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Welcome to The Full Nerd newsletter—your weekly dose of hardcore hardware talk from the enthusiasts at PCWorld. Missed the fierce debates on our YouTube show or the hot news across the web? You’re in the right place. Want this newsletter to come directly to your inbox? Sign up on our website! Last month, I wondered what the future of the desktop PC would be—if perhaps mini-PCs would eventually replace the image in everyone’s mind as the default. Intel is the reason I could sit and ponder such a world. The launch of the company’s Next Unit of Computing line sparked today’s proliferation of affordable competitors from other vendors. In 2013, no one thought much of small PCs. I fell in love when Gordon first introduced me to a NUC in 2014, but I was most definitely not part of the norm. Nowadays, though? Consumers are increasingly just as in on the idea as corporations have been. Intel also is behind other technologies that have proliferated widely—many have been topics of discussion on The Full Nerd episodes. Some, like USB 1.0, tied into joint projects. Others sprang fully from within, like RealSense. I’m personally still a fan of Team Blue’s contributions to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module development; their efforts made rock-solid dependability the norm. Will and Brad nominated Unison, Optane, and Thunderbolt as standouts, as well. For decades, Intel approached the industry as if its champion. It strove to further PCs overall—it wasn’t content merely to pioneer new processor innovations. We the public gave them grief when they slowed down on the CPU side, content to keep pushing out four-core, eight-thread processors with minimal clock speed bumps. Criticism of their divided attention flowed freely. But now, looking at how rapidly Intel has shrunk in recent years, I feel regret and sorrow. Its NUC division is gone, sold to Asus. Other divisions and projects are outright dead, part of the company’s streamlining and downsizing. And in a recent earnings call, CEO Lip-Bu Tan was quoted as saying, “I do not subscribe to the belief that if you build it, they will come. Under my leadership, we will build what customers need, when they need it.” Nobody asked for these SFF-sized gaming NUCs. But they existed to show what simplified SFF building could look like—and I still love that.Alaina Yee / IDG Tan’s statement referred to a willingness to commit to the 14A node—chip making. The exact business the noisy masses have demanded attention to. But this level of contraction cuts so deep that I now wonder about what we’re losing, with this new austere approach. People don’t always know what they need. Sometimes, an investment in the unproven and unknown fills in gaps we always assumed were normal. When I talked about Intel’s best technologies with Will, we debated briefly about his pick of Thunderbolt. I wasn’t convinced Thunderbolt was ready to be named as such. He countered that its very existence mattered most. Will’s right. If no one takes a chance to experiment, to bring things into existence that may not be perfect, we don’t know what could be. Intel shaped much of what the PC is today. To know that it has set down the mantle of champion, even if temporarily, makes me quietly mourn all the technology we’ll never get to know. In this episode of The Full Nerd… Willis Lai / Foundry In this episode of The Full Nerd, Adam Patrick Murray, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, and Will Smith lock horns over nominations to our PC Hardware Hall of Fame. We may be dressed nicely, but our debate gets ugly at times. I also may have once again appealed to chat to help break a deadlocked vote in my favor. (I adore you all.) Plus, Will showed us his home-brew cufflinks, made from case thumbscrews. What I expected: Alliances to form and break around me. What I did not expect (but should have): Betrayal after being coaxed into an alliance for the greater good. As I said during the show, Clementine will remember that.  (I call up on you, my people, to help me wreak such chaos next year that the episode will go down in infamy. I’ve already begun my notes and planning. I have screenshots from this year. I plan to be ready.) Getting ready for next year’s fight. Uh, debate. Luis Ibarra / Adam Patrick Murray Missed our live show? Subscribe now to The Full Nerd YouTube channel, and activate notifications. We also answer viewer questions in real time!  And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds. This week’s surprising nerd news I pretty much adore Framework’s modular approach to PCs—so I read my colleague Mark Hachman’s review of their new desktop PC with delight. I don’t get quite the same excitement as from Intel’s Ghost Canyon or Beast Canyon, but I like where future releases could go. Also, I found out someone in the world—a pretty famous someone at that—still uses an RX 580. I don’t believe that negates my nomination of Polaris into the Hardware Hall of Fame, but just emphasizes its relevance and importance. AHEM. It’s so little!Alex Esteves / Foundry Framework’s teeny desktop PC is cute: A spiritual successor to Intel’s pandemic-era gaming NUC models? In many ways yes, but I am giving side-eye to that soldered memory. (Interested in its performance? Check out Mark’s review, too.) That’s a big oops, Proton: I’m betting you know of ProtonMail—and more likely trust Proton to keep data safe. But the company’s new Authenticator app isn’t immune from bugs, as it turns out. Saved 2FA seeds were stored as plain text in log files. Yikes. So many hertz: AOC’s upcoming native 600Hz display is impressive, yes…for its slide-out headphone holder. (Only half-joking here; I now want that feature on my next monitor.) Windows Recall still captures sensitive data: Continue filing this feature under “I’m not surprised” and also “Forever a hard no.” I like this PC Gamer quiz: I evaded the quiz-taking crazes of the late ’00s and early 2010s, but this one asking me to identify games from their crates? Fun. (Also that pun in the strapline? Chef’s kiss.) Valve should have kept surprising us: Keeping my backlog (fractionally more) manageable is easier when I don’t know upcoming sale periods. I can truthfully tell myself I didn’t budget for a bajillion random buys. A champion for the masses, still trucking along in some quarters of the world. Just like the GTX 1080 Ti, Brad. Boss. Sir.Brad Chacos / IDG Linus Torvalds still uses an AMD RX 580: I never thought I’d say I found myself in perfect alignment with Linux users, but part of personal growth is flexibility. (One day, I’ll get Polaris into the Hardware Hall of Fame.) PCIe 8 goes zoom: Before PCIe 7 launches, we already know for sure its successor will be trailing right behind it. We love to see it, but meanwhile, PCIe 6 SSDs haven’t reached us lowly consumers yet. :[ How times have changed for AMD: Windows users keep embracing AMD’s CPUs for gaming—Team Red’s market share just crossed over 40 percent in the latest Steam hardware survey. What a comeback. I want this ‘impractical’ display: What happens when you combine engineering with Wheel of Fortune mechanics? This really fun 1,000-pixel wood “display” panel. More hertz please: I’m a big fan of E-Ink displays. I also stare at a screen all day. If we can get refresh rates to a point where writing and editing is feasible on this kind of panel, my wallet is very ready. I now know I enjoy learning about fan blade design: Leave it to Steve Burke over at Gamers Nexus to make 30 minutes feel too short for discussions about engineering and fan blade angles. Castle Crashers got new DLC: What. Catch you all next week, when Brad is off on vacation—which means Adam, Will, and I can discuss rumors to our hearts’ content. If we want. :] Alaina This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Rollable OLED is reliable Extra screen space just a keypress away Solid Lunar Lake performance Cons Expensive (naturally) Battery life takes a hit A portable monitor may be more practical Few ports Our Verdict The world’s first laptop unrolls extra screen real estate from below the keyboard at the push of a button. It works well, and the tradeoffs are all worth it if you want a rollable display. If the sticker price doesn’t phase you, you’ll love it. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable is a 14-inch laptop that unrolls into a tall 16.7-inch display when you press a button on the keyboard. Lenovo proudly proclaims this is the world’s first rollable laptop. You have a bunch of extra screen real estate built into your laptop, and you can access it at the press of a button. I’m shocked how cool this is: Lenovo has taken the kind of product you’d see as a tech demo at CES and turned it into a real, solidly engineered laptop that anyone can buy. Yes, it’s expensive, but the fact that you can get this kind of one-of-a-kind experience at a few thousand bucks is just awesome. Lenovo has been delivering lots of wild laptop concepts, like the dual-display Yoga Book 9i. Given the price, these laptops aren’t for most people. But if you like the idea, they’re the only real game in town. Lenovo should be applauded for delivering these concepts as real, buyable products. Machines like these demonstrate why PCs are awesome. Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable: Specs The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable is available in one single configuration. This laptop includes an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU — that’s a Lunar Lake CPU, which means it has excellent battery efficiency and impressive integrated graphics performance alongside an NPU powerful enough for Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC features. However, Lunar Lake only has eight cores — four performance cores and four low-power efficient cores — so CPU-heavy multithreaded workflows will lag compared to other CPU architectures. Alongside that, Lenovo includes a generous 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. Model number: Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 258V Memory: 32GB LPDDR5X Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc 140V NPU: Intel AI Boost (48 TOPS) Display: 14-inch 2000×1600 OLED display that unrolls into a 16.7-inch 2000×2350 display, 120Hz refresh rate Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 1440p camera Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C), 1x combo audio jack Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Fingerprint reader and IR camera for facial recognition Battery capacity: 66 Watt-hours Dimensions: 11.95 x 9.08 x 0.75 inches Weight: 3.72 pounds MSRP: $3,299 as tested Lenovo has taken the kind of product you’d see as a tech demo at CES and turned it into a real, solidly engineered laptop that anyone can buy. Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable: Design and build quality IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable has great build quality, actually! This does not feel like the world’s first rollable laptop — it feels like a polished second or third generation version of the concept. At a glance, the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 looks like a silver Lenovo ThinkBook laptop that’s just a bit bulkier than normal. It has a serious-looking hinge, which looks like the kind of hinge you’d see on a 2-in-1 machine. Aside from the slight extra bulk — it’s only a bit thicker than normal, and at 3.72 pounds, it’s not even that much heavier than a normal laptop — this could pass for a standard Lenovo laptop — until you see the screen. Rather than the screen ending in a bezel, the screen continues past a seam down into the laptop, under the keyboard. To unroll the laptop, you just have to ensure it’s at the right angle — 90 degrees works, or a bit further back — and then press the key to the right of F12. A motor kicks into action and unrolls the screen, making the laptop taller as the rollable OLED display unrolls from underneath the keyboard. To roll it back up, you’ll press the key again. (If your screen isn’t at a good angle for rolling, the key won’t do anything.) The motor and hinge feel incredibly reliable. Time will be the real test, but this feels solid. In fact, it feels more reliable than my foldable Galaxy Phone, as I’m folding that with my hands using various degrees of pressure, while this machine has a motor that unrolls and rolls it nicely. Lenovo includes its own software that handles resolution switching when the screen rolls and unrolls, as well as a “ThinkBook Workspace” pane designed to live at the bottom area of the screen when it’s unrolled. Workspace works fine, but I preferred to stick with my usual Windows software. Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable: Keyboard and trackpad IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable has a fine keyboard. Lenovo tends to be good at keyboards, and this feels on the shallow side compared to other Lenovo keyboards I’ve used. A slightly shallow keyboard is no surprise: This machine, after all, has a display that rolls up and fits under the keyboard. It’s not mushy, but it is a tad rubbery and doesn’t feel as “snappy” as I’d like. This isn’t even a criticism — of course a rollable laptop won’t have the most keyboard travel. If you like the idea of a rollable laptop, you shouldn’t let the keyboard stop you. If you’re wondering whether other high-end Lenovo laptops like the ThinkPad X1 Carbon have snappier keyboards, though: Yes, yes they do. This machine has a touchpad that’s a good size. It’s a haptic trackpad, too — that means you can customize the action and use the whole touchpad surface to click down. Combined with the size, it’s a great touchpad with smooth action. However, the surface feels a little rubbery, and a glass touchpad always feels a little smoother under the finger to me. These really aren’t criticisms — I’m just relaying what the experience of using the laptop is like. The keyboard and trackpad work well, and you’ll be pleased with them if the rollable display is your main draw here. Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable: Display and speakers IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable’s display is its star feature. It’s a rollable OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and up to 400 nits of brightness. When rolled up, it’s a 14-inch display with a 2000×1600 resolution. When unrolled, it’s a tall 16.7-inch display with a 2000×2350 resolution. If you’ve used a foldable phone, you’ll be familiar with the “crease” in the middle of the display, where it folds. Since it’s a rollable, it doesn’t have a single crease, but it does have some crease-look visual artifacts where it folds. They’re very well hidden — you have to look at it from just the right angle in just the right lighting to see anything that looks unusual. The screen looks good, but make no mistake: The rollability is its main feature. I’ve seen laptops with high-end OLED displays that are brighter with more vivid colors. But, for a rollable display with such an unusual size and resolution, this is an impressive showing. This is not a touch-screen display, however. If you’re looking for a touch screen, this is not the machine for you. This machine’s Harman Kardon speakers sound unusually great. I test every laptop I review by playing Steely Dan’s Aja and Daft Punk’s Get Lucky. They had plenty of volume, and the audio quality was crisp with decent instrument separation in Aja. The sound was balanced enough in Get Lucky that, even without a ton of bass, the sound sounded great — nothing tinny and enough bass to be fun. We’re grading on a scale since these are laptop speakers, of course — but these are unusually good. Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable has a 1440p 5MP webcam that offers a clear image without visual noise even in lighting conditions that weren’t the most ideal. Lenovo didn’t cut any corners here, and this is the kind of webcam that will make you look professional in online meetings. Also, since this machine meets Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC requirements, it has access to Windows Studio Effects for real-time webcam effects like fake eye contact and background blur. And it has a privacy shutter switch, too. The dual-array microphone setup sounds excellent, and it picked up my voice in high quality. The ThinkBook line of PCs is marketed for business users, and Lenovo has delivered hardware that works very well for online meetings. This machine offers both a fingerprint scanner and an IR camera, so you can sign into your PC and authenticate with Windows Hello using whichever you prefer. The fingerprint reader is part of the power button on the right side of the laptop. Both worked well. Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable: Connectivity IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable skimps on the ports. On the left side, you’ve got a combo audio jack for headphones and a microphone and two Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C) ports. That’s it. This machine charges via USB-C, so one of those ports on the left will be used by the power cable while it’s charging. In general, it would be nice to have more ports or at least a Thunderbolt 4 port on both sides. However, this machine includes a rollable display and a motor while not being much thicker than the average laptop, so obviously there wasn’t as much room for ports — it makes sense. Still, bear in mind that you may need a dock or a dongle. It’s a little funny — this machine promises easy access to more screen real estate so you won’t have to bring a portable monitor with you. But it has fewer ports — so, depending on how many peripherals you need, you may find yourself bringing a dongle or dock with you instead. Thanks to Lunar Lake, this machine supports both Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. I had no problems with wireless connectivity. Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable: Performance The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable has an Intel Lunar Lake chip — specifically, the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V. Lunar Lake has always delivered snappy performance in desktop productivity apps, and it does the same in this machine. As always, though we ran the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs. IDG / Chris Hoffman First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. With an average overall PCMark 10 score of 7,703, Lenovo’s rollable laptop delivers solid Lunar Lake-powered performance. IDG / Chris Hoffman Next, we run Cinebench R20. This is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. Since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage. With an average Cinebench R20 multi-threaded score of 4,060, the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Rollable delivered performance in line with other Lunar Lake-powered laptops. They just don’t have as many cores as other chips, including Intel’s previous-generation Meteor Lake chips and AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 series. IDG / Chris Hoffman We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark, but it runs over an extended period. This demands the laptop’s cooling kick in, and many laptops will throttle and slow down under load. The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable took an average of 1,599 seconds to complete the encode process — that’s over 26 and a half minutes. It was a bit slower than even other Lunar Lake-powered machines, which suggests that the thermal profile of this machine is impacted by the additional display and motor mechanism — in other words, it can’t cool itself as well as some other Lunar Lake-powered machines and throttles more under load. That’s no surprise. IDG / Chris Hoffman Next, we run a graphical benchmark. This isn’t a gaming laptop, but it’s still good to check how the GPU performs. We run 3Dmark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance. With a 3Dmark Time Spy score of 4,483, Lenovo’s rollable laptop offered great integrated graphics performance, only falling short to laptops with discrete graphics. That’s a great score. Overall, Lenovo’s ThinkBook Plus delivered the results we’d hope to see: Good Lunar Lake performance that only struggles with heavily multi-threaded workloads. The slightly slower Handbrake result isn’t an issue — if you plan on doing heavily multi-threaded CPU-hungry workloads, a machine like this one isn’t the one for you. It’s a portable productivity machine with a lot of extra display. Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable: Battery life The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable has a 66 Watt-hour battery, which is a decent size but not the largest. It’s battery life fell short of other Lunar Lake machines. Displays tend to be a big contributor to power usage, this suggests that the large rollable OLED display is unusually power hungry compared to the average laptop’s display. IDG / Chris Hoffman To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop suspends itself. We set the screen to 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks. This is a best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this. The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable lasted for an average of 761 minutes — that’s over 12 and a half hours. That number sounds good, but it’s hours shorter compared to other Lunar Lake-powered systems. (For example, the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro hit nearly 24 hours in our benchmark — but it’s not a rollable laptop.) You’ll have to plug this machine in a bit more often than the average Lunar Lake laptop. But, if you love this laptop, you’ll make it work. Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable: Conclusion The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 is incredible. The rollable display and motor action feel incredibly solid, and I was never worried about them. You get a display that gives you a lot of extra screen real estate at the press of a button, and it all rolls up on the keyboard when you want portability. This is why PCs are awesome — because machines like this can exist for the people who want them. If you want a rollable laptop, this one delivers. Is this the right machine for the average laptop buyer? Of course not — the $3,300 price is both impressive for bleeding-edge first-of-its-kind product and above the average laptop buyer’s price range. Even if you do want to spend this much, you’ll have to consider the trade-offs — like less battery life compared to other Lunar Lake systems — and decide what you value. But it’s an awesome machine, and it works as well as I’d hoped. If this is a little too rich for your blood, though, consider a portable monitor. It doesn’t feel like a sci-fi product the way a rollable laptop does and you’ll have to carry two things, but it’s a much less expensive way to have extra screen real estate on the go. Read...

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