Lenovo launched a $3,500 laptop with a rollable display, and I got to try it

In October 2022, Lenovo debuted a concept laptop with a rollable display. At the time, the company emphasized that the device was just a concept and it had no plans to actually bring it to market. However, here we are in 2025, and Lenovo has done just that: at this year’s iteration of CES, the company launched the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, a Lunar Lake-powered laptop with an extendable display.

I had the opportunity at the show to spend some time with the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6. I came away impressed with the innovative technology, but couldn’t help but wonder how practical this laptop could really be for someone.

Keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’

If you were to grab the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 while in its closed state, you would think it was any old Lenovo laptop. Yeah, it’s a bit thicker and heavier than usual, but not as hefty as its predecessor, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 (which was a whole different concept, with a Windows install in the keyboard and an Android install in the screen).

Even when you open it up, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 doesn’t look all that strange. If you stared at it, you’d notice that it has a weird button on the keyboard and that the screen bezels are very thick for a 2025 machine — but otherwise, it’s just a laptop.

When you hit that aforementioned button, though, the magic happens. The 14-inch OLED display starts to extend upward while the flexible display buried within the laptop’s body unfurls with it. When it’s finished doing its thing, your 14-inch laptop has suddenly become a 16.7-inch laptop.

Lenovo went all out with this process. When the laptop is unrolling, it actually plays a little song. It then plays a different song when you hit the button again to return the laptop to its 14-inch state. The wallpaper also changes, complete with a video animation. In the case of the wallpaper you see above, the shadow people start walking towards the monolith, and the “Smarter AI for all” logo creeps up from the top of the keyboard deck.

I must have rolled/unrolled the display a dozen times while I was using it. By the fifth time, the song was already annoying, so I muted the laptop. Lenovo did say that the song can be customized, so you could at least change it to something you might enjoy a bit more (or disable it altogether).

I’ll freely admit that I was giddy with joy while the screen rolled and unrolled. However, once the novelty wore off, I was left with a ton of questions.

The Dr. Ian Malcolm conundrum

While I was testing out the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, I couldn’t stop from picturing Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park saying his famous line: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” If that line could ever be applied to a laptop, it’s this one.

While having a display that can get bigger instantly is really cool, how useful would this actually be? I can think of a few scenarios in which having a tall display would be nice, such as coding, editing vertical video, and even traditional word processing. However, would those advantages be worth the numerous trade-offs present here?

First, the size and weight of the laptop are significant barriers, especially for folks used to ultra-thin notebooks. Durability is also in question, as Lenovo told me the screen is only tested for up to 30,000 rolls, which is enough for eight up/down rolls each day for five years. That’s a pretty low number when you know the average book-style foldable smartphone can handle over 200,000 folds before hitting a wall.

Lenovo also didn’t show us any OS-level features for the extended display. Yeah, it’s nice that the wallpaper plays a nifty video, but Lenovo didn’t present any productivity features that could only work with this specific laptop. This is especially concerning when you know that the original 2022 concept laptop looks and performs much the same as this 2025 version. In other words, Lenovo had multiple years to come up with cool ways to take advantage of the extendable display, but had nothing to tell us about when it actually launched it. If the company itself can’t give you a good reason to use an extendable display, then what does that say about the whole idea?

Finally, the most significant trade-off is the absolutely bonkers price of the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable: $3,499. Even for a state-of-the-art machine with wall-to-wall top-tier specs, that would be a tough pill to swallow.

Granted, this laptop does have some killer hardware. It maxes out with the Intel Core Ultra 7 (2nd Series), which means plenty of performance with very efficient power consumption. It also has options for up to 32GB of RAM and up to 1TB of internal storage, which are also solid offerings. Unfortunately, the battery inside is pretty small (66Whr), and the webcam is a paltry 5MP (the 2024 MacBook Pro has a 12MP webcam, for the sake of comparison). In other words, some specs are good, and some specs are meh, which doesn’t make me feel great about paying $3,500 for this machine.

Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable hands-on: Worth the cash?

When you combine all the good and bad aspects of this laptop, you’re left with a very specific product in which only a relatively small selection of buyers will be interested. Basically, that niche would be folks who want a tall display on their laptop but can’t stand the idea of carrying around a portable monitor to solve that problem. If that’s you and you’ve got $3,500 burning a hole in your pocket, the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable is exactly what you need.

However, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that pretty much no one reading this actually falls into that description. For those people, I would imagine the novelty of a rollable display simply isn’t enough to make this laptop worth buying. I mean, come on: $3,500 could get you a top-tier Dell XPS, a MacBook Pro, or even a balls-to-the-wall gaming laptop.

Despite all this, I must applaud Lenovo for taking risks like this. The laptop market has so much room for innovation, and very few companies are willing to bet big on out-of-the-box ideas. Lenovo, though, seems to take pride in coming up with whackadoo ideas like this, and I have mad respect for that.

Finally, I want to call out that this is the very first widely available rollable laptop that you can actually buy. With Lenovo taking the first big stab, other companies (or even Lenovo itself) could come up with better implementations of the technology. There could be a laptop in the near future that isn’t as expensive and makes better use of the rollable display idea. I’m excited to see those laptops in the future, but today, in 2025? I’m not so sure this is fully cooked.