Andy Edser, hardware writer
This month I tested: Laptops and flight sticks again, with an emphasis on a few RTX 4090 mobile beasts. I still think the RTX 4080 mobile is a much better call for a laptop GPU, but some will always prefer the biggest GPU you can buy, even if it comes with some serious drawbacks.
Tech trade shows are where companies can showcase not only the latest consumer products, but also the wild, crazy and futuristic extreme. We’ve been seeing transparent displays and transparent screen technology popping up at many of these events for a while now, but it always seemed to be a few years away from release.
However, the tide is starting to turn and some of these devices seem tantalizingly close to release, with some planning to hit the market very soon.
Samsung made headlines at this year’s CES with its claim to the world’s first transparent Micro LED display, which showed off impressive color reproduction and brightness, along with greater transparency that lets you see more of what’s on the other side . LG, meanwhile, unveiled the world’s first wireless transparent OLED TV, which it said would go on sale this year.
We also covered some leaked images of Lenovo’s transparent laptop concept that will be unveiled at MWC, which looks like yet another attempt to show off a use case for the technology, which will come to your home devices sometime in the near future.
The problem is I still can’t see Why you would want one.
Commercial use is one thing. Samsung’s gigantic Micro LED screens look very nice and impressive, and that would be great in a chic hotel lobby, for example. Visiting guests would ooh and ahh at the technology, children would run around it and peer at each other through the glass, and everyone would feel very reassured that they had wisely spent large amounts of money choosing such high-tech accommodations to stay in. stay. stay during their journey.
But at your home, or on your lap? I remain unconvinced. Let’s start by talking about the big hooting elephant sitting in the middle of our transparent room: visual fidelity and readability.
I think the purpose of an exhibition is to show you things. Things you want to see, read, delve into, in detail. Display technology until now has primarily focused on delivering visual information to the user with as much clarity, vibrancy and readability as panel technology can provide, because after all, that’s why you want to spend your money. You want to see things and see them as best as possible.
So what does transparency bring to the party? I must admit that I have rarely seen a document or a web page on a transparent screen, mainly because it is almost never demonstrated on the exhibition stands. It’s always fireworks over a nighttime cityscape, or fish happily swimming through a bowl. The hope is that, with a solid background conveniently displayed behind the text, or some highly customizable transparency settings, it’s a perfectly usable experience on par with the readability of a regular panel.
However, as things stand now, all attempts I’ve seen to display an opaque block on one of these displays don’t look nearly as clear as on a traditional display, with green borders, blurry pixels, and strange distortion effects. Are all these issues really a good trade-off for the ability to see through the panel itself?
Another LG CES demonstration came in the form of the Dukebox, an ‘innovative audio product’ concept with a great-looking, customizable transparent OLED display in front of its very nice glowing valves, complete with the suggestion that it could be used to to watch a movie. .
I mean, I’m sure it could be done, but given the problems we’ve seen so far, the question is: would you really want that?
For what it’s worth, LG’s transparent wireless OLED TV features two different display modes. You can view your content in transparent mode to create an “immersive and atmospheric effect”, or you can press a button to bring up a contrast screen behind the screen, handily turning it into something a bit more looks like a regular TV.
LG suggests that because it’s a large clear glass panel, transparent mode allows you to place your TV in the center of the room as a huge screen for photos and artwork. Much less obtrusive than a regular screen, that big piece of glass, you see.
Still, good luck preventing your children or visiting guests from smearing it with fingerprints on both sides, or from getting dust on both sides of the panel. It’s a headache to keep a large, prominently placed glass panel clean on both sides, but given the likely price of such cutting-edge technology, keeping your screen clean yourself may not be much of a problem for the average early adopter.
And then there’s the Lenovo laptop, called Project Crystal. When we first covered the leaked images, there was some suggestion in the comments that a transparent screen could be used that was only visible on one side, and that the assumption that you could view it from the back and everyone being able to have your message read emails in public (albeit in reverse) was premature. Reasonable.
However, it was only first introduced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and I’m sorry to tell you, but…
While Lenovo says it’s working on possible features to block out the back of the screen, this transparent laptop doesn’t really have much to offer in its current form other than aesthetics. And while I can recommend it as a visually interesting concept display, nothing major seems to have been added to the usability of the device by making it transparent, other than perhaps making it more desirable to run away with it, as it’s clearly very is bad. duration.
Before I let this column get too grumpy, I want to make an important confession: transparent displays can be fantastically beautiful. We reviewed a fishbowl PC case demonstrated by MSI at the CES booth with an LED crystal film display that wrapped around the curve, and even I was impressed with the visual result.
For what it’s worth, novelty is fleeting. If transparent displays become mainstream, the shine will likely fade quickly.
It caught our attention. It drew us in. It made us pay attention to the exhibition, if only to witness the novelty of an image beautifully rendered on glass while still allowing us to see what was behind it. Once we got there, we hoped that show visitors would also check out the other products, which we dutifully did, although I would like to point out that we did this for the purpose of comprehensive journalistic reporting, and not just because we are attracted to shiny things like moths to a flame.
All very well as a sales technique to capture public attention, even if novelty, for what it’s worth, is fleeting. If transparent displays become mainstream, the shine will likely wear off quickly and most people will simply ignore the visual clutter in the hope of achieving something more substantial.
But do you have one at home? Buying a transparent panel not just because it is distractingly beautiful, but because you want to use it every day as a useful device that you are willing to spend a lot of money on?
So far, count me out.
However, be prepared to marvel at some fantastic transparent displays at public demonstrations near you. Coo to them, if you will, and I will be with you. But for me and my personal devices, I’ll take my screens traditional, if that’s okay with the rest of you, sci-fi aesthetics be damned.