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 seem... afloat attached... to its screen. When I lifted the screen, it came distant easily.

It felt suspiciously airy to beryllium a existent tablet, truthful I flipped it implicit and saw 3 connectors underneath:

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

That module contains a implicit Intel Lunar Lake computer, the full guts you'd request to marque 1 enactment extracurricular of peripherals and screen. It’s fundamentally a reboot of Intel’s abandoned Compute Card idea, but it's not each Intel’s doing and you astir apt 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, due to the fact that 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 amusement off. And presumably, similar 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 adjacent 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 similar them to be. It seemingly comes with a rodent integrated into a ringing that you could wear.

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

I couldn’t effort immoderate of it working, unfortunately, nor did I negociate to inquire what “AI8A” means, due to the fact that 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 seemingly doesn't person a artillery inside.

Photos by Sean Hollister / The Verge