Notebooks evolve at IFA

One of the themes at last week’s IFA was innovative thinking when it came to notebook design.

Yoga C930

Yoga C930 performs the neat trick of installing a Dolby Atmos speaker in the 360-degree hinge, which turns it into a mini soundbar for a laptop. It’s a good idea, especially considering the unit’s ability to be used as a conventional laptop or have the screen turn into a tablet: while the two conventional speakers at the bottom of the unit may be pointed at you, the “sound bar” will always be facing your waiting ears.

Elsewhere, it was all about bezels, or to be more precise, the lack of them, with screens getting closer to the edge than ever before. On the one hand, this is allowing more screens for the same form factor, Acer’s Swift 5, for example, manages to squeeze a 15.6-inch screen into what was a 14-inch body; on the other hand, it’s allowing genuinely smaller models. Asus’ ZenBook 13, ZenBook 14 and ZenBook 15 looked significantly smaller than ever, and the company said the ZenBook’s display took up 95% of the screen thanks, in part, to a new ErgoLift hinge design.

In fact, while the hinge and the various connectors will probably always fit on the bottom of the screen, at least to some extent, the only real problem will be what to do with the webcam which is normally located at the top.

Predator Triton 900

Finally, it wouldn’t be IFA without Acer also showing off some kind of muscular gaming machine. This year it was the Predator Triton 900, which followed the 2-in-1 trend with a 4K touchscreen on an engineered rotating hinge. In order to get the screen as close to the user as possible, the touchpad has been moved to the right side, where it sits with a switchable and tidy numeric power pad underneath.