New ThinkPads are always worth checking out, but it’s, ahem, clear what Lenovo’s most exciting announcement is at Mobile World Congress. It’s hard to ignore, even if you can see right through it: The company is showing off an experimental transparent-screen concept laptop, a ThinkBook the company is dubbing “Project Crystal.”We were able to spend some time up close and personal with Project Crystal at a private meeting before its unveiling, and it made quite an impression. You can watch our hands-on session and feature rundown in the video above.Before you get too carried away and scroll down for a release date or a price, stop here. As it stands, Lenovo currently has no plans to bring Project Crystal to market as a real product. This is 100% a proof-of-concept device, promising only that this technology is possible; maybe it appears in a different product down the line. For a closer look, and some ideas for what you’d use a see-through screen to do, check out the video above and details below.Lenovo’s All-Glass Translucent DisplaySo, about that screen. The display—an array of micro LEDs sandwiched between clear glass—is the obvious draw here, though it’s not the only interesting or unusual part of the design. This screen measures 17.3 inches diagonally, and it is completely borderless, with glass on three sides connecting to the bottom hinge. Micro LEDs present high brightness as an advantage; this panel can push up to 1,000 nits, which is also crucial to displaying visibly on clear glass.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Your first inclination (and mine) may be to wonder why you’d want a glass display, and what benefits it brings. (In normal desktop operation, your text and icons will read backward from the reverse side, of course.) Lenovo ran us through some demos of potential use cases, giving a glimpse of future workflows. We’ll go through those below, but putting them aside for a moment, experiencing and using the screen is what struck me first. In short, it’s extremely cool to see in person, one of those stand-out prototype moments you enjoy before thinking too much about the practicality of it all. Despite the default transparency, it is easy to see images, text, and icons displayed on the screen; our photographs here aren’t nearly as clear as it was in person, because the effect is simply difficult to capture on camera.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Desktop icons seemingly float in the air—mostly crisp, with only a slight fuzz around the edges—but remain perfectly usable. Video content is somewhat less viewable in transparent mode—all of the quickly varying colors and motion don’t stand out quite as well on a transparent background, but you can still see what you’re watching easily enough.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The micro LEDs are, crucially, capable of making portions of the display virtually opaque, too. If you pull up, say, a side window or panel, it can display it as entirely white rather than see-through by activating all of those LEDs, showing up white as on a normal screen. In this way, part of the screen can remain transparent, while the other displays an opaque white or colored background.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Since the screen is transparent, the background—be it a wall or window—behind the display does make a difference to your viewing experience, though maybe not as big a one as you’d think. A dark background helps some lighter images and text show up more clearly, and putting it against a window or other light source can diminish the effect. Still, the screen remained largely legible in all of these scenarios. A 17-inch laptop with a glass screen isn’t the most portable device, but being able to move it when needed is vital to making use of the display.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The screen isn’t the only core feature transformed by Lenovo: The keyboard and touchpad are one entirely flat touch-enabled surface, a bit like on last year’s Yoga Book 9i. You’ll find no physical keys, but rather, where you’d normally find the keyboard deck and touchpad, you’ll notice one smooth surface, with LED keys you can turn on and off. Keeping the keyboard and touchpad sections active allows you to use them in those ways—typing on a touch surface is about as effective as you’d expect, compared with a real keyboard—or you can turn them off to enable one giant drawing surface.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The supersize tablet surface could be used with a pen in conjunction with the display to draw, edit, or create content when you don’t need a keyboard. With the keyboard completely flat, the glass display can fold into place fully flush against the laptop chassis for added protection. You’d certainly want a laptop like this in a well-padded, protected bag for travel, though, since the back of the glass screen is still exposed when lying flat. You’ll also find a rear-facing camera, which seems like a minor note, but is important to the concept behind the laptop—more on that in a moment.Designing for the Future: AR, AI, and More Use CasesBeyond looking cool, transparency opens the door to use cases other laptops aren’t capable of. These mostly revolve around augmented reality (AR), which, it should be said, does not apply to plenty of everyday users. Some of the suggested scenarios, like the main demo we were shown, combine the transparent display with generative AI. I understand if this lacks appeal for normal PC use and sounds more niche; this is likely another reason why this isn’t a real product ready for the market at this time, with AR and AI still in the early stages.Regardless, Lenovo demoed a few AR scenarios, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see them implemented in the real world. The main demo used the clear panel, rear-facing camera, and AI in conjunction. This was somewhat of a pre-baked demonstration, with specific software less important than the idea.
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(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
To start, Lenovo opened up an application with an interface that had a menu on one side—imagine your Adobe software of choice—and a clear “window” to see behind the laptop screen on the other portion. Then, a small potted flower was placed behind the laptop, in view of the rear camera and in the crosshairs of the clear “window” portion on the screen. The camera and software detected the object; the AI noted it was a flower; and then AI “generated” a small bird to fly in over the flower. AI also composed a chunk of text describing the type of flower, as it detected it. (Again, this was a pre-baked demo.) Different objects could be used to generate different images and, in theory, the software and camera in conjunction would always try to create relevant content for the subject. I can easily see extending this idea to educational purposes, and with different objects and software, entertainment, or creative uses. It would require well-tuned AI to recognize and generate content, but the PC market is determined to move that way, especially following the launch of Intel’s Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” processors and their onboard AI-processing NPUs, as well as Windows’ Copilot AI assistant.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Lenovo’s other suggested scenarios used the same core idea, with AR and the camera at the center. Think of an interior-decorating or design studio that could point the laptop into a space and overlay virtual furniture, decor, or remodeling. If you bring AI into the equation, it could even process and suggest colors as well as specific items. Another theoretical use case was for checking in to a hotel, where the desk attendant and camera could see a guest approach the desk, have the AI recognize them by face, and pull up the check-in information. Of course, that comes with some chilling Bourne Identity-style implications as far as facial recognition, but I don’t think it will surprise anyone if and when similar technology is rolled out.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Some of these are concepts possible with AR headsets now, but AR support on Windows (not to mention, the general adoption of headsets) has not taken off; Project Crystal would require just the device without any wearables, and it lets you see and work on one device with its own processing power.For now, this laptop and these ideas will remain theoretical, at least in this form. Similar implementations may be in development elsewhere, which may drive Lenovo to revisit this device or find a way to perfect and scale the concept of a transparent laptop display. Until then, Lenovo seems happy to let us dream.
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