This Award-Winning Hinge Design From Wistron Could Be The Future Of Gaming Laptops

This Award-Winning Hinge Design From Wistron Could Be The Future Of Gaming Laptops

You might’ve never heard of Wistron, but this company is responsible for many laptop designs today as the ODM (Original Design Manufacturer). ODMs design the components, which then get passed on to OEMs to put their branding and sell it as a retail product. Recently, it won the coveted iF Design Award with its unique hinge design that exposes a section of rear overhang to facilitate cooling.

It’s officially called “Dynamic Airflow”, which is based on the concept of “Hinge Auto-Extension”, according to the brief description provided by Wistron. Typically, cooling elements like heatsink fins overlap with the laptop motherboard itself, which limits the cooling capacity. This hinge design pulls the rear overhang further rearward when the lid opens, allowing greater airflow.

Now, the concept of an active-aero-style cooling system isn’t new – various manufacturers have tried such ideas before, but mostly on highly exotic laptops. These implementations include AAS+ from ASUS, and a slide-open keyboard mechanism from the 2021-model Acer Predator Helios 700 is another implementation of tackling the heat. Winstron’s design has an advantage – it is an ODM design, meaning more manufacturers will have access to this design and implement it in more laptops.

Now, whether this design will actually end up in a retail product remains to be seen. Still, if there’s anything we know about gaming laptops, it’s that OEMs will use whatever way possible to gain that small bit of thermal headroom for extra performance.

Source: Tom’s Hardware

Pokdepinion: While we’ve seen quite a few ASUS laptops with this kind of active mechanism to expose certain parts of the laptop, this ODM design could be the best one yet, since it’s the least intrusive.