This ingenious concept fixes the biggest problem with gaming laptops
A concept laptop by Compal shows a brilliant new design element that fixes a major issue with gaming laptops.
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All high-powered laptops share one problem: cooling. But this fascinating concept from a Taiwanese manufacturer, Compal, demonstrates a unique way of sidestepping that issue.
As spotted by Liliputing, this new concept laptop design takes all the guts of the laptop and builds it into a secondary hinge on the back of the laptop. This gives the screen a floating hinge in the style of the Surface Laptop Studio or an iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard — and, in theory, this also allows for improved cooling without the vents being blocked by the bottom of your laptop.
More than that, it could allow laptop manufacturers to design a really thin-looking chassis. That thickness would be added on top when the laptop is closed, but it could still make for some very sleek designs.
The other major benefit is that all the heat created by the high-performance components stays away from your hands. I’ve seen the advantages of this type of design in a gaming tablet like the Asus ROG Flow Z13. No matter how hot the components get, you won’t ever notice while using it. Warm surface temperatures are a constant problem for powerful gaming laptops in particular, making for an uncomfortable gaming experience.
The Compal design is just a concept, of course, so we don’t really know anything about how this exact laptop would be configured or what the dimensions would be. I’d be curious about, for example, just how thick this secondary hinge would need to be.
We do know that the concept won an iF Design Award, which is impressive in its own right. Compal is a manufacturer that partners with many of the most popular laptop brands such as Dell, Lenovo, and Apple, so maybe we’ll see more designs from these companies inspired by this concept in the future.
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Luke Larsen is the Computing Editor at Digital Trends and manages all content covering laptops, monitors, PC hardware, and everything else that plugs into a computer. Luke joined Digital Trends in 2017 as a native Portlander, happy to join a media company that called his city home. His obsession with technology is in observing the ebb and flow of how technological advancement and design intersects with our day-to-day experience of it. From digging into the minute details to stepping back and seeing the wider trends, Luke revels in telling stories with tech.
Before working at DT, he worked as Tech Editor at Paste Magazine for over four years and has bylines at publications such as IGN and The Oregonian. When he's not obsessing over what the best laptop is or how Apple can fix the Mac, Luke spends his time playing designer board games, quoting obscure Star Wars lines, grilling chicken wings, and endlessly tinkering with his pedal board.
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