Lenovo is more game to show a transparent laptop than ship one

Lenovo is proud of the transparent OLED laptop it showed at Mobile World Congress, but don’t expect to see the technology in a consumer-grade device anytime soon.

Speaking to Reviews.org at the company’s Innovate 2024 event in Thailand, Lenovo’s Gregory Beh said that the prototype (which featured a 17.3-inch transparent OLED screen) was more of an experiment than an expansion into a new category.

“What we showed at MWC was just to reiterate our commitment to driving new innovative products and technologies into our consumer products, our enterprise products and all,” he said.

Put another way: Lenovo didn’t put out the futuristic-looking concept wasn’t something the company showed because it had a firm use case in mind for the technology but because it wanted to find one.

“We need to study what the consumer needs and use cases are,” he said.

Fortunately, Beh said that Lenovo came away with a lot of helpful feedback from those who saw the machine at the recent Mobile World Congress.

While Beh said that he couldn’t comment on future products, the way that the company has incorporated new technologies into its Yoga and ThinkPad laptops in the past makes it feel less like a matter of if than when.

The dual-screened Yoga Book 9i isn’t specifically aimed at those who want a laptop with two screens as much as it targets those who want a mobile multi-screen experience. A transparent OLED might not be around the corner, but it could be on the cards once Lenovo works out who that kind of product is for.