Wildest Laptops at CES 2026 - Rollables, Redesigns, and Biggest Surprises! - video Dailymotion

Tom's Guide

‪@PaulAntill‬ breaks down the coolest, wackiest, and genuinely exciting laptops that just got announced at CES 2026.  From rollable displays like the Lenovo ThinkPad Rollable XD Concept and the Lenovo Legion Pro Rollable that literally expand your workspace on demand, to refreshed, stealthy gaming laptops that actually make sense as everyday work machines, like the MSI Stealth 16 AI+. And yes, Dell finally did it. The XPS line feels like it’s back to its roots and fixes a lot of what didn’t land last year.  CES 2026 turned out to be a surprisingly strong year for laptop redesigns. We’re seeing real experimentation again, not just spec bumps, and it feels like a preview of the form factors we could realistically be using over the next few years. These are the laptops we had the most fun testing on the show floor, but let us know what stood out to you from this year’s announcements.

Transcript

00:00A ton of new laptops got announced at CES 2026, and I'm sharing the coolest, wackiest, and most

00:04exciting models that my team and I got to try out. All right, first up, Lenovo is giving us

00:09a better look into what a real production rollable laptop could look like. The ThinkPad

00:14Rollable XZ Concept transforms from 13.3 inches to 16 inches vertically and actually rolls up

00:19and over to the top of the display to its back side. You activate the rolling just by sliding

00:23your finger on the top edge of the display, which feels very satisfying. There's also an

00:28external touchscreen, world-facing, which may seem a little bit weird at first, that covers

00:32the top third of the lid from the outside. It comes complete with interactive widgets for

00:36your AI assistant, sticky notes, weather, and a lot more. One of my favorite parts of this

00:41new design, though, is that when fully extended out, you can actually see the internals of

00:45the laptop hinge, including the cables that make this magic happen. I think if you're

00:49someone who works with a lot of large documents, this extra screen real estate can be really

00:53useful, and personally, I think I would use this all the time for two apps stacked on top

00:56of each other. This is a pretty cool concept, and Lenovo says we're actually not that far

01:00off from being able to configure a ThinkPad with this rollable option sometime in the future.

01:04My bet is on two years or less from this being a reality, but let me know what you guys think.

01:09The new Stealth 16 AI Plus is the stealthiest stealth series gaming laptop MSI has ever made,

01:16and MSI pretty much pioneered the whole gaming laptop performance without actually looking out

01:23of place in a boardroom or office setting, and there's a lot of great design upgrades that they've

01:28made, so let me take you through those. So MSI has definitely gone minimalist here, especially on the

01:33back lid, and when you open this up, you tell me, what does this remind you of, right? Kind of like a

01:38MacBook, and that's not a bad thing. You have the large trackpad, you've got your large speakers on the

01:44side here, very small bezels at the top, a very premium gaming laptop, and that's what I'm saying.

01:49You're getting the gaming level performance. With styling, that feels more like a premium high-end

01:55ultrabook. The other thing, it's small, but it actually goes a long way. Come over here,

02:00and check this out. Okay, so the edges are a lot more rounded off, and as soon as I started typing

02:04on this, I noticed that instantly because it's not digging into my racism, so it's a lot more

02:09comfortable, especially for prolonged typing or gaming sessions. Inside, we find up to an Intel Core

02:15Ultra 9 processor with the NVIDIA RTX 5090. Pricing is going to start around $2,400, and I think this

02:22redesign is going to be a big hit in 2026. Don't call it a comeback. Actually, you know what? Maybe

02:29you should, because Dell is giving one of the best apologies to fans of the XPS lineup with the new

02:34Dell XPS 14. Believe it or not, they're actually backtracking on the whole premium name nonsense from

02:40last year, and addressing two of the most controversial design quirks that we hated.

02:45Finally, they brought back a physical function row instead of the touch bar from before that,

02:50along with an improved touchpad that now has a visible border around it, which seems like a

02:54no-brainer to me. Inside, you'll find the latest Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, an amazingly

03:00vibrant tandem OLED display that can scale all the way down to 1 hertz, and a redesigned 70-watt-hour

03:06battery that promises up to 27 hours of juice with its 2K LCD display option. Other positives include

03:12an even thinner and lighter design at just 14.6 millimeters and around three pounds, which is

03:17shaving off about half a pound. Even with that, Dell gives you a 14-inch laptop in the size of a 13-inch

03:23system, making this one of the best Ultrabooks that you can buy in 2026. But if you're after raw

03:30performance, the new Alienware 16 Area 51 brings a number of minor upgrades, but they really do add

03:36up. It finally has an OLED panel, which looks stunning, along with lower input lag, which went

03:41from 3 milliseconds down to 0.2. Even though its design remains mostly unchanged, this is still one

03:47of the most unique-looking gaming laptops that we've ever tested. It features tons of ports and should

03:52deliver really strong gaming performance since it will pack up to an RTX 5090 laptop GPU. Pricing is

03:58expected to be announced closer to launch, which should be Q1 of this year. Now, if I had to pick

04:03one laptop that actually blew me away from this year's show, it's got to be the Lenovo Legion Pro

04:08Rollable Concept. It looks like your typical thick-boy gaming laptop at first with a 240-hertz 16-inch

04:14OLED display, but with a click of a button, it extends its display horizontally up to 24 inches with a 24-by-9

04:22aspect ratio or, if you want, a slightly narrower 21-by-9. But I'm definitely going to be maxing that baby out

04:29every single time. I didn't get to demo any gameplay here, but this would definitely be a big step up for

04:35playing your immersive and cinematic titles on the go without needing to bring an external monitor. And besides

04:41gaming, this should also be a beast for productivity and multitasking, letting you run two programs or even three

04:46side-by-side with plenty of screen real estate. And can you imagine bringing this thing to a Starbucks,

04:51unrolling it, and watching the person next to you's jaw drop in confusion? Like, what is this black magic?

04:57Unsurprisingly, this is still a concept, and pricing and availability hasn't been announced yet, but this

05:01is a laptop that's looking to shake things up, and I can't wait to test it more. So CES has been a pretty

05:08exciting year for laptop redesigns and is giving us a glimpse into some of the form factors that we could

05:13see over the next few years. Personally, if I'm getting a new laptop this year, I'd probably want

05:17a specced out MSI Stealth 60 for its balance of performance and inconspicuous styling. But man,

05:22if Lenovo can actually deliver on that Legion Pro rollable and make it thinner and not actually

05:27cost an arm and a leg, that would be insane. But let me know what you guys think about these new

05:32laptops. You can find us everywhere at Tom's Guide, and you can follow me to see what other cool and

05:36wacky tech I'm reviewing. And until the next one, I'll catch you later.

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Wildest Laptops at CES 2026 - Rollables, Redesigns, and Biggest Surprises!

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