TCL, a pioneer in display across feature-rich smartphones, tablets, and connected devices, is elevating digital experiences to unprecedented levels at CES this year. Building on its comprehensive product ecosystem, TCL unveils the new NXTPAPER 4.0 display technology, the TCL NXTPAPER 11 Plus tablet, and the TCL 60 XE NXTPAPER 5G smartphone, marking significant advancements in enhancing visual clarity and comfort. TCL continues to 'Inspire Greatness' in daily life with the launch of its latest smart connectivity products, along with a strategic partnership with Microsoft to leverage advanced AI in TCL devices, reinforcing the commitment to providing users with innovative and accessible digital solutions.

The Future of Display Technology with TCL NXTPAPER 4.0
Driven by a mission to make technology more human, TCL's pioneering NXTPAPER technology addresses everyday visual comfort challenges as screen usage continues to increase globally. With an unwavering dedication and a strong sense of purpose, TCL has been on a remarkable journey to transform the way we interact with technology.

E-Ink aficionados have been on the rise in recent years, and for good reason. E-Ink displays, despite their undeniable downsides, are excellent for note-taking and reading without having to worry about eye-strain. The 13.3-inch BOOX Note Max is an excellent option for its targeted demographic, and is now available for purchase worldwide for a relatively affordable price of $649.

The Note Max sports Android support, specifically Android 13. Needless to say, this means that a plethora of apps and functionality can be installed separately. The 13.3-inch capacitive touch display with 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity sports a resolution for 3200 x 2400, amounting to a commendable PPI value of 300. An octa-core 2.8 GHz CPU takes care of all the computing needs, paired with 6 GB of memory. Of course, the Note Max is not meant to be a powerhouse, but decent performance is always welcome.

Flexible OLED tech has come a long way and started sharking up the smartphone and tablet market, but Lenovo now apparently wants to use rolling OLED displays to increase screen real-estate on its laptops without actually making them much bigger. According to notorious leaker, Evan Blass, in a post on X, Lenovo will launch the sixth-generation of its ThinkBook Plus line-up with a rollable OLED display that can extend upwards to give it significantly more screen real-estate. Blass claims that the new ThinkBook Plus will launch at CES 2025, which is slated to take place between January 7 and January 10, 2025.

Looking at the renders that were shared alongside the leaks, and based on the size of the keyboard, the new ThinkBook will have a tall—it looks like 3:4 aspect ratio—screen that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 inches before the screen is fully unrolled. After unrolling, though, it appears to be able to fit two 16:9 windows on top of each other. Previous iterations of the ThinkBook Plus 17 had a small secondary display on the keyboard deck to the right of the keyboard, and the ThinkBook Plus 13 models consisted of the Gen 5 hybrid model with a detachable display and the Gen 4 variant, which had a 360° hinge and a color e-ink display on the back of the main OLED. While these designs all made compromises, whether in the suboptimal ergonomics of the mini screen of the 17 or the fact that you could only use one display at a time on the e-ink version. Previous ThinkBook versions were also compatible with an MPP stylus for handwriting, note-taking, and even image editing or sketching. It's unclear if the new ThinkBook Plus will be compatible with pen input, but there do not seem to be any images online showing the leaked laptop with a stylus in the same image.

The VU1 was inspired by a hobbyist project called CAPS which used analogue dials to show network, RAM, CPU and GPU activity. The dials were incorporated into a Streacom DB4 which is what caught our attention and led us to reach out to Saša Karanović who developed the firmware, hardware and software for it. Needless to say, we shared a lot of common ideas and passion, all of which laid the foundation for this collaboration. Much like the original project, the initial concept was to use off-the-shelf gauge dials to display typical PC hardware information, but the question soon arose, what if someone wanted to show different information? How could we make it easier for people to customise what each dial was labelled?

The breakthrough happened with the idea of using an e-ink display to serve as the dial face. This transformed the singularly assigned display into a highly versatile one, capable of representing virtually any numeric information from any source via this retro analogue gauge format. Having this dynamic dial face also meant it was important for it to be an open platform with support for 3rd party applications, enabling it to be used in scenarios that are beyond our limited imagination. The VU1 was born, its name a reference to the standard "VU - Volume Unit" labelling on audio gauges and a phonetic play on the word "view" as it will be used to view real-time data.