The Miraxess Mirabook is a laptop shell for your smartphone

As the gap between smartphone and laptop performance dwindles and the size of phones grows, there’s lss and less of a need for casual users to have both on hand at the same time. The Maxiss Mirabook bridges that gap by providing a laptop-like computing experience powered by your smartphone’s CPU.

By outward appearances, the Mirabook looks like a standard laptop. It features a 13.3-inch screen in an aluminum chassis that weighs slightly less than 2.2 pounds. It includes a couple USB-C ports, which it uses to connect to a compatible smartphone, as well as an HDMI jack for external monitors and an SD slot to expand its onboard memory out to 128GB. What’s really cool is that the rig can run for up to 24 straight hours — all while charging your phone. The Mirabook can use either Andromium for Android or Continuum for Microsoft to emulate a desktop (rather than mobile) workspace.

Miraxess reps told Engadget that they envision the device being made available to travelers on long-haul flights, much like airlines rent out headphones, so that folks can check their notebooks but remain productive in the air. The company plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign come March or April and will offer the Mirabook for around $300.

Of course this isn’t the first time that a company has attempted a laptop-phone chimera. Motorola had the Atrix and Ubuntu briefly developed Ubuntu for Android, which would load whenever an Android smartphone was connected to an external monitor. Don’t remember either of those? There’s a good reason for that. They both flopped, hard.

As for the Mirabook, we only had a few moments to check out it during CES Unveiled but can’t help but wonder why folks wouldn’t simply use a low-end netbook or Chromebook during their travels instead of shelling out for a laptop without a mind of its own.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.