We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. The unveiling of the Microsoft Surface Neo on Wednesday, a dual-screen laptop, brings the total number of major companies working on prototypes with foldable or dual displays to three. In addition to Microsoft, Lenovo and Dell have also confirmed their own research and development of foldable or dual-screen concepts. And Intel has shown several twin-screen prototypes this year, notably at Computex 2019, to spur development and creative thinking around twin-screen machines. Earnest efforts from these tech titans suggests that these devices, and similar ones, will in fact make it to market, probably in the next year or so. But not all of them are created equal. Concept designs like the Surface Neo, with a 360-degree hinge and two separate but adjacent displays, seem to have a more secure future than those with a single screen that itself bends, folding over a 180-degree hinge, like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 concept. The fraught launch of foldable smartphones using the latter approach, such as the drama-beset Samsung Galaxy Fold and the infinitely delayed Huawei Mate X, have us wondering: Do we actually want a PC that's essentially just a screen? At this early stage, we think the answer is a cautious "Yes." But we have an assortment of caveats around that answer. Some features will be essential, notably long battery life and high-quality displays. Others will be nice but appeal only to some users, like LTE connectivity for corporate road warriors, or digital pens for artists. And we can foresee many pitfalls to avoid. No one wants to type for very long on a virtual keyboard, nor should they have to kid-gloves their device and attend orientation workshops, as Samsung has asked of Galaxy Fold customers. One thing that's clear? The Microsoft Surface Neo and Lenovo's foldable ThinkPad prototype are unlike any other dual-screen devices currently on the market. They seek to take this product category mainstream, which is far more ambitious than carving out a niche for E Ink fans as the twin-screen Lenovo Yoga Book does, or serving as a hulking Intel Core i9-powered dual-screen clamshell laptop for digital artists, like the Asus ZenBook Pro Duo. Figure Out the Keyboard First For a twin-screen or foldable machine to be something the average user will be able to rely on as his or her main laptop, the first step is to figure out how typing will work. Every serious laptop needs a good keyboard. It doesn't matter whether you're a spreadsheet jockey, a novelist, or just someone who writes a lot of emails—the keyboard is one of the main reasons you're reaching for your laptop instead of your phone. If you fill the entire surface area of a laptop's interior with displays, though, how will typing work? Both Lenovo and Microsoft think the answer is a detachable keyboard, similar to (but much more compact than) the existing Surface Type Cover or Apple Smart Keyboard. In the Surface Neo design, the keyboard can attach magnetically to the bottom of the device when not in use. You can then place it over part of one of the screens when you're ready to type, and the new Windows 10X operating system will detect it automatically and shift everything that's covered by the keyboard on that screen away from it. Or, in a pinch, you can use a virtual, onscreen keyboard. Lenovo's ThinkPad prototype includes a similar detachable keyboard, but the company is mum on the specifics of how it will attach to the device when not in use. One possibility is a sort of "sandwich mode," where the keyboard lies in between the two halves of the device when it's folded and not in use, secured by magnets. When you're ready to open it, set the keyboard aside if you want to watch a movie, or attach it to the bottom screen the same way you would with the Surface Neo when you're ready to type. Dell, on the other hand, disagrees that physical keyboards will always be necessary. It's operating under the assumption that people will eventually shift to onscreen keyboards in the future or rely on voice activation or pens. Include a Brilliant Display, Or Two The question of whether to include one or two screens will define the laptop of the future. With the Surface Neo, Microsoft is firmly in the dual-screen camp. Redmond's prototype has a clearly dividing hinge like the Yoga Book does, with two displays, one on either side of it. There are two clear advantages to such a setup. First, the hinge can rotate 360 degrees, essentially halving the surface area of the device and making it easier to hold with one hand when the situation calls for it. Second, the Surface Neo can use existing display technology, such as two smaller versions of the high-quality PixelSense displays already available on the rest of the Surface lineup. Lenovo is taking a far riskier approach with its ThinkPad prototype, which uses a single foldable screen that flexes down the middle. This is along the lines of the Galaxy Fold, whose launch was delayed after the screens in early units proved exceptionally prone to damage. Not only will Lenovo have to overcome this potential reliability issue (and users' trepidations), but it will also have to improve the off-angle viewing quality. When I saw the ThinkPad prototype, its display took on a bluish tint when viewed at an angle, hardly something you'd tolerate in a premium laptop. (Granted, this was very much an early prototype.) Dell, meanwhile, is working on several different dual-screen and foldable prototype options, a few of which the company's product managers and engineers showed off to journalists earlier this year, but the company isn't sharing any details about which type it plans to introduce first. Use an Efficient, No-Compromises CPU Every laptop needs a processor to power it, but finding the right balance of power, battery life, and heat generation is always difficult. You'll find Intel chips in most Windows laptops and tablets, but the company has recently struggled to bring super-efficient mobile CPUs to market, with the launch of its latest 10th Generation "Ice Lake" processors delayed by more than a year. In the meantime, Apple's chip business has improved at a breakneck pace, with the company claiming that its latest A12X Bionic chip lets the iPad Pro outperform 92 percent of all portable PCs sold in 2017 and 2018. Apple seems unlikely to let other manufacturers use its chips in their devices anytime soon, and AMD is focusing much of its effort on the high-performance desktop-PC chip market. So the most likely candidates for a CPU to power foldable PCs would be Intel and Qualcomm. For the Surface Neo, Microsoft plans to use an Intel chip still under development, under the family code-name "Lakefield." Its benefits include a hybrid architecture that fits both the CPU and the graphics processing cores onto a single 12mm-square package. With some cores optimized for peak performance and some optimized for power efficiency, the Lakefield chip, theoretically, should be able to offer both battery life and on-demand performance. A perfect mixture of both is critical to the foldable PC's success, especially since the rigid-screen iPad Pro has already largely achieved it. If you can combine the performance and efficiency of an Apple tablet with the flexibility of a Windows-powered dual-screen or foldable design, you just might have the holy grail of mobile computing on your hands. We don't have all that long to wait to find out if that comes to pass. Both Microsoft and Lenovo are planning on launching their designs next year. Here's to hoping that they figure out everything on our wish list before then.

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