Lenovo’s twisting 2-in-1 is the best kind of concept laptop

Lenovo can usually be relied on to bust out a wacky concept or two at trade shows, but I think the Auto Twist AI PC Proof of Concept it unveiled at IFA stands a better chance of making it to the mainstream than most of its previous headline-grabbing gadgets. I didn’t know I needed a hybrid laptop with a fully automatic hinge that can open and close with a voice prompt, but Lenovo’s slick demo already has me sold.

Essentially a ThinkBook 2-in-1 with a mechanical hinge that can rotate a near full 360-degrees, the Auto Twist is no thicker than a normal hybrid laptop, but can articulate itself to any angle under it’s own steam – no hands required. You just say one of its trigger phrases, like “close laptop”, “tablet mode”, or “open lid”.

Not only is this brilliant for accessibility, but Lenovo has baked in some AI to track user movements, so you can always keep the screen in view. That’ll be very handy if you’re presenting to an audience and like to roam the stage. Apparently it’ll also reduce strain by adjusting to suit your posture. Walk away and it’ll automatically shut the lid and lock the Windows desktop, so you don’t have to worry about ne’er-do-wells accessing your docs while you spend a penny.

The camera mode can shoot panoramas with a single button press, using the webcam built into the front of the screen bezel. Naturally my first thought was to create a homage to the spider man pointing at spider man meme by quickly moving from one side of the room to the other.

In the ten minutes or so I spent with the concept, I’d already thought of a few funky possibilities – one button timelapse videos would be a boon for creators, and the laptop could become a sentry bot for monitoring your work space when you’re not around.

It doesn’t move especially quickly, and there was a bit of wobble on show as it tilted and panned around the room, but the subject tracking was on point, and the (clearly still early) software was pretty quick to stitch panoramas together.

The firm isn’t talking internal hardware just yet, as a CPU candidate wouldn’t be locked in until the machine was ready for full production. But with new Intel Core Ultra chips, AMD Ryzen AI and Qualcomm Snapdragon silicon all vying for your attention, it’s feasible any of the three could find a home inside a machine like this.

It helps that hinge aside, this is a fairly conventional laptop; compared to February’s Project Crystal, which felt like tech without any real purpose, I could see this on shop shelves pretty quickly.

All it needs is a Robot Wars-style self-righting mechanism and there’ll be no stopping it.

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