Lenovo Thinkbook Transparent Display Laptop: A Novel Touch Pencil, a Novelty for Artists, and What They Can Do
A laptop concept from the company has a transparent display and a completely flat touch keyboard, which isn’t the same as a physical keyboard. When images of the device were leaked, I assumed it was just another sci-fi flourish, but it was actually part of a 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.
This being 2024, there was also an AI element to Lenovo’s demonstration. The company put a camera on the rear of the laptop to be used for objectrecognition on devices behind it. The results can beviewed on-screen while it is still in full view. The laptop would recognize sunflowers as such if it was behind them. Show that a butterfly is flying around them. Put a small model of coral and you see a fish. It was very proof-of-concept stuff.
Like its rollable laptop from last year, Lenovo isn’t pretending that it has any plans to release its ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop as a consumer device. In the next five years, the technologies will make it into a real laptop, and Butler hopes that revealing this proof of concept will start a public conversation about what it could be useful for.
Until Lenovo finds its killer use case, we’re left with an exceptionally cool-looking device that’s capable of some fun novelties. When I just finished my interview, I moved my Macbook screen to double-check my phone behind it, and Butler leaped on it.
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. Then you’re left with a flat surface to sketch on, similar to what you’d 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 would you like 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.
The inner components of the laptop can’t be seen. It’s a huge 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 is 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 newest MacBooks hit 500 nits.
It was yellow due to the 55 percent light transmissivity of the screen, and part of it is due to the colour of the screen. 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.