This $1,900 laptop forgoes a physical display in favor of a pair of AR glasses

WTF?! Laptops nowadays have all sorts of crazy designs to stand out. You may have heard of models with foldable and transparent displays, but what about those that don’t have any display at all? Sightful just announced the Spacetop G1, a $1,900 portable computer that requires you to wear augmented reality glasses.

After nearly three years of development by veterans from Apple, Microsoft, and Magic Leap, Spacetop G1 is finally emerging from its invite-only Early Access period and attempting to reimagine the way we work and create on the go.

The bottom half houses a typical laptop with a 79-key keyboard, a multi-touch trackpad, and two USB-C ports for connecting peripherals. But it’s in the top half where things get interesting. Instead of a physical display, the laptop has a hole that houses AR glasses. These glasses are equipped with two 1920 x 1080 OLED displays with a refresh rate of 90 Hz.

The glasses create a huge, 100-inch virtual workspace, or at least the illusion of one. Since the field of view maxes out at 50 degrees, you probably won’t be able to see the entire work area at once and will have to move your head to view different sections.

Nevertheless, Sightful argues that this “almost infinite” workspace combined with a custom spatial operating system called SpaceOS (built on ChromiumOS) can seriously boost productivity and creativity. The software optimizes the virtual desktop for AR navigation using custom gestures adapted to the glasses.

“We launched Spacetop to free people from the constraints of time and space because we don’t believe people should be stuck with 14-inch screens,” says Sightful CEO Tamir Berliner. “We strongly believe in the power of AR glasses as a first step. Physical reality has always been a limiting factor – bulky, uncomfortable headsets, limited battery and processing power, and a world that hasn’t yet been built for everyday augmented reality.

Under the hood, the Spacetop G1 features a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip with an Adreno 740 GPU and a Hexagon NPU that delivers up to 48 TOPS of AI performance. There is also 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 128 GB of UFS 3.1 memory.

Battery life is up to 8 hours on a single charge, thanks to a 60Wh cell and 63W fast charging support. That’s fine for an ARM-based laptop, but at least it gives the Apple Vision Pro 2.5 hours of battery life. There’s even a 5MP webcam for video calling at resolutions up to 2592 x 1944.

Sightful has also made some improvements since it was first unveiled. AR Glasses are now based on the Xreal Air 2 Pro with prescription lens options. The magnesium alloy body, which weighs 1.4 kilograms, is reinforced to protect the glasses during transport. This could be a significant improvement considering that when closed, the laptop has an extension due to the slot for inserting glasses.

If you’re feeling adventurous and have $1,900 to spare, you can pre-order the Spacetop G1 now for October 2024 delivery with a $100 reservation fee.