardness. The company says you can comfortably use two or even three windows side by side on the main screen and use the tablet to launch new apps or house more static content. And content creators can drop a toolbar down to the tablet while using the primary panel for editing.
As handy as some of these uses sound, the ThinkBook Plus will still only appeal to a special (probably right-handed) customer—one who doesn’t mind a ridiculously wide chassis or a frustratingly offset keyboard.
