Lenovo’s new concept laptop has a rotating screen that’s perfect for doomscrolling

This is what going 90 looks like on a laptop.

Lenovo has made laptop screens that roll, flip, and go transparent, and now for IFA 2025 it's announcing a new concept with a screen that can rotate into portrait mode. The Lenovo ThinkBook VertiFlex Concept is a pretty standard-looking 14-inch productivity laptop, but if you nudge the screen's edge from its top-right corner, the whole display rotates 90 degrees within its chassis, realigning itself into a better view for documents, coding, or doomscrolling.

That's it. That's its whole trick. It's both utterly delightful and a touch mundane - much simpler than other, wilder Lenovo concepts. There isn't some fancy flexible OLED display or whirring motor built into the chassis - just a clever, pivoting track system hidden behind its screen. It's one of the most down-to-earth Lenovo concepts yet, which means it's got a good chance of turning into a real product.

I got to see the concept laptop in person during an early preview in New York City ahead of its IFA debut in Berlin. As with other Lenovo concepts, I found it charming, and the company reps had an anxious air of Do you think this is cool too?"

And, well, it is pretty cool. If you're like me and you often plug your laptop into a big monitor and use the laptop screen as a secondary display, being able to use it in a vertical orientation is pretty nifty.

The screen was easy enough to rotate vertically with one hand. I felt obligated to be gentle with it and hold the laptop deck down with my other hand to prevent the whole thing toppling over, but it was sturdy enough that that wasn't necessary. Once the screen is turned, the laptop lid has just enough room on either side to rest a phone beside it, the better for using Lenovo's Smart Connect app to transfer files and control your Android phone with your mouse - though it wasn't fully working in my brief demo.

There isn't much else to the VertiFlex concept laptop itself. Lenovo isn't talking full specs, but the one I saw had two Thunderbolt (presumably Thunderbolt 4) ports, one USB-A port, HDMI, and a 3.5mm audio jack. The 14-inch concept laptop is not especially thin or particularly light, at 17.9mm / 0.7 inches thick and 1.39kg / 3.06 pounds. It's a little thinner and two-thirds of a pound lighter than the rollable ThinkBook Plus, but still thicker and heavier than a conventional laptop like the ThinkPad X9.

I was excited last year by the ThinkBook Flip concept, which took the flexible OLED from the rollable and turned it into a slightly simpler folding-screen setup. With a standard non-flexible panel and fewer moving parts like motors, the VertiFlex is even simpler. I'm not quite as stoked by a regular old rotating screen as I am by ones that fold or flip, but it still seems fun and potentially useful - and likely to be a lot cheaper than the $3,300 ThinkPad Plus Gen 6 rollable. Lenovo reps told me that the VertiFlex concept could also be easily scaled to different laptop sizes. Do people want their laptop screens to rotate into portrait mode? I have no idea. I certainly wouldn't mind it, for the right price. But I love quirky devices, and I'm happy to see Lenovo throw more ideas at the wall and see what sticks.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge