Intel still dreams of modular PCs — it brought a tablet laptop gaming handheld to CES

While I was there, I also spotted a dense metallic handheld connected a array that didn’t look fully... attached to its screen. When I lifted the screen, it came distant easily.

It felt suspiciously ray to beryllium a rea tablet, truthful I flipped it complete and saw 3 connectors underneath:

Above it, connected a shelf, was a laptop pinch a suspiciously sized chunk of integrative connected the bottommost that looked for illustration a cleanable match. A infinitesimal later, Intel gaming evangelist Colin Helms confirmed I was looking astatine a prototype modular PC.

That module contains a complete Intel Lunar Lake computer, the full courage of a PC. It’s fundamentally a reboot of Intel’s abandoned Compute Card idea, isolated from it's not each Intel’s doing and you shouldn't ever expect it to ship.

It’s a conception from Quanta, a institution whose sanction you don’t typically spot connected the laptops and tablets they create, because Quanta is an ODM (like Compal, Pegatron, Wistron, and Apple’s amended known iPhone supplier Foxconn) that designs and manufactures hardware connected behalf of marque names.

Quanta’s calling the full modular strategy the “AI8A,” and the aforementioned module astatine its bosom is the “Detachable AI Core.” Helms told maine it plugs into different conception computers arsenic well, including an all-in-one desktop that Intel didn’t person to show off. And presumably, for illustration the Compute Card idea, you could upgrade your machine conscionable by putting a caller new module into it.

The modular laptop has tons of concept-y bells and whistles too, truthful galore that Intel’s CES unit hadn’t moreover worked them each retired yet.

For starts, the laptop has a motorized hinge, truthful you tin tell it to unfastened and adjacent its ain lid; it besides claims to connection eye-tracking that lets you sling astir multitasking windows conscionable by looking astatine wherever you’d for illustration them to be. It apparently comes pinch a rodent integrated into a ringing that you could wear.

The astir mundane: a built-in Qi wireless charging pad successful the palmrest, pinch parameter lights to show your battery’s remaining capacity.

I couldn’t effort immoderate of it working, unfortunately, nor did I negociate to inquire what “AI8A” means, because I mistakenly thought it said Aiba until I checked my photos intimately conscionable now. Nor could we hotswap the module betwixt the handheld and laptop, since the module apparently doesn't person a artillery inside.

Photos by Sean Hollister / The Verge