When you buy a laptop, the end-game is to use it for at least 4-5 years till it becomes old tech, and then you ditch the old laptop and upgrade to something new. However, there’s a major flaw with this concept. The only thing that ages in a laptop is a motherboard and its components. The screen doesn’t ‘age’, nor does the keyboard, nor do the I/O ports. However, we discard a laptop in its entirety when the CPU becomes laggy. That’s like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, resulting in us ditching some extremely capable components just because one part of the laptop is outdated. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?
Laptops, sadly, aren’t designed to be upgraded. They’re made to be slim, and fairly set in their ways. Components aren’t designed for modularity in most laptops, although companies like Framework and now Compal are changing this narrative. Meet the Adapt X, a laptop concept from Compal that garnered the iF Design Award this year. With an entirely modular architecture, the Adapt X does two clever things – firstly, it separates the screen, keyboard, and ports into its individual parts for easy upgrading, but secondly, it also separates them in a way that turns a laptop into a makeshift desktop. Undock the keyboard and the screen itself has a kickstand, allowing you to really make the most of your laptop while working in a flexible setup. Sounds incredibly clever, and I can’t help but wonder why nobody ever thought of this before.
Designer: Compal
This approach gives the Adapt X a kind of “laptop shell with desktop behavior.” Want to replace your display? Pop off the screen. Battery acting up? Slide it out. Need more USB-C ports today and an HDMI tomorrow? Hot-swap the entire side panel. There’s a brutal honesty to it—each piece is responsible for its own job, no hidden dependencies, no soldered-on surprises. And somehow, despite all the moving parts, the final product doesn’t look like a Frankenstein experiment. It looks intentional. Clean. Almost minimal.
While Compal hasn’t published full technical specs, what’s known so far leans heavily on sustainability and upgradability. The chassis is built from recycled materials—an increasingly common move among OEMs, but one that feels more genuine here because of the design philosophy backing it. You’re not being handed a recycled plastic laptop that’ll die in four years. You’re being handed a laptop that wants to live longer than your next phone contract. And if it doesn’t, you can surgically remove the weak link and keep going.
Of course, it’s still a concept. Compal is an ODM, not a consumer brand, which means the Adapt X probably won’t hit store shelves with its name on it. Instead, this is a proof-of-concept to tempt the Dells and Lenovos of the world into licensing the design. It’s a soft nudge to the industry: stop building disposable rectangles. Start thinking like builders again.
What sets Adapt X apart from Framework’s platform—beyond the magnetic design—is how it compartmentalizes the laptop experience. Framework offers modularity within a conventional shell. Compal’s take goes a step further by treating the laptop as a desktop in disguise. Every part is a first-class citizen. You’re not upgrading in the laptop. You’re upgrading the laptop.
There’s still friction, of course. ODMs like Compal rarely bring products directly to market. That job falls to the Dells, the HPs, the Lenovos—brands that could easily water this down or ignore it entirely. But if even one of them sees the potential here, we might finally break out of the annual laptop refresh cycle that’s been clogging landfills and wallets alike. Those are real concerns, given that nobody really jumped on past culture-shifting trends like folding displays or expanding displays (something that Compal even demonstrated at MWC this year). But Adapt X isn’t pretending to solve the whole puzzle—it’s just putting the pieces on the table in a different arrangement.
If we’re lucky, someone will pick them up. Maybe even build something lasting. Because for all our talk of sustainability and user rights, most laptops still die too young and too sealed shut. The Adapt X doesn’t solve that with a marketing slogan. It solves it with magnets, modules, and a quiet confidence that computers should be made to evolve, not expire.
