Asus has just potentially changed the design of laptop lids forever, showcasing a new colored E ink screen that takes over the whole lid. The new Project Dali system effectively enables you to put any colored artwork on an Asus gaming laptop lid, and it will stay there until you update it with a new design, even when the lid is closed or the laptop is unpowered.
We spotted the Asus Project Dali display while we were treading the show floor at Computex 2024, and we were wowed by the quality of the results, with Asus basically having a laptop lid art gallery on display in its booth. In the future, you could forget having just a manufacturer logo on the lids of the best gaming laptops, and instead just assume you can clad them in your own choice of artwork.
Asus showed us how the system works, with the company’s Project Dali software set up on a number of ROG Zephyrus G14 laptops at the event. The manual editing portion of the software gives you an option to layer elements of your design in various orders, and add your own text in a choice of fonts, change the background color, and also add a choice of stickers.
The latter includes the ROG logo, as well as Don’t Panic in naturally big, friendly letters. Instead of covering your laptop lid in real, paper stickers, which might start to peel off and leave sticky residue, you could download stickers and apply them virtually to your laptop lid.
We’re not sure how popular the sticker idea will be, given that paper stickers are often souvenirs from real physical events, but we love the idea of being able to put your own colored design on your laptop lid.
Asus also had some of its own curated designs available in the software, including an image of a colorful flying fish, which we enabled to show in the image below.
A number of other example lids were being exhibited as well, including sci-fi images of spaceships and floating cities, as well as artwork for games, including Crime Boss: Rockay City and WRC Generations. You don’t get a very high resolution on the lid screen, but you do get strong colors and complete flexibility.
This is just a proof of concept at the moment, of course, but it clearly already works, and we’ve never seen anything like it before. There’s great potential here for you to really customize your whole laptop lid in any way you like, and the results genuinely look good, even if the resolution of the E-ink screen means they’re a bit chunky.
To see more of the weird and wonderful tech products we’ve spotted at the show, make sure you check out our Computex news hub.