Concept PCs are a lot like concept cars. The idea comes from a decent enough place, but mostly they exist to make you feel bad and inadequate about your current dumb device. It’s a metaphor for life, really.
In that spirit, here are a trio of concept PCs that Dell debuted this week at CES. Honestly, none are too far-fetched. One looks an awful lot like an existing product, and the other two are pretty reminiscent of recently announced products from competitors. Any of the three could seemingly have been announced as actual retail devices, but life is an endless stream of increasing disappointment culminating in your inevitable, inescapable demise.
First up is the Alienware-branded UFO. Remember a paragraph ago when I told you that one of the products looked like an existing one? Well, this is that. It’s Alienware’s take on the Nintendo Switch (or any gaming portable, to be honest). Though one assumes that, were it ever to actually come to market, it would feature much beefier specs. One assumes.
Like the Switch, the gaming portable features detachable controllers (sound familiar?) and a kickstand, so you can, say, play it on an airplane tray table (wipe it down first, though; those things are the germiest part of the plane). There’s a 10th-gen Intel chip inside this hypothetical product, powering an eight-inch, 1900×1200 display.
Concept Duet, meanwhile, is the sort of idea a number of PC manufacturers have been flirting with for a while. It’s a standard laptop form factor, only with a 13.4-inch display on either side. The benefits of such a form factor are pretty clear, and like the Lenovo, there appears to be a slip-on keyboard, so you don’t have to type on a touchscreen. The Concept Ori is in line with the actual ThinkPad X1 Fold announced earlier today by Lenovo. It’s a 13-inch screen that folds in for a significantly more portable form factor.
“I’m excited about our new approach this year at CES, and we hope you enjoy this glimpse into our labs,” CTO Glen Robson says in a blog post. “This is only a small fraction of the ideas, experiences, hardware and software our teams are constantly developing. Who knows, if response is positive, you may see more of our early work in the future.”
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