Lenovo’s concept laptop can unfold itself and turn to face you

Lenovo is back with another twisting laptop, and this time, it can twist itself. Today at IFA, the company showed off its Auto Twist AI PC concept, which has a motorized hinge. It can track your movements and rotate its display to face you as you walk around it and can transform itself into different modes in response to voice commands. The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy got a hands-on — well, hands-off — demonstration.

The Twist AI is a motorized take on the twistable form factor, which dates back more than 20 years. Most 2-in-1 laptops today have 360-degree hinges that let them fold backward into tablet mode with the keyboard facing outward on the bottom. But earlier convertible laptops rotated on a center hinge and then folded over the keyboard. HP and Acer were making them at least as far back as 2002. When HP and Lenovo briefly revived the form factor in 2012, we called them “traditional convertible tablets.” Lenovo did it again in 2023 with an OLED display on one side and an E Ink screen on the other. (That one sounded great, but it didn’t live up to its potential when I reviewed it.)

The concept unit responded to voice commands within a second or two, but the motors are slow, taking about 10 seconds to transform. The follow-me feature is more useful, especially during video calls.

But what problem does this solve, exactly? Lenovo communication director Jeff Witt told The Verge, “We’re still experimenting with that. A lot of these concepts don’t come to market, but you may see elements of them down the line. It’s got face tracking; it’s basically a video conferencing system built into a laptop. There’s a lot of accessibility potential.”

If the Auto Twist AI, or something like it, does come to market, it could be practical for people who might have difficulty manually transforming this kind of convertible laptop themselves. Also, commanding your laptop to switch between modes on its own is just cool.