CES 2024 has been and gone and a big theme we saw during the event was transparent technology, specifically TVs. LG unveiled a wireless, transparent OLED TV and Samsung showed off its seethrough microLED display. However, it looks like Lenovo could be throwing its hat into the see-through ring at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) taking place at the end of February - with rumors suggesting it could unveil the world’s first transparent laptop.
WindowsReport has obtained images of what it claims the laptop might look like, just two weeks before the big tech event in Barcelona, Spain. The images show what appears at first glance to be a regular old laptop, but upon closer inspection, it looks like the display is entirely ‘clear’ when turned off.
The display has no bezels and the hinge area of the laptop looks pretty see-through as well, with the keyboard replaced with what looks to be a touchscreen with clear glass, what looks like virtual keys instead of physical ones.
The non-transparent parts seem to be reserved for the bottom half of the chassis and a strip just beneath the display where the ‘Thinkbook’ label is placed. From the photos, we can’t tell a whole lot about what kind of ports the laptop would come with, or even any specifications, and until we get official word from Lenovo we’d have to take this as a rumour and not get our hopes up too high.
Very cool, but necessary?
While the idea of a transparent laptop is incredibly cool, is this just a ‘because we can’ flex from Lenovo, or will the design benefit users? There’s no guarantee that if this laptop does make an appearance at MWC, it’ll ever get into the hands of consumers any time soon… if at all. Or, the see-through tech could look entirely different from what we’re seeing in these images if this is a prototype (and that's even if the images are real).
The technology behind transparent displays is normally quite expensive to manufacture, which leads us to believe that if we do see this transparent Lenovo laptop, and it goes on sale, it’s going to cost a pretty penny.
Lenovo has a lot to prove to that this potential design is more than just a gimmick, and demonstrate that a transparent laptop is worth buying - especially if it wants people to likely pay a lot of money. Again, we can’t quite think of a reason why anyone would need something like this, nor will we likely have our best laptops guide full of transparent laptops any time soon.
Laptop design has been pretty much the same for the past few decades, bar the odd innovation like 2-in-1 laptops, so it's always good to see companies explore potentially unique new form factors - so hopefully Lenovo wows us with a world's first in the next few weeks.
