The coolest laptops we saw at CES 2026

CES is always full of new laptop announcements, serving as a barometer for upcoming releases for the year. The proofs of concept at the show show what could happen even further in the future. 2026 will soon bring us new chipset options from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. While I’m excited to see how the latest racehorse will turn out, some of the new designs and form factors on display at the show are easily more convincing.

There were countless new models on display from Asus, Lenovo, Dell, MSI, Acer and HP. Here’s my short list of everything I’m looking forward to testing — or hoping will even be there He is An opportunity for future testing.

I love OLED displays and enjoy a good gaming laptop. The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo is a gaming laptop based on the excellent Zephyrus G16, but with two Full size OLED screens. Sign me up.

The original Zephyrus Duo was a strange experience for a laptop with two displays. The bottom screen used to be a decent-sized bar at the bottom, but now for 2026, the second screen is the entire bottom half of the laptop as it should have always been. Asus essentially took the dual-screen design it established two years ago with the productivity-focused Zenbook Duo and translated it into the Zephyrus gaming laptop. You’ll make trade-offs, as the new Zephyrus Duo will likely cost more than the standard Zephyrus G16 while not being as powerful, but in return you get two 16-inch OLED displays with a 120Hz refresh rate for a multi-screen setup you can take on the go.

The 2026 Zephyrus Duo looks very promising as a compact gaming laptop and easy-to-use multi-monitor workstation. There’s really nothing else like it. Now let’s realize that this unique laptop doesn’t get a uniquely high price tag to match.

Lenovo Legion Pro rotatable concept

I was immediately a fan of foldable laptops when I saw Lenovo’s concept become a reality at CES last year, and it proved useful once I reviewed it. But I, and I bet a lot of you, have wondered if a laptop screen stretched horizontally might be better. Lenovo’s Legion Pro Rollable concept proves there’s something to that, as I couldn’t help but smile when I saw this gaming laptop expand from 16 inches to an ultra-wide 24 inches before my eyes.

This concept was still rough around the edges, with noisy drivers that occasionally stuttered, a resolution that didn’t adjust to the changing screen size, and a large panel gap in the lid. But if all that comes down, and I expect it will if it comes out, this could be the perfect gaming laptop. You get the immersive multitasking benefits of an ultra-wide screen on demand, and you can put it away and take it with you. It’s unlike anything else, and I’m really rooting for it to get past the proof-of-concept stage. I want another moment like last year where we can say, “And you can own this if you want to.” I still shudder to think how much it would have cost.

I wasn’t fond of touch trackpads and their simulated clicks when Apple started putting them in MacBooks about 10 years ago, but at some point I got to know them and the ability to tap anywhere on their surface from corner to corner. Now, Acer’s new Swift 16 AI has the largest haptic trackpad, complete with stylus support, and it’s instantly one of Acer’s more interesting offerings at CES because of it.

We don’t know how much the Acer Swift 16 AI will cost (an unfortunate trend for some laptop companies at CES 2026), but I’m interested to see where this model in particular lands. This ballpark with a touch trackpad, combined with a wide range of ports (which Swifts are typically known for) and an OLED display, has a lot of potential if the price is right.

I’m very relieved that Dell bowed to the pressures of last year and revived the XPS line. I don’t want to give too much credit, as I found several bugs in the last XPS model I tested. But things are really looking promising for the new XPS 14 and 16 (they even have cool new lid logos). The row of physical functions is back, the smooth tactile trackpad now has some nice engraved lines to let you know its limits, and these devices have become very underpowered. The thinness makes me a little nervous, as many XPS laptops in the past have struggled with heat, but we’ll have to see when it’s time to test.

The new XPS models also have a unique feature: displays with a variable refresh rate of up to 120Hz and only down to 1Hz. This is the type of technology that has helped phone screens stay extremely smooth while scrolling while saving battery life when viewing static items like a document. This feature will be present in the base XPS 14 and 16 models with low-end IPS displays, as well as more impressive configurations with bright tandem OLED displays. I’m tempering my expectations, especially since there are no discrete GPU options like previous XPS generations, but a lot of this XPS comeback looks good.

Lenovo ThinkPad XD rollable concept

It’s another rotatable Lenovo concept, yes, but a ThinkPad with a rotatable display is a big deal. This is Lenovo’s line of business laptops, and the concept here is not to reinvent the wheel but potentially augment its offerings. The flexible OLED display you see there, which wraps around its own cover, stretches up from a standard 13.3 inches to a very long 15.9 inches.

I agree with the commenters that an externally exposed screen can make a working laptop more fragile, even with something as simple as throwing it in your bag. But the interesting thing here is that Lenovo continues to tinker with how to introduce the rollable form factor. Since the ThinkPad Rollable XD retains the motors and flexible OLED displays in the lid, it may one day be offered as a display configuration for regular ThinkPads. Anything that means rollable form factors can become more popular (and ideally cheaper) sounds good in my book. And that transparent cover that shows the extendable screen mechanisms in action? Chef’s kiss!

It’s clear to you that I love big screens, and at 2.65 pounds, the Asus Zenbook A16 is one of the lightest 16-inchers out there. It also has something else that is near and dear to my heart: a full-size SD card reader. This is a rare find these days in thin and light devices, and it makes the life of a photographer like me much easier.

But there are other compelling factors to the A16 beyond my personal love of card slots: It has a 2,880 x 1,800 OLED display with 120Hz refresh, a solid array of ports, and it can be configured with Qualcomm’s top-end Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip. I imagine these specs would be more expensive, but they might be worth it for someone who needs a large Windows laptop that doesn’t work feel Big – and it should have great battery life and an equally great charge.

MSI has shaken up the looks department this year for its gaming laptops. The new Prestige models look like something you wouldn’t be embarrassed to bring into the office, and they’re really quite stylish overall. The new Stealth 16 Creator/softcore gaming laptop’s improved design also looks great (even if it could just be a little more stealthy). It has some MacBook Pro wannabe vibes, but it offers plenty of ports (including Ethernet). It also comes standard with a 240Hz OLED display, Intel’s new Panther Lake chipset, and Nvidia RTX 50-series GPUs. Last year I tested the absolutely superior MSI Titan, and I’m eager to review something from MSI that’s a little quieter than their typically flashy gaming laptops.

Asus’ TUF line is the most affordable tier of gaming laptop offerings. It’s designed to be as cheap as you can get on an Asus laptop with a discrete Nvidia GPU. But there is a new TUF A14 coming with AMD Strix Halo – yes, Built-in Graphics. It looks very interesting.

Last year’s Asus ROG Flow Z13 proved that integrated graphics can be great. Now in 2026, we will see TUF with integrated graphics in a fairly compact chassis. Ideally, it should be affordable (well, affordable).Nest) A gaming laptop that is also good at other things like battery life. But the Strix Halo isn’t known for being an affordable chipset. Maybe newer versions made by AMD will help, but we have to hope Asus can come up with a price that makes sense for this little guy.

The Eliteboard G1a “keyboard computer” is essentially a headless laptop sandwiched into a humble HP keyboard. I was pretty much ready to write it off as just a weird, fun thing for boring suits and IT people – even if it kind of takes us back to the good old days of the Commodore 64. But I’ll be honest with you guys: it No idea Why did our silly little video about this thing blow up on social media. (Is that my shirt? Tell me it’s my shirt.)

Should I review the Eliteboard once it’s available? Something tells me I’ve already answered my own question as I write this.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto/The Verge