Peering into a future with a transparent laptop

Why Would You Want a Transparent Laptop? Finding a Use Case for a Surface-less Laptop with a Bezel-less 17.3-inch Display

The laptop concept by Lenovo has a completely flat touch keyboard, just like a physical keyboard, but it also has a transparent display as well. When images of this device first started leaking, I assumed this was meant as just another sci-fi flourish, but it’s actually part of Lenovo’s pitch for artists. The base of the laptop is also designed to work as a drawing Tablet and is similar to a keyboard.

This being 2024, there was also an AI element to Lenovo’s demonstration. The company had set up a small camera on the rear side of the laptop’s chassis to perform object recognition on devices placed behind it. The results of this could then be shown on-screen while it was still in full view. Put sunflowers behind the laptop, and it’d identify them as such. Show the butterfly flying around and display some information. A fish can be seen if you put a small coral model in front of it. It was proof-of-concept stuff.

But why would you want a transparent laptop? Well, it seems like even Lenovo doesn’t quite have a good answer. One of the use cases it suggested was that you can make sure people are following along in a meeting, which is the last thing I’d want.

We have a device that is cool looking and capable of some fun new things until we find a better use case for it. Halfway through my interview, I pulled my (decidedly nontransparent) MacBook’s screen forward to double-check my phone behind it, and Butler leaped on it immediately.

The keyboard that you can see on the laptop is actually a projection, which disappears when you bring a stylus close to the drawing surface or even when you step away from the laptop entirely. A screen-less Wacom tablets has a surface that is similar to what you would find in a flat surface.

In sci-fi films and TV shows, transparent screens are attractive, but it can be difficult to figure out their practical uses in real life. How often do you want to see the empty desk behind your laptop? Would it be beneficial to be able to see your colleague sitting across from you, or would it be distracting?

The key draw is its bezel-less 17.3-inch MicroLED display, which offers up to 55 percent transparency when its pixels are set to black and turned off. But as its pixels light up, the display becomes less and less see-through, until eventually, you’re looking at a completely opaque white surface with a peak brightness of 1,000 nits.

Unfortunately, you can’t see the inner components of the laptop or anything like that. It’s a big keyboard at the bottom. I didn’t like it much, however, as I found it hard to type on, not to mention Lenovo said it currently didn’t offer any kind of haptic feedback when you tapped on the virtual keys. You know, concept and all.

The screen itself can get searingly bright. When I launched WIRED’s homepage on a fullscreen browser I wasn’t sure if I had gone straight to heaven. The display can be bright for 1,000 nits. The latest MacBooks hit 500 nits.

However, there was a yellow tinge on the screen, and this is partly because Lenovo says the screen has 55 percent light transmissivity. As the technology improves, expect to see better color accuracy. The photos here don’t do it justice and the colors are still impressively vivid.