With Concept Duet and Ori, Dell brings dual-screen, foldable experience to laptops
Debuting at CES 2020, these laptop prototypes show what's possible with current screen technologies.
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Last year we got our first look at dual- and folding-display devices from Intel, Microsoft and others. Now Dell's unveiled its entries at CES 2020, the Concept Duet and Concept Ori. The Duet, which is similar to Microsoft's Surface Neo, is expected at the end of the year. It's all about giving you more screen real estate on the go, because it's essentially like having two monitors you can fold up and put in your bag to take anywhere.
For content creators, for example, the design means you can use it vertically to review images on one screen while working on the other, or have one panel just for your tools. Or you can do things like build a plan for a vacation on one display while collecting your details on the other. It's also a great way to read a book or magazine.
Flip it to use horizontally and you can run a video chat on the top screen while taking notes on the bottom. And if you want a keyboard experience, there's a detachable one that you can just drop on the lower display.
With the keyboard placed at the bottom, you can have a continuous screen running from above the keyboard to the top display, or slide the keyboard up, and up pops an onscreen touchpad to give you a more traditional laptop layout. Adding the physical keyboard definitely puts it a notch above past dual-screen devices we've seen that used an onscreen keyboard.
The Ori, meanwhile, is a large, folding tablet not unlike Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 prototype it first showed in mid-2019 and is now known as the ThinkPad X1 Fold, also announced at CES. The idea is you've got a full pen-enabled tablet PC that you can draw or write on, but which can also be used with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse if you want. You can also fold it 90 degrees and use one half as an onscreen keyboard and the rest as your display.
Again, these are just concepts that Dell is currently working on, so there's no specs or pricing, but it looks like 2020 might be the year of doing more with displays.
