I was one of the first to test Lenovo’s new Legion Pro Rollable laptop — I’m as impressed as I am skeptical

I’m here in Las Vegas for the Lenovo Tech World event and CES 2026, and Lenovo has some exciting new developments to share. One of the most interesting, by far, is the Lenovo Legion Pro Rollable: a 16-inch laptop that expands to 23.8 inches of screen space at the click of a button.

This isn’t the first time Lenovo has unveiled a rollable laptop proof of concept – that was back at CES 2025 with the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable – but this is Lenovo’s first horizontally-rolling display, and the first time it’s been tested on a gaming laptop.

OLED display. It expands from 16 inches, dubbed “Focus Mode” (16:10) to 21.5 inches, “Tactical Mode” (21:9) with a simple keyboard shortcut, and once again to 23.8 inches, “Arena Mode” (24:9) at max expansion.

It has some pretty impressive specs, like a 240Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time. Lenovo didn’t have any games loaded up on the Legion Pro Rollable, but I was able to test the screen expansion and retraction, use the keyboard and trackpad, and imagine what it would be like to game on this first-of-its-kind laptop.

At it’s 16-inch minimum screen size, it’s a sleek Legion laptop with Lenovo’s usual high level of polish. When at full expansion, it looks like a computer you’d see in a Sci-Fi movie’s spaceship, with fascinating proportions and ultra thin bezels.

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It was also wildly impressive that the screen doesn’t need any time to ‘think’ about the expansion – no flashes to black, no ‘expansion in progress’ overlay – you just click a button and it grows in size without skipping a beat.

A Lenovo rep mentioned that you can close the lid while the screen is fully expanded, though it may not be a great idea for the display’s durability.

Rollable screen aside, it’s an imposing high-tier gaming laptop with a punchy full-size RGB keyboard, a smooth, large trackpad, and a solid port selection. It also features an RGB lightbar along the bottom edge of the backside.

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(Image credit: Future)

Internally, the Legion Pro Rollable comes equipped flagship-level hardware, including up to an Nvidia RTX 5090 mobile GPU and an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor.

Will this laptop ever make it to production?

Lenovo positions the Legion Pro Rollable as a solution for esports competitors who travel often and need to train on large displays, similar to those they’d use in tournaments.

The concept make sense, and I see the benefits of traveling with a 16-inch gaming laptop rather than trying to bend space and time to fit a 24-inch monitor in your backpack.

But I’m not sure this is a problem that needs to be solved.

Many major esports organizations provide equipment for players to use once they reach their destination, often from sponsorships. Players are seldom expected to bring their own PC and monitor with them to events – though many prefer to take peripherals along like the keyboards and mice they use every day.

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FPS professionals often take setup and viewing angles to the extreme to remain on top of their game, positioning the monitor exactly the same way every time and sitting just inches from the display. One thing to note is that while the screen expands horizontally, you cannot adjust its vertical position (without a laptop stand or the old stack of books trick).

As for casual PC gamers, I doubt this will be the most cost-effective solution on the market.

You’d be better off investing in a quality budget gaming laptop and 24-inch monitor to hook it up to. No, you don’t get the ability to easily travel with that monitor, but you can always use the smaller screen in a pinch.

But of course, the Legion Pro Rollable is a proof of concept. It’s Lenovo pushing the boundaries of what computer enthusiasts call ‘normal,’ challenging the limits of modern computing technology, and coming up with new ideas.

And for that, I love it.

TechRadar will be extensively covering this year’s CES, and will bring you all of the big announcements as they happen. Head over to our CES 2026 news page for the latest stories and our hands-on verdicts on everything from wireless TVs and foldable displays to new phones, laptops, smart home gadgets, and the latest in AI.