After a long, long month of laptop releases, Computex 2022 is finally over. In a sense, Computex was not.
Earlier this year was an exciting time to be a laptop reporter. Each company and its mother announced that great ideas were on the way. Crazy products abounded, from monitors to phones. The LG Display (which supplies the 13.3-inch panel for Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Fold) showed a 17-inch foldable OLED screen. We saw an abundance of RGB, OLED and haptic elements. Chipmakers have promised architectural innovations and performance improvements. We were told they were all coming soon.
At the end of May was Computex, the biggest laptop show of the year. (Well, it really was the whole of May – since a lot of global players couldn’t get to Taiwan, most companies just did their thing and always threw away their releases, but that’s another story. I’m still recovering from this month of continuous messaging, please , don’t send me messages.) This would be the perfect time for some of these innovative publications to be released, you know. Or get a release date.
But we didn’t get them at Computex 2022. The show was actually aggressively exciting. We’ve got a hell of a lot of chips. We have several displays with a higher refresh rate. We have the HP Specter x360 with more rounded corners. (To be clear, I’m personally very excited about the rounder corners, but I may be the only person on the planet in this boat.)
Don’t get me wrong: Gradual upgrades to both internal specifications and external elements are important. They will change people’s lives. Companies don’t have to invent the wheel with every laptop they launch. But it’s still worth noting that a number of devices that really seem ready to expand or redefine their categories aren’t here yet (or if they are, I can’t find them listed for sale).
Here’s the Elite Dragonfly G3, which you still can’t buy. Photo by Amelia Holovati Krales / The Verge
Here are some long-awaited products announced earlier this year that have not yet reached my desk:
- Asus’ Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, originally announced at CES for the second quarter of 2022. There are 25 days left from the second quarter since this letter was written, and we don’t even have a confirmed price yet. This is one of the many rumors, 17-inch folding laptops we expected this year – Samsung also showed one at CES, and HP is rumored to have one in the works. We did not see either in Computex.
- XPS 13 2-in-1, one of the most significant models in the convertible. Okay, so this one isn’t actually announced yet, but it’s expired – and according to the leak, Dell will probably switch this product from the traditional 2-in-1 form factor to a Surface Pro-like device. There is no mention of this in May.
- The non-corporate version of the HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook, the only device Verge employees were most excited about this year. It’s ready to be the first Chromebook to include a haptic trackpad and Intel vPro, among other impressive new features. This was to be sent in April when it was announced at CES. We received an update in early May – now “this summer” is coming, but it is currently out of stock.
- Speaking of HP, also the exciting Dragonfly G3, which finally brings the 3: 2 display to the high-end business line and which we saw a prototype in January, was originally expected in March. Looking at the HP website, it doesn’t seem to be available until July.
- Lenovo’s ThinkBook Plus Gen 3, the 2022 edition I was most excited about. This is a 17-inch device with two screens. While dual-screen devices that place the keyboard in front of the deck can still be quite good, positioning them doesn’t work for everyone. ThinkBook Plus puts the screen on its side, keeping the keyboard in its usual position (albeit a little far to the left) and keeping the touchpad in a usable size, an arrangement that can be more practical for many people. This was legally very cool to use in the Lenovo CES demo zone, and it could potentially be useful to present the dual-form form factor. This was supposed to be sent in May, but is still “coming soon” according to the Lenovo website.
- There are still no signs of the ThinkPad Z-Series, a funky new line of ThinkPad that targets the Gen Z, includes a haptic touchpad and vegan leather cover, and is potentially a new vision of who can benefit from a business laptop. This was supposed to be sent in May, but so far there have been no dice. The website, at the time of writing, still says “Spring 2022 is approaching”.
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RDNA 3, AMD’s next-generation Radeon GPUs rumored to bring insane performance improvements. AMD’s updates were still a big announcement, but the claimed single-threaded profits were astounding in comparison.
Not everything is bad news. Some of the most anticipated devices for 2022 have been released on schedule, including a number of gaming products such as Asus’ ROG Flow Z13. And, of course, companies are constantly deviating from their plans. But I checked my impressions with Gartner Research Vice President Stephen Kleinhans, and it seems to be true: On the other hand, we see delays in the supply of computers, which in turn affect versions. Of course, this is not a unique problem for the computer space – industries across the country, including the automotive industry, have been held back.
Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge
These delays, Kleinhans said, are not surprising, “mostly supply chain problems” and many of them are related to the current situation with COVID in China, which has led to blockages in key technology centers. Kleynhans told me that “until China really reopens, which seems to be what we see now, and cannot catch up with the backlog that has been created, we will continue to see disruption in addition to the disruptions that were already there.” He believes that the availability of the computer may be impaired “at least until the summer and the end of the year.”
According to Kleynhans, not only do companies have problems getting current generation units in their hands – this is also related to the execution of last generation orders. “If you have a customer who ordered 1,000 machines three or four months ago and still haven’t received them, you don’t want to launch this year’s model while those orders are unfulfilled,” Kleinhans told me. We certainly see delays in current models as well – many of Apple’s latest MacBook Pros show delivery dates from the end of July or later. (It is rumored that Apple has a new MacBook Air in preparation and it will be interesting to see if the company will be able to stick to its usual schedule for availability in the short term.)
“We will continue to see disruption.”
When it comes to slowing down the supply chain, the PC market is hardly the hardest hit (or most important) industry. The world will continue to turn if the delivery of 17-inch folding computers takes longer than expected. And laptop delays are hardly the most important or impactful consequence of this pandemic.
However, this situation should serve as a reminder of a fact that, frankly, is always worth remembering: computer space has so many moving parts. Many things had to go right to bring the laptop you are currently writing on and the laptop I am currently writing on (this is Zephyrus G14, if you are curious) to our doorstep. It’s fun to live in a world full of haptics, foldability and 2X performance improvements at the beginning of the year. But the real world is more complex and boring, and even the coolest innovations require all kinds of logistics stars to line up.
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