- Lenovo's transparent laptop prototype on display at MWC 2024 this week, as captured by India Today.
- Here, you can see what the see-through screen looks like from behind.
- The laptop giving an AI demo.
- Typing on the touchscreen keyboard doesn't look comfortable.
- A Lenovo-provided image of two of its transparent concept laptops.Lenovo
In 2010, Samsung demoed a transparent laptop prototype. The OLED laptop looked uniquely futuristic, and there were even reports that Samsung would release the design for real. But it never did. And 14 years later, even with a different type of display technology improving the experience, it seems like there still isn’t a strong argument for transparent-screen consumer laptops—even with AI shoehorned into the design.
Just a prototype for now
Before we get into the Lenovo ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop Concept, keep in mind that it is just a concept. Lenovo has no official plans to release this computer and describes it as a way to explore how transparent displays and AI can be combined.
That said, Lenovo's executive director of ThinkPad portfolio and product, Tom Butler, told The Verge he has "very high confidence" that such technologies will be available in a consumer product within the next five years. If that's true, Lenovo will need to figure out what people might want in capabilities.
AdvertisementA see-through laptop may not be the answer.
The concept
Here's what Lenovo has come up with so far. The laptop that it's demoing at MWC 2024 in Barcelona this week is 17.3 inches. The lid is a transparent Micro LED display with as much as 55 percent transparency with the pixels turned off. In the world of transparent screens, that's pretty impressive. For comparison, the aforementioned Samsung transparent laptop claimed up to 40 percent transparency, and LG currently sells transparent OLED signage (for businesses) with 38 percent transparency. In its announcement, Lenovo claimed that Micro LED "offers more possibilities in the future with further optimization of image quality, durability, and adjustable transmittance to provide more privacy or more transparency to interact with real world objects."
Notably, Samsung Display revealed the first transparent Micro LED screens in January at CES 2024, so it's reasonable to expect the technology to advance further. Micro LED has already been praised for offering more powerful transparent experiences than we've seen with OLED and LCD thus far. Engadget, which saw Lenovo's prototype, for example, reported that next to transparent OLED and LCD, the Micro LED screen was notably brighter and more see-through. Additionally, Samsung Display has previously claimed that transparent Micro LED is less affected by ambient light than transparent OLED.
Lenovo claims its prototype's screen can reach 1,000 nits of full-screen brightness with up to 3,000-nit highlights.
Completing the design is a touchscreen keyboard that's projected onto a glass deck and goes away if you bring a stylus near it, an embedded trackpad, a rear-facing camera, and Windows 11.
Searching for purpose
Lenovo is demoing a functioning prototype this week that features a transparent screen with a dramatic design. But I struggle to see who could benefit from a laptop with a fascinatingly see-through lid.
My immediate concern is privacy. With a see-through lid, people around you might be able to see confidential files, emails, websites, et cetera, that you're browsing. A company like Lenovo could try incorporating a privacy film or a way to turn the transparent screen opaque quickly. However, these would add to the cost of what presumably would already be an expensive PC and counteract the laptop's biggest feature.
I could also see Lenovo's design being helpful for presentations or showing someone how to do something on the laptop. But there are few times in my years of using a laptop that I've had serious interest in being able to see what was behind my computer's lid or had a workload that required me to see behind my screen for a sustained period. As with many emerging technologies, it's possible that a killer app could make transparent laptop screens useful. But as it stands, transparency still seems more helpful to me for things like business signage, which calls for an eye-catching, dynamic wow factor, or even TVs.
LG plans to release the Signature OLED T, a transparent 77-inch TV, this year. The TV is expected to be expensive but will bring transparent screens to a readily available consumer device. But differing from a crystal laptop, a see-through TV is handy for making large TVs feel less dominating in living rooms; laptops are much smaller than TVs and are meant to be transported.
Speaking with The Verge, Lenovo's Butler pointed to specific laptop use cases, like tracing something on the computer that's visible behind the screen or architects sketching designs on transparent laptops while on location. Incorporating AR is one of the ideas that appeals most to me about the ThinkBook concept. Despite some efforts, AR laptops haven't taken off, though. Obstacles include finding use cases and bulky designs that might include uncomfortable tethered glasses and the potential for nausea. Lenovo's prototype answers some of these problems but not all.
AdvertisementAccording to Lenovo, the deeper answer to "what would this be for?" lies in (of course) AI. As shown by numerous videos I watched of the prototype, Lenovo demoed the laptop using its camera and object recognition to identify objects, like a sunflower, that the laptop's user could see behind the screen. The PC then displayed a related image, like a butterfly, on the screen. A demo viewed by India Today shows what it would look like if the laptop also used Lenovo's personal AI assistant to display facts about what was behind the screen.
But again, the situations where one would prefer to do this on a bulkier laptop than, say, on their phone with Google or on a premium headset, aren't obvious. Lenovo's announcement argues: "AI in combination with transparent displays will open up new ways of engaging with data and applications, offering opportunities to develop new features and form factors.”
Perhaps one of the most pertinent limitations in making something like this appealing to consumers is the laptop display's paltry resolution by today's standards. The prototype maxes out at 720p, per The Verge. A company rep told the publication that if the laptop used transparent OLED, it could be stuck with as low as 480p. With the laptop's pixel density of 84.9 pixels per inch, you can expect to see pixels when looking at the screen closely (which you may very well do with a laptop), but The Verge at least claimed that text viewed during its demo "was perfectly readable."
Finally, while Lenovo's prototype didn't come with any pricing suggestions, we can't ignore the exorbitant pricing still associated with Micro LED. Samsung's Micro LED TV, The Wall, for example, currently starts at an $80,000 MSRP for 110 inches.
Lenovo's concept design successfully encourages discussion on how we might use transparent screens in the future. It also shows how far transparent laptops have come since Samsung's 2010 design. However, the reasons for a transparent laptop remain much more opaque than the Lenovo laptop's screen.
Listing image by India Today/YouTube
