We’ve seen folding laptops and mobile laptops, but what about a rolling laptop? Lenovo’s latest weird notebook design to become an actual product you can buy is the new ThinkBook with a screen on a pivot. In the version of a coder’s worst nightmare, the laptop screen can follow you no matter how hard you try to run around your desk.
Previewed at Gizmodo for CES 2026, the $1,650 ThinkBook Plus Gen 7 Auto Twist uses a hinge that can rotate on both a horizontal and vertical axis. In addition to tracking your face with its webcam, the laptop can track your movements when you’re walking slowly during a meeting or sitting in your chair, watching Netflix and ignoring all the bells and whistles you get from Slack. Auto Twist should be available from June this year.
Personally, the spinner is near-silent and somewhat intimidating the way it tracks your body as you try to get out of the frame. One problem with my demo came from putting two people in the frame at the same time. Auto Twist got frustrated and would follow one person or another regardless of how close they were to the laptop. It was the same problem with Lenovo’s Smart Motion Concept laptop manager, although the ThinkBook is much more mobile than that big brick of a machine.
Despite the odd contraption that allows the display to pivot, you don’t sacrifice much for realism. The new 14-inch ThinkBook comes with a 2.8K OLED display that sports a 120Hz refresh rate. It features an Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processor inside with 12-core Xe3 GPU chip options. The extra GPU headroom can be useful if you intend to make this laptop a portable workstation for some lightweight graphics tasks.
If that wasn’t enough, Lenovo is also considering an updated version of the ThinkBook Gen 6 Rollable laptop from 2025. The new ThinkPad Rollable XD is another concept device designed for Lenovo’s long-lasting laptops, albeit with a twist. It still has a 14-inch flexible screen that stretches just north of 16 inches vertically. While the ThinkBook uses a method of feeding the screen to the laptop body, the ThinkPad uses a series of carbon fiber cables and pulleys to drag the display to the laptop lid. There is a piece of clear plastic on the top to protect the most sensitive part of the folded display.
Installing a flexible display on the lid has several advantages. First, it keeps the chassis available with the kind of high specs and cooling equipment you want for a pint-sized laptop. Second, the folding screen then becomes a secondary rear display. Lenovo showed how this can be used for alerts and updates while the lid is closed or to show video to people looking on the other side of your laptop.
That concept is not yet a real product. The moving and rotating ThinkBooks proved that Lenovo is willing to make these strange products a reality. Sure, you might not use these laptops, but at least Lenovo’s staying ahead of the curve in keeping the old, laptop design fresh.
Gizmodo is in Las Vegas all week bringing you everything you need to know about the technology unveiled at CES 2026. You can follow our CES live blog here and find all our coverage here.
