Lenovo’s Transparent Laptop: A Sneaky Look at What You Can Expect to Learn From a New Product? A Conversation with Steve Levinson

As well as the transparent display, Lenovo’s laptop concept also has a completely flat touch keyboard, rather than a physical keyboard with keys you can feel and press. I assumed this device was just another sci-fi flourish when the images first started leaking, but it was actually part ofLenovo’s pitch for artists. That’s because as well as functioning like a keyboard, the laptop’s base is also designed to work as a drawing tablet.

More so than its rollable laptop with its simple pitch of “more screen with the flip of a switch,” Lenovo’s transparent laptop concept feels like a collection of cool technologies in search of a killer app. It isn’t uncommon to see sketches behind a laptop screen, but it feels like a niche use case among digital artists, and even though you can always snap a photo and trace that, it doesn’t feel like a museum use.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in December, transparent TVs were a hot topic and we are getting our first glimpse at a transparent laptop. At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Lenovo showed off Project Crystal, a complete proof-of-concept laptop that will never see the light of day as a real product, but demonstrates what the see-through technology will look like on a portable PC.

We have an unbelievably cool looking device that is capable of some fun new things, but we do not know what the use case is. 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. You have a flat surface to sketch on, just like you would find in a screen-less Wacom tablet.

Although the appeal of transparent screens in sci-fi films and TV shows is obvious (opaque screens are boring, actor’s faces are interesting), it’s a lot harder to put your finger on their practical uses in real life. How often, of course, do you actually want to see the empty desk behind your laptop? Do you think it’s worthwhile to be able to observe your colleague sitting across from you?

When its pixels are turned off, it will display up to 55 percent transparency. 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.

It’s difficult to see the inner components of the laptop. It’s just a giant touchscreen keyboard at the bottom. I didn’t like it so much as I found it hard to type on, not to mention that it didn’t offer any kind of feedback when you tapped the virtual keys. You know, concept and all.

The screen can be very bright. When I launched WIRED’s homepage on a fullscreen browser I wasn’t sure if I had gone straight to heaven. Lenovo says the display can hit a max brightness of 1,000 nits. Apple’s new MacBooks hit 500 nits.

There is a yellow tint on the screen and this is due to the fact that the screen has 55 percent light transmissivity. As the technology improves, expect to see better color accuracy. The colors were still impressively vivid—the photos here don’t quite do it justice.