While the majority of laptops still use the 16:9 aspect ratio, we've seen many companies increasingly embrace taller aspect ratios over the last couple years. Lenovo, while also playing around with the likes of 16:10 laptop screens in other upcoming machines, is taking a wider approach. At CES this week, it announced a laptop with an ultrawide display. Oh, and it has a second screen next to the keyboard, too.

Lenovo says the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 is the first machine to use a 17.3-inch 21:10 screen. We've seen ultrawide laptops before, but laptops with a screen that's wider than 16:9 are incredibly rare today.

Toshiba tried to make it a thing in 2012. The company's 21:9 Toshiba U845W laptop promised a superior experience for watching movies (at least ones made in the same aspect ratio) and multitasking. More recently, Acer's 2017 Predator 21 X used the 21:9 aspect ratio and a unique curve to claim supreme gaming immersion (again, with supported titles).

The ThinkBook Plus Gen 3's ultrawide screen is a pretty beefy IPS. It has 3072 x 1440 resolution, a speedy 120 Hz refresh rate, up to 400 nits of brightness, and a steep 100 percent DCI-P3 color claim.

Lenovo is targeting the third iteration of its ThinkBook Plus at small and medium-sized businesses and the task juggling that comes with them. While taller screens are great for reading long documents and spreadsheets, a wider screen grants you space to tack more windows up side-by-side. And Lenovo pointed out that Windows 11 makes this generally easier than it used to be.

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The ultrawide screen also results in an ultrawide machine overall (it's 16.14 inches long). This allowed Lenovo to fit a secondary screen on the laptop's deck for even more multitasking.

The 8-inch touchscreen is similar to Asus' ScreenPad tech that turns some of its laptops' touchpad into a touchscreen. Lenovo highlighted a mix of uses for its 800 x 1280 LCD, from a calculator, notepad, and calendar to displaying a live feed, such as a stock tracker. The small screen could display a gallery of thumbnails while you work in PhotoShop, or you can write on it with the pen garaged in the back of the deck.

A very long document could start on the upcoming clamshell's primary display and flow onto the secondary one. You could also use the 8-inch screen to store oft-used app launchers. Additionally, Lenovo pointed to the screen as a way to mirror your smartphone. Again, this targets SMBs with a lot on their hands.

Specs-wise, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 has a 12th Gen Intel Core I-series CPU, 32GB of dual-channel LPDDR5 RAM, and 2TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD storage. Lenovo gave it two USB-C ports, including one Thunderbolt 4, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and an audio jack.

Lenovo said the dual-screen PC will be $1,399 when it comes out in May.

Listing image by Lenovo