The Spacetop: a Compact Pair of Glasses with a Small Touchpad for Typing and Touching a Pencil

You can buy the glasses without a copay if you have invite-only access. The Spacetop will come with a pair of custom-ground Lenses attached to it. I was happy to be able to try out the device with my goggles that matched my prescription.

The glasses went through multiple iterations to ensure they’re comfortable to wear for long periods, without leaving marks on your face, snagging hair, or messing up makeup. The headset has been changed to be better for reading text. There’s a physical button on the right arm that controls display brightness.

Sightful thinks that the laptop market is boring and that the Spacetop injects a much-needed dose of innovation. Representatives asked me a number of times what I think about the state of the market, and I got the sense that they were looking for that answer to start off their pitch. Nonetheless, there’s a reason today’s computers look the way they look. The reasons that formula is there need to be addressed by a device that hopes to shake it up. I hope that the Spacetop can do that because it was a lot of fun to use.

I didn’t spend a lot of time with Spacetop but I was surprised at how little there was. It’s a pair of glasses that connect to a full-sized keyboard with a touchpad and a wire. At 3.3 pounds, it’s only slightly heavier than the latest 2.7-pound MacBook Air and compact enough to easily slide into your backpack or tote.

The Sightful Spacetop: Toward a More Diverse Workfrom Home, Not Just a Tablet Rather than an Ultraportable Device

the concept of working from home has been utterly redefined in the past few years. As long as there’s Wi-Fi and a computer, many people can technically work from anywhere. But for those who have gotten used to clicking through multiple monitors or walking at a standing desk, working away from the house requires schlepping around a bunch of peripherals in order to be productive.

It is available for purchase through an invitation-only early access program. The delivery will start in July. Anyone can apply for the position, however Sightful is looking for enthusiastic early adopters who will provide feedback the company can use to refine the experience.

There was a new update on May 18. An earlier version of the article stated the SpaceTop has a processor. It’s powered by an advanced processor. We’ve corrected the story to reflect this.

But even among the “web-forward” audience, the Spacetop, in its current iteration, is not ready to fulfill its own mission. It sells itself as being able to display an endless number of web pages, but its processor isn’t capable of that. It sells itself on multitasking, on the space for creativity — it’s essentially a multi-monitor setup in one, after all — but is powered by a chip that’s well known to be best for running a few tabs at a time. It sells itself on combining the advantages of a big-screen laptop with an ultraportable form factor, but it also brings the downsides of that ultraportable form. The estimated battery life is not good for a consumer who wants to work from anywhere. The keyboard is not as large as the touchpad. The port selection is a grand total of two USB-C, one of which will be occupied by the charger a large portion of the time. (When I told Berliner that customers might hope for a more diverse port selection, he blinked and asked, “What’s the use case?”)

This isn’t all that surprising; the product is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, and Sightful’s representatives were trying to run more tabs than I’d ever recommend running on that chip. Berliner says that the first batch of units (limited to 1,000 early adopters) will only be going to people whose workload is “web-forward.” Video editors and game players don’t need to apply. If we don’t think this can solve the main pain point of their experience, then we won’t include them.

Overall, performance was choppy. The laptop crashed in my demo session. Things like scrolling and resizing windows were slow. The browser froze when I tried to play a video onYouTube. It seemed like things were barely crawling along at times.

This is, incidentally, why I don’t feel that the 100-inch screen accolade is quite accurate — the Spacetop gives you no peripheral vision. Everything outside of your immediate view is dark. While the Spacetop can technically display more windows than you might be able to cram onto a 13-incher, you can still only see a few at a time.

The actual field of view is small enough that you usually can’t see the full 100-inch space at a time. You can see areas that are not on Sightful’s spec sheet, but you need to move your head around in order to see them. This created some amusing scenarios where I’d lose the cursor somewhere off to the side and not be able to find it (Sightful says the cursor will immediately jump to where your eyes are in future updates) or forget where I’d put a tab and be whipping my head around wildly trying to find it.

Seeing through the Glasses: The Spacetop, a companion for the Sightful AR Glass System and creator of the Spacetop

I enjoyed using the device, and it’s cool to feel like you’re moving your windows in open air. I can see myself working it effectively, or at least a buttoned-up version of it.

It’s impressive technology. You can see your desktop well, but you can also see what’s behind and around it, well enough that I could easily walk around while using the device. Audio comes through the glasses as well, and it is quiet but also not audible to those around you. The resolution was very good. It is unlikely that anyone else will notice what you are doing if you are sitting in Starbucks. There aren’t fancy gesture controls or other systems to pick up on. If you can use a Windows laptop, you can get the hang of this.

Nevertheless, there are few things worse than having to wear AR glasses over one’s own glasses, so I was thrilled that Sightful, like Magic Leap, offers prescription inserts. (Berliner is a Magic Leap alum.) I had to cram my glasses under my goggles, but I wouldn’t send the company my prescription if I were a real customer.

A hundred inch laptop would be the size of a 13 incher, if you went to Best Buy tomorrow. I thought the 13 incher was probably the most portable, but I wasn’t a big fan of sitting around in glasses all day. “You are already wearing glasses?” Berliner said as he pointed at my face. Fair enough, but my glasses were hand-selected and custom-molded to my head shape, and I couldn’t say the same for Sightful’s hefty goggles.

I was a tad disappointed in the company Sightful that I sat down with to demo its new product, the Spacetop. It is not, in fact, shaped, decorated, or themed like a spaceship.