We’re still waiting for the laptop’s big year

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The month of laptop releases has come to an end. It was the Computex that wasn't.

It was an exciting time to be a laptop reporter. Big ideas were announced by the companies and their mothers. There were a lot of wacky products from monitors to phones. The 17-inch foldable screen was shown off by the company that provided the 13.3-inch panel for the X1 Fold. We saw many different types of electronics. Performance gains were promised by the chipmakers. We were told that they were on their way.

The largest laptop show of the year took place at the end of May. Since many global attendees couldn't get to Taiwan, most companies just did their own thing and dumped their releases, but that's a different story. Please don't text me because I'm still recovering from this month's announcements. This would have been a great time to release some of these innovative releases. A release date is available.

We weren't able to get them at the event. The show was dull and uninteresting. We have a lot of chips. Some displays have higher refresh rates. The HP x360 is a rounder corner. I am very excited about the corners, but I may be the only person in this boat.

Incremental improvements to internal and external elements are important. They will change people's lives. Every single laptop they release does not need to be re-invented. A number of devices that seem poised to expand or re-define their categories are not currently available for sale.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Some highly anticipated products have yet to make it to my desk.

• Asus’s Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, originally announced at CES for Q2 of 2022. There are 25 days left of Q2 as of this writing, and we don’t even have a confirmed price yet. This is one of multiple rumored 17-inch foldable laptops that we’ve expected this year — Samsung also showed one off at CES, and HP is rumored to have one in the works. We didn’t see either at Computex.
• The XPS 13 2-in-1, one of the most significant models in the convertible space. Okay, so this one hasn’t actually been announced yet, but it’s leaked — and according to the leaks, Dell is likely switching this product away from the traditional 2-in-1 form factor and into a Surface Pro-like device. No mention of that in May.
• The non-enterprise version of the HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook, the single device that Verge staff have been most excited about this year. It’s poised to be the first Chromebook to include a haptic trackpad and Intel vPro, among other impressive new features. This was supposed to ship up in April when it was announced at CES. In early May, we got an update — it’s now coming “this summer”, but not currently in stock.
• Speaking of HP, the also-exciting Dragonfly G3, which finally brings the 3:2 display to the high-end business line and which we saw a prototype of in January, was originally expected in March. Looking at HP’s website, it looks like it’s now not shipping until July.
• Lenovo’s ThinkBook Plus Gen 3, the 2022 release that I’ve been most personally excited about. It’s a 17-inch dual-screen device. While dual-screen devices that put the keyboard in the front of the deck can still be quite good, their positioing doesn’t work for everyone. The ThinkBook Plus puts the screen on the side, keeping the keyboard at its usual position (albeit a bit far to the left) and keeps the touchpad a usable size, an arrangement that could be more practical for many folks. It was legitimately very cool to use in Lenovo’s CES demo area, and could potentially be a useful imagining of the dual-screen form factor. This was supposed to ship in May, but is still “coming soon” according to Lenovo’s website.
• There’s also no sign yet of the ThinkPad Z-series, a funky new ThinkPad line that targets Gen Z, includes a haptic touchpad and a vegan leather cover, and is potentially a new vision for who a business laptop can benefit. This was supposed to ship in May, but no dice so far. (The website, as of this writing, still says “Coming Spring 2022”.
• RDNA 3, AMD’s next generation of Radeon GPUs that are rumored to bring bonkers performance improvements. The refreshes AMD did show off were still a big announcement, but the stated single-thread gains were underwhelming in comparison.

There are some good news. The ROG Flow Z13 is one of the most anticipated devices of the year and was released on time. Companies don't always follow plans all the time. I checked my impression with Stephen Kleynhans, and it appears that the delays in PC shipments are having an impact on releases. The PC space is not the only one where industries are being held up.

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

Kleynhans believes that a lot of the delays are due to supply chain issues and that the current COVID situation in China is one of the reasons. Kleynhans told me that until China opens back up, which seems to be what we are seeing now, and it can catch up from the backups that have been created, we are going to continue to see disruptions. He thinks the availability of PCs could be disrupted by the end of the year.

Kleynhans thinks that companies are having trouble getting current-gen units into their hands because of last-gen orders. Kleynhans told me that if you have a customer who placed an order for 1,000 machines and haven't received them, you don't want to release this year's model. Many of Apple's most recent MacBook Pros are showing ship dates of late July or later. Apple is rumored to have a new MacBook Air in the works, and it will be interesting to see if the company can stick to its usual near-term availability schedule.

The PC market is not the worst hit in supply chain delays. If 17-inch foldable PCs take longer than expected to arrive, the world will turn. There are laptop delays, but they are not the most important consequences of the Pandemic.

This situation should serve as a reminder that the PC space has a lot of moving parts. It took a lot of things to get the laptop you are typing on and the laptop I am typing on to us. In the early part of the year, there are a lot of 2X performance gains. The real world is boring and complicated, and even the cool innovations need all the stars to align.