Compal Infinite Laptop built around screen that extends from 14- to 18-inches, horizontally

The Compal Infinite Laptop concept
(Image credit: Compal, iF Design Awards)

Laptop manufacturer Compal Electronics has won an iF Design Award 2025 for a previously unseen design with an extending screen (h/t Liliputing). Unlike the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus we saw in December, and the ThinkBook Codename Flip we saw at MWC earlier in the week, the Compal Infinite Laptop's screen extends horizontally, expanding from a 14- to an 18-inch diagonal.

Purchasing a laptop involves some hard decisions and compromises. However, specs that were once set in stone post-purchase are now easier to sidestep than ever. For example, portable monitors are more common and cheaper than ever, so you can have more screen space in your laptop backpack when you need it. Similarly, if you decide on a thin and light with integrated graphics, there are lots of portable eGPU docks around in 2025.

Using the latest rollable OLED screen technology to give laptop buyers a way to summon more working screen space at their will, is even better than having to pack a second screen, though. Lenovo teased laptops with vertically extending and flipping screens for months before showing off the aforementioned ThinkBook Codename Flip. Now ODM (Original Design Manufacturer) Compal has shown there's another way to use the same technology. What do you prefer? Don't say a diagonally extending screen.

The Lenovo ThinkBook Codename Flip screen can be as compact as 12.8-inches at minimum, and up to 18.1-inches when fully unfurled. Its ThinkBook Plus could extend from a 14- to a 16.7-inch diagonal, according to our last report. The iF Design Award pages say that Compal's Infinite Laptop is 14-inches in diagonal, but it can extend to 18-inches.

Sadly, there aren't a lot of tech details shared by the award pages. In the description, it is claimed the Compal Infinite Laptop balances portability and productivity thanks to its screen expansion capabilities, which sounds fair enough, if your workflow can make good use of very wide aspect ratio screens.

Laptop lid LED alerts

We can see in Compal's images that the screen expands both left and right, keeping the machine nicely balanced when fully extended. Compal boasts that the extension mechanism is 'seamless' and ensures both screen quality and durability, which is good. Last but not least, we can see the laptop lid has two arrays of LEDs, which appear to be configurable to show custom alerts like emails arriving.

We've reported on fascinating Compal concepts emerging previously but, sadly, these things sometimes never get commercialized. This innovation seems genuinely useful, though. If it doesn't add too much weight to a laptop, it would be great if the concept technology was picked up by one of the brands that uses Compal as a manufacturer.

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Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

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  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    What do you prefer?

    Neither. OLED panels don't belong on a display that will show static image elements for perhaps hours on end.
    Reply
  • RedHagar
    Why do you immediately assume a laptop would have static displays? I have never had a static display on a laptop...since they were invented!

    All my displays will be OLED this year.
    Reply
  • JohnyFin
    Stay away from that types of products.
    Reply
  • Heiro78
    RedHagar said:
    Why do you immediately assume a laptop would have static displays? I have never had a static display on a laptop...since they were invented!

    All my displays will be OLED this year.
    So you have your taskbar hidden normally as you do the ribbon in word processors and the like? There's plenty of static images on windows and mac OS. Can't speak to Linux.

    That being said, OLED improvements for burn in have been great and I doubt it's such a problem anymore. There's a youtuber with a video of a Nintendo Switch OLED having been on for about a year that had bad burn in but only after the extreme case it was put in. Rtings is doing a long term test of a bunch of TVs and at the last update, the OLEDs weren't doing so bad.
    Reply
  • Heiro78
    JohnyFin said:
    Stay away from that types of products.
    I would stay away from an unknown company but what else is keeping you away from this product exactly?
    Reply
  • BFG-9000
    Heiro78 said:
    I would stay away from an unknown company
    The second largest laptop manufacturer in the world is an unknown company? They are OEM for laptops from Lenovo, Acer, Dell, Fujitsu, HP and Toshiba, plus the Apple Watch. The only larger manufacturer is Quanta Computer who make Macbooks.
    Reply
  • th2102
    This company is a very famous OEM. Many major brand laptops such as HP, Dell, etc. are made by it
    Reply
  • Notton
    If you look at long term OLED TV and monitor burn-in tests/reviews, the burn-in problem is all but gone.
    The main issue for OLED is shimmering when combined with variable refresh rate.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    RedHagar said:
    Why do you immediately assume a laptop would have static displays? I have never had a static display on a laptop...since they were invented!

    All my displays will be OLED this year.
    Really? Every computer I've used in the Windows era has had static elements everywhere, from taskbars to title bars to backgrounds to games with static display elements.

    If you trust OLED then go ahead and use it, but considering they won't warranty it for 5 years parts and labor it says to me they don't have faith it will last 5 years. Not even LG will warranty their top end panels for 5 years parts and labor, and those are displays with far fewer static elements than a computer display, so how am I to trust something that will be used for potentially 50-100 hours per week with far more static elements?
    Reply
  • carlinlemon
    I'm wild about this idea. It still needs to work with a stylus for me, and unfortunately a 2 in 1 design wouldn't work so well with this design, but even if it just had a 180 degree hinge, I would gobble this up.

    Sign me up.
    Reply