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Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 review: Introducing a mesmerizing display at CES 2025

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Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 review: Introducing a mesmerizing display at CES 2025

Jennifer Jolly
 |  Special to USA TODAY

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At first glance, Lenovo’s ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 looks like any other new, AI-infused modern laptop. But tap a dedicated button at the top of the keyboard, and get ready to pick your jaw up off the floor.

The screen actually rises up and gives you an extra 2.7 inches of beautiful, nearly bevel-less, divine device real estate. It’s not gimmicky, either. It’s genius. And it works. Like, for real.

When the PC screen unfurls vertically, it pushes the display size from 14 to 16.7 inches — a 50% increase in scrollable space. It’s like having an entire second screen attached to your take-everywhere gadget, but one that glides down and tucks behind the keyboard when you’re done.

You can work the screen in two ways: with its dedicated key or a specific hand gesture toward the built-in camera. I preferred the button. The gesture has a steeper learning curve, and I had a tough time holding my hand in the “just right” position to make the screen magic happen.

Practical reasons for an unfolding screen

Putting the screen up also lets you work in split-screen mode, cranking on a document at the top while scrolling news at the bottom. You can even share your “second screen” during meetings.

This is great for people like me, who often have a dozen tabs open at any given time while I work on a script or story on one screen and race around looking up facts on another. It’s also great for students, content creators, businesspeople and anyone else tired of carrying around an external monitor.

Another twist on this design is that it’s arguably better for your body. A taller upright screen means less tech neck — no more staring down all day — and, according to Lenovo, reduced strain after a marathon day staring at your monitor. Ergonomics has long been one of Lenovo’s key selling points in intentional and well-executed ways.

When you think about it, it makes a ton of sense: With the web more suited to tall, narrow smartphone screens than ever, giving a laptop a taller display is a no-brainer. Spreadsheets, news websites, business documents, ebooks and many other types of content just fit better on a taller screen.

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Quirky concept becomes reality

Lenovo debuted this design in past CES showcases, but only as a concept and never as a real product. That all changes this year, but will anyone bite?

Honestly, it reminds me a little bit of the heyday of feature phones. Companies like LG, Motorola and Kyocera experimented with obnoxious designs that had very little in the way of staying power. (Does anyone out there still have an LG Wing phone with a second screen that flips out like a holy cross?!) It doesn’t really matter, though, because a new design is often right around the corner.

Things are a lot different in 2025. We haven’t seen a unique laptop design for the consumer space in a long time. Flexible display technology, like the kind that finally shook up smartphones after many years of stagnation, is officially arriving in the laptop space, and the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 is the first solid example.

Will rollable displays become the new “foldable phones”? It’s hard to say right now, but with so many MacBook clones — metal unibodies and minimalist aesthetics — flooding every corner of the laptop world, something new and a little strange definitely has a chance to catch on.

High-end specs, higher-end price

The biggest headline here is obviously its eye-catching design, but this new notebook is no slouch on performance. Drawing power from Intel Core Ultra processors and providing ultra-smooth visuals on its 120hz OLED display, the new rollable ThinkBook easily qualifies as a flagship notebook. Throw in Thunderbolt 4 connectivity and Wi-Fi 7 and it’s a certified premium device.

Love it or give it a big ole’ side-eye, the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 is an undeniably exciting device — right up until you see its price tag: Expected to land early this year, it will start at an eye-watering $3,499.

That’s an incredible amount of money for what could be an ultra-niche device… or it might be a totally acceptable price for a gadget that spawns an entirely new class of devices. For now, though, it’s awesome, cool and costly.

Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer tech columnist and on-air contributor for “The Today Show.” The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY. Contact her at JJ@Techish.com or @JennJolly on Instagram

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