For all the talk of artificial intelligence over at Computex 2024, I find myself more drawn to a new laptop lid on display over at Asus HQ. It’s a simple concept done well: a colour e-ink screen integrated into the rear of a laptop lid.

I saw the e-ink lid in action. Not only on the back of a laptop proper, but as a wall of lids with images flickering across them. They don’t always flicker—once an image is selected, the panel flickers into life, the pixel values update gradually, and it freezes in place once the image is fully displayed. The whole process takes around 10 seconds, and the newly picked image is now stuck on the laptop’s exterior.

The e-ink image at the end is impressively vibrant, too.

An Asus employee says the system doesn’t draw any significant power whatsoever once an image is set. That checks out with most e-ink tech—it’s also how Kindles last an age before the battery dies.

The image is adjusted via an application, and a decent-looking one at that. It appears almost ready to ship. Yet I’m told there’s no real information on when such a panel could launch. If it ever does.

I’ve no idea of the practical repercussions of this sorta panel. It might make for a flimsy lid, or a very breakable one. I’ve an old-school Kindle that’s still going strong, and whenever that’s taken a bump on the e-ink screen it’s killed a pixel or three forever. I imagine the same could happen here—a laptop lid is more likely to get into a few scrapes, too.

And yet I still really wanna see this panel make the leap from concept to real-world, if only one time. It has a lot of potential, provided it’s done right.