New PCs, laptops and unique form factors at CES 2026

Dell

Last summer, Dell's COO and vice chairman, Jeff Clarke, took over the Client Solutions Group, in large part to rebuild the struggling consumer business. This has caused acceleration among internal product teams, and several roadmap items that were planned for future dates were pulled into the 2026 release window. Given its renewed focus on the consumer market, and the fact that this is the first CES since the leadership change, this is undoubtedly a big deal for Dell.

In a nutshell, the announcements are related to Alienware (not something that moves the needle in enterprise, but should be interesting to the gaming community), UltraSharp monitors and, perhaps most importantly, the return of the XPS line.

You might recall that last year's CES saw Dell introduce its new naming scheme that hoped to simplify the word salad that all the Dell brands had become. Vostro, Inspiron, Latitude, XPS, Optiplex, etc. all gave way to Dell, Dell Pro, Dell Premium, etc. While this made sense in some respects (Just what is a "Vostro," anyway?), the XPS enthusiasts lost their collective minds that Dell would scuttle such a beloved brand. As a result, Dell brought back XPS, doubling down on the devices, the look and feel and the capabilities.

With respect to the monitors, CES brings the introduction of a 52-inch monitor capable of 6K resolution with features that reduce blue light, as well as a 32-inch quantum dot OLED (QD-OLED) display that prioritizes color accuracy. The 52-inch displays are aimed at delivering a lot of screen real estate without a multi-monitor setup, while the QD-OLED displays are targeted at creative users.

HP

HP made announcements across both products and services. Its Workforce Experience Platform (WXP) is a digital employee experience tool that offers visibility into all the devices that can be considered part of the workspace -- PCs, laptops, Macs, printers, meeting rooms, etc. -- alerting IT to issues and minimizing response time and downtime.

HP has expanded WXP to include Out-of-Band Remote Connect, which uses Intel vPro capabilities to provide remote Kernel-based VM support at the BIOS level, which works even if the OS won't boot. (Seriously, if you have vPro devices, this is a very cool feature that you can take advantage of, even without WXP.)

WXP will also feature printer support (even for non-HP printers), meeting space insights, and custom alerts.

On the device side, HP announced a unique device called the HP EliteBoard G1a, which doesn't really fit the desktop or laptop form factors. It's a keyboard with a built-in computer. Plug it into any monitor, and you've got a 50-trillion-operations-per-second AI PC -- CoPilot+ PC, if you're keeping track of that -- running on the AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series processor. It even has a battery so you can move from one display to another. It's like a Commodore 64's super cool grandchild.

I'm honestly not sure what to think about this. I've panned devices that plug into the back of monitors before, and in some way, this seems no different. Then again, why have another box on a desk if all you need is the keyboard and mouse? Will this catch on? Time will tell, but it's an interesting form factor that seems worth a look.

HP also announced a new 31.5-inch 4K monitor that features "Neo:LED pixels," which doesn't mean a lot to me, but is allegedly a new technology developed by LG. I'm sure they pair well with the EliteBoard G1a, though!

Lenovo

Lenovo, as you might expect, made many announcements around CES, and, honestly, it's kind of hard to keep them all straight. A few devices stood out, though.

The Yoga Pro 9i Aura is available in 16-inch and 11-inch versions. From an enterprise perspective, these are seen as the "cool" device compared to the more corporate-feeling ThinkPad line. There's also a new companion monitor in the Yoga Pro line that's specifically made to share the same color space between the external display and the one in the laptop. It's the first time I've seen this approach. And at only 27", I'll be curious to see if this catches on beyond creative personas that care about color matching.

The other notable device features a different unique form factor: a cylinder. Resembling something like a large aluminum hockey puck, the Yoga Mini I crams a speaker, microphone, touch sensor, accelerometer and an Intel Core Ultra X7 processor into a relatively small package aimed for portability. As with HP, the need for a portable device without a display is unknown. Unlike the HP device, the Yoga Mini I lacks a battery, so its portability is only as good as its user's patience for powering it on and off.

Conclusion

CES is mostly about speeds and feeds, so hopefully this was a helpful rundown of what's there without getting into the weeds. I'm anxious to hear how Dell's investments in the consumer market pay off, how HP fares with both WXP and their new form factor device and what else Lenovo might be doing that I missed.

Gabe Knuth is the principal analyst covering end-user computing for Omdia.

Omdia is a division of Informa TechTarget. Its analysts have business relationships with technology vendors.