Lenovo Transparent laptop first look at MWC 2024: A Sci-fi dream turn reality

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, I got a preview of the company’s proof-of-concept ThinkBook laptop that features a transparent display that I would like to call a form of augmented reality. After spending a few minutes with the notebook, I came away with weird feelings about how Lenovo is positioning the transparent screen computing device.

After a short wait, a Lenovo employee let me touch the demo unit, and it instantly made me feel like I was not using a laptop I am familiar with. The device looks like one piece of glass with floating Windows icons on it. Moving the cursor appears as if you are moving in mid-air. It’s like you are using an AR headset, and the apps interact in a whole new environment. As I delved into the demo deeper, I started to realise I might take more time to get familiarised with the concept of a transparent screen laptop and what it’s trying to be.

Lenovo says a camera below the hinge helps identify objects behind the screen display and show information about them. (Image Credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)

Perhaps the biggest draw (and also the highlight) is the 17.3-inch MicroLED transparent display, which, according to Lenovo, has a 55 per cent transparency. I walked around to the other corner and looked at the screen from behind, and I could see everything clearly. But as pixels light up, the display becomes less see-through. I must say, peering through the transparent display is pure magic, giving you the feeling of using a dystopian computer for the dystopian world. But again, this works just like a computer you and I use for things like browsing the web, playing videos and interacting with Windows and apps.

However, the concept laptop feels heavy and doesn’t come anywhere close to a MacBook Air in thickness or size. It replaces the traditional clamshell designs with a pair of two screens, with one on the bottom that displays a capacitive touchscreen and a trackpad. After a good few minutes with the hands-on, I later realized that the keyboard is actually a projection that disappears when you bring a stylus close to the drawing surface or even when you step away from the laptop. A Lenovo employee told me that the entire secondary touchscreen could be transformed into a Wacom-style drawing surface, helping digital artists to use the laptop for creative work. That means the laptop’s base could morph into a drawing tablet, opening up new types of use cases.

Lenovo says ThinkBook Transparent’s entire secondary touchscreen can be used as a drawing surface. (Image Credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)

On the back of the concept transparent screen laptop, below the display hinge, sits a camera that faces outward. Lenovo says this could be used to identify objects behind the screen display and show information about them using object identification and generative artificial intelligence. For example, place a flower behind the laptop’s screen, and it would identify it, display the information, and show a butterfly flying around it.

Despite being awkward to try at first, the Lenovo ThinkBook Transparent screen laptop demo was a pretty impressive affair. I haven’t seen anything similar in the laptop form factor, even though before Lenovo, many brands have experimented with transparent displays. But that doesn’t change the fact that Lenovo’s transparent display laptop is far from hitting the retail market anytime soon. Lenovo needs to answer a lot of pertinent questions, like finding the legitimate use case, and until that happens, this device should stay in the labs. Moreover, the company has to figure out certain things that are crucial to the user experience. Most notably, the resolution of the screen remains limited to HD quality. During my demo, texts were clearly readable, but Lenovo is aware that achieving a Full HD display at the moment on a transparent MicroLED panel would be a challenge.

The writer is in Barcelona, Spain attending the Mobile World Congress at the invitation of Xiaomi India