Each year there's a major mobile show called MWC (Mobile World Congress – which you can follow in our live blog here) and while it's mainly all about the best phones coming in the future, many companies attend to show their latest wares in other sectors – whether networks, peripherals, or laptops.
It's the last of those categories that Lenovo's new concept fits into – and what a concept it is! Named the Lenovo ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop (which I'll just shorten to 'ThinkBook Transparent'), based on the images on this very page it's clearly (very clearly) a laptop unlike any other I've ever seen. As the name gives away: the ThinkBook Transparent houses a fully see-through display.
I've always been fascinated by Lenovo's concept devices. It was at MWC 2023 that the company showed off a laptop with a rollable display, meaning it could be housed in a smaller footprint for transport, then expand into a larger product for more productive use. To me that makes a whole lot of sense – even if the mechanics and costings aren't there for full production at present.
Lenovo revealed a laptop concept at the MWC 2024 show featuring a fully transparent Micro LED display. It's called none other than the ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop.
The ThinkBook Transparent is a whole other thought process, of course, but it's very of the moment: it was at CES 2024, which is the world's largest consumer technology show and took place back in January, that Samsung showed off a transparent Micro LED technology, while LG presented its transparent OLED T TV – which will actually go into production, the company claims.
Lenovo is riding the wave of up-to-the-minute tech here, as it appears the company is using Samsung's technology in a product for the first time: "The ThinkBook Transparent features a world-first 17.3-inch Micro-LED transparent display" claims the company's press release, "providing a completely borderless and see-through display experience". And I think it looks great.
In a laptop format a transparent display creates an interesting dynamic: whatever you're looking at or working on will be visible to those around you, of course, but that also creates use cases for sharing and collaborating on work when applicable. In certain office spaces or creative industries it could make genuine sense. I wouldn't fancy using one on the train to work, mind, but as a nod to the future the ThinkBook Transparent is a cool futuristic vision that I never knew we needed. Yet I'm so here for it.
