Sometimes, the tech world gives us something that’s conceptually pretty cool—unless you think about it for more than five seconds. That’s exactly what Lenovo is doing at MWC 2024.
The folks behind the ThinkBook brand have revealed a completely transparent laptop at the Barcelona Technology Show.Dubbed the Lenovo ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop (a catchy name), it’s exactly what it sounds like: a laptop with a display that you can fully see through.
See it through, you absolutely can. I got to put my eyes and hands on this concept device, and I can safely report that it is indeed a see-through laptop. But this left me with more questions than answers.
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for the sake of transparency
from the side.
Photo credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable
But first, let’s talk specs. Lenovo didn’t provide us with a full spec sheet for the device, possibly because the concept is clearly not suitable for any form of mass production. However, there are some things to chew on.
First, it has a very large 17.3-inch microLED display with a peak brightness of 1,000 nits. It also has 55% backside light transmittance. In other words, the amount of light you see from the other side is about half the amount of light you see from the front.
YouTube videos play on Lenovo transparent laptop
Photo credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable
It also runs Windows 11. There’s also a camera on the bottom of the laptop that’s positioned away from the screen, rather than a traditional user-facing webcam. Lenovo gave us a quick demo where the camera was able to look at a flower and use generative artificial intelligence to give us facts about the flower.
This is what the Windows 11 desktop looks like on a Lenovo transparent laptop.
Photo credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable
The two most interesting things about a transparent display laptop are of course its transparency and its keyboard. Yes, you can completely see what someone is doing on the screen from the other side of the device. By default, there is no privacy. Lenovo told us there’s a privacy filter that makes the other side of the screen opaque, but that feature wasn’t shown in the demo.
It’s also worth mentioning that virtually every other existing laptop already does this via opacity.
You can watch the video on the screen, but the transparency is still very noticeable.
Photo credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable
As for the keyboard, it’s not the traditional, tactile keyboard we’re used to. Instead, it has a digital interface.although it looks cool createFor a non-traditional keyboard like this, the adjustment period takes a while. Personally, this is not my preference. One cool thing you can do, however, is turn off the keyboard and turn the bottom half of the device into a giant touchpad.
But transparency is still the most important thing here. Lenovo’s transparent display laptop is impressive from a technical perspective – and it’s neat that there’s an actual device that looks like it’s from (albeit not for sale) Mass Effect. However, for now, it has no obvious use case. I just don’t think anyone really desires a laptop that’s designed to offer zero privacy.
Application launched on Lenovo ThinkBook laptop with transparent display.
Photo credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable
Still, tech trade shows are a great place to see such wacky concepts. We will be attending MWC 2024. Stay tuned for other wild tech coming out of the Barcelona showcase.