As laptops got thinner and lighter, sacrifices had to be made. Often those sacrifices come down to port selection, as ultraportable laptops are increasingly ditching things like USB-A ports, 3.5mm jacks and SD card readers for portability and style. Whether you find it inconvenient or incredible, take a look at the Craob X laptop. It takes minimalism to the next level – it has no built-in ports.
The Craob X, spotted by My Laptop Guide on Monday, claims to be “the world’s first portless ultrabook.”The Craob website provides limited information about the Craob X laptop and nothing about the company itself. There is no release date other than a vague “coming soon”ad. Overall, there are very few details about Craob X, which leaves us skeptical about whether and when it will be available. In fact, we can’t even find any mention of a company that exists outside of this site.
However, the Craob X represents an interesting idea for the future of ultraportable laptops. While even the smallest ultraportable laptop usually offers at least a USB-C port, the Craob X deck is empty. And we can understand why – almost nothing fits there.
According to the Craob website, the 13.3-inch laptop is 0.28 inches (7mm) thick and weighs 1.9 pounds (861.83g). That would be pretty impressive, even compared to other lightweight clamshells. At 0.58 inches (14.8 mm) thin and 2.64 lbs (1197.48 g), the Dell XPS 13 is 107.14% thicker and 38.95% heavier than the Craob X’s advertised dimensions.
You can presumably use Bluetooth to connect peripherals to the device, but the site doesn’t address the laptop’s Bluetooth capabilities.
Of course, the laptop still needs a way to get power. Craob X uses a MagSafe-like device that attaches magnetically to the laptop’s lid. Dubbed PortsHub, the wireless charger has its own ports – USB-C, USB-A, Thunderbolt (undisclosed version), headphone jack and SD card reader, so it can charge other devices as well. It’s not clear how much power a wireless charger can deliver, how fast it can charge a PC, or whether the charger can power other devices and your laptop at the same time.
It’s also not clear if the wireless PortsHub will send data to a PC. The SD card reader and headphone jack on the wireless charger mean it will, but PortsHub will have a hard time supporting Thunderbolt 4’s maximum bandwidth of 40Gbps over Wi-Fi 6E, the laptop’s only confirmed wireless protocol.
Craob X continues its striking design with incredibly small bezels accentuated by a webcam built right into the 4K display.
The laptop claims to use the 12th generation Intel Alder Lake mobile processor, namely the Core i7-1280P. The Intel P series is suitable for thinner laptops with less powerful cooling. In particular, the chip runs at a base clock speed of 1.8 GHz and has six performance cores (up to 4.8 GHz) and eight efficient cores (up to 3.6 GHz). The Craob X will also have up to 32GB LPDDR5 RAM and 2TB PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD storage.
Craob X represents a world where portless laptops are getting serious attention. It will be interesting to see how the Craob X reacts – and even more intriguing to see if it leads other laptop makers to even more daring omissions in port selection.