Like many professionals who work remotely, I love working from home for one key reason: No, it’s not so I can wear pajamas to work (which I do), but so I can use my dual or triple-screen setup. The exact number of screens varies throughout the year, but one constant remains: my monitors.
I also love to travel often, and it’s always more challenging to work from the road. Laptops like the Yoga Book 9i take a unique approach to solving this, as the two OLED displays make it simple to work with multiple windows. However, this solution doesn’t always work, especially as the two displays are stacked on top of each other versus being horizontally aligned.
I’ve tried many of the best portable monitors, and while these help in a pinch, I have longed for a better setup. At MWC 2025, Lenovo showed off a potential solution, and it’s one of the more unique approaches that I’ve seen. Here’s why I like it and why it could be the ideal solution.
It works like magic, thanks to Magic Bay
If you haven’t heard of Lenovo’s Magic Bay, you’ve been missing out. It’s one of the more unique features on a laptop and lets you use a range of different accessories to extend the capabilities of your laptop. These all connect via pogo pins, making it easy to install or remove any of these at will.
Magic Bay is a concept that Lenovo has shown off at several shows in the past. Some of the previous concepts shown were an add-on screen that adds a 10-inch panel about the laptop screen, a ring light, a mirror, and a small fan. There are also aromatherapy diffusers, speakers, and a 4K studio webcam that also adds two speakers to your laptop.
Magic Bay is limited to a selection of ThinkBook laptops, but it’s a concept that I wish would come to more laptops. In particular, the latest concepts would be ideal for any laptop user.
Two screens or one, it’s up to you
The Magic Bay Dual Display concept is designed to offer you two 13-inch screens, while the 2nd Display concept offers a single 8-inch display that clips to the right of the laptop screen and is ideal for vertical use cases like scrolling social media or monitoring notifications.
The Dual Display concept features two 13.5-inch displays with 2880×1920 pixels resolution, a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, 1500:1 contrast ratio, and 100% of the sRGB color spectrum.. It weighs 1.2kg and doesn’t require a separate power supply. The 2nd Display concept features an 8-inch display with a 9:16 aspect ratio, 1920×1200 pixels resolution, and a 60Hz refresh rate. It weighs just 0.3 kg, making it one of the lightest second-screen products you can buy.
One of the key problems with existing portable monitors is the integration with your laptop, but the two Magic Bay concepts solve this in two key ways. First, all the various keyboard shortcuts work as planned, so it works as an extension of your laptop. Second, and arguably the most impressive thing about it, is that the brightness control of your laptop display also controls the brightness of the secondary screens.
This is the type of integration found in the Apple ecosystem, and it shows just how Lenovo’s tight integration of its accessories and ecosystem allows it to achieve a similar result.
Will it launch as an actual product?
As you may have guessed, it’s a conceptual device that may not make it to release. While many of Lenovo’s concepts do make it to a commercial product, the Magic Bay concept is not usually one of these.
It’s been over two years since the launch of the Magic Bay concept at CES 2023, but the only product that has launched is the 4K Studio webcam. I hope that this dual-screen concept follows the webcam and launches to the market, as it will solve one of my biggest issues with the best portable monitors.
