This wild new laptop has absolutely zero ports — and it's thinner than an iPad

Craob X laptop shown open on a table with charger attached to back of lid

(Image credit: Craob )

A new challenger has appeared in the laptop market, and it promises to deliver something we've never seen earlier: an ultraportable with no ports.

Information technology'south called the Craob X, and it surfaced before this year as the flagship product in development at Craob, a company I've never heard of that appears to have no contact info and no history of building laptops.

With that kind of track record information technology'due south perhaps unsurprising that the Craob X sounds too good (?) to be truthful. Co-ordinate to Craob'south website, it will be a Windows ultraportable with a xiii.3-inch 4K display that weighs 1.9 pounds and measures merely 7mm thin. If true, that would make the Craob X thinner than Apple's iPad 2021, and nearly as thin as the graceful iPad Air.

Craob X promo image — While it's hard to brand out much detail nigh the Craob X based on these promotional images alone, it does appear equally though the laptop has a webcam built into the screen. (Prototype credit: Craob)

Inside that ultra-thin laptop Craob aims to pack up to a 2TB SSD, up to 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and upwards to a 12th Gen Intel Cadre i7-1280P CPU. That Core i7 is one of the new Alder Lake laptop chips Intel unveiled before this year, all of which are built on a hybrid architecture like Apple'south M1 chips, and nosotros've seen benchmarks which evidence the top-of-the-line Intel Alder Lake Core i9 is faster than Apple tree'due south M1 Max — although Intel's CPUs can't match the power efficiency of Apple silicon.

Speaking of power efficiency, you might be wondering: How do I charge a port-less laptop? Craob has an respond: A wireless charger that can be plugged into an outlet and then magnetically attached to the back of the Craob X hat. It'southward basically similar MagSafe for the iPhone.

Craob X charger and dock — (Paradigm credit: Craob )

I'm not quite sure if it'due south a silly or subtly genius solution, but Craob seems to think information technology'll appeal to customers. The charger as well sports some ports along the edges that let you connect devices to the laptop via USB-C, Thunderbolt, or USB-A. There's besides an SD card slot and a headphone jack on the charger, which appears to have a nice petty compartment for winding and storing the power cable when not in utilize.

Craob X promo image showing how power cord winds around for charger for storage — (Paradigm credit: Craob)

No further details are all the same bachelor about the Craob X, including any hint of a toll or release date. The website appears to have gone live late last year so this may be the early stages of a public marketing campaign, in which case nosotros may hear more than details afterwards this year. However, based on the promotional images (which evidence the laptop either angled so the screen isn't showing or from a distance) and lack of details or public-facing communications team, the Craob X could prove to be vaporware.

Fifty-fifty if information technology does come to marketplace, I'm non convinced anyone wants an ultra-thin laptop with no ports. Weight is certainly a significant factor when buying a laptop, just thinness? Perhaps it's just my ungainly mitts that make me deaf to the siren song of a laptop that's 0.27 inches thin, only the Craob 10 sounds similar it wouldn't exist very comfortable or sturdy to blazon on, especially for extended periods.

That said, lots of people utilize every bit thin detachable keyboards to type up work on their tablets — some of them are secretly amidst the best 2-in-i laptops you tin buy. So perhaps information technology's best to reserve judgment on the Craob X until we get one in for testing.

Alex Wawro is a lifelong tech and games enthusiast with more than a decade of experience covering both for outlets like Game Developer, Blackness Hat, and PC World magazine. He currently serves equally a senior editor at Tom'southward Guide covering all things computing, from laptops and desktops to keyboards and mice.