Screenless Laptop: Mobile computing presents some unique challenges: Laptops with large displays (or multiple screens) give you lots of room for apps and games, but often at the expense of battery life and portability. Meanwhile laptops with thin and light designs, small screens, and/or long battery life solve those challenges, but don’t give you much screen space for multitasking.
A startup called Sightful is taking an unusual approach to this dilemma: Sightful’s Spacetop G1 is a mobile computer that’s basically a laptop without a built-in screen, as it uses a pair of XREAL Air 2 Pro glasses to give you a virtual “100 inch” display. First introduced through a small early access program about a year ago, the Spacetop G1 will be widely available later this year for $1900 (roughly ₹158,575). Customers can reserve it right now for $800 (roughly ₹8,346).
The Spacetop G1 is a game-changer in the laptop market, according to the company, as its spatial operating system helps boost productivity, ensure privacy and bridge the gap between traditional laptops and more immersive AR devices like Apple’s Vision Pro. It runs its own native SpaceOS based on an Android open-source build and can support tools like Google, Office 365, Zoom and more.
The Spacetop G1 has a battery life of 8 hours and is designed through partnerships with Qualcomm, Wistron and XREAL, all of whom helped the company with the hardware and manufacturing of the device. Its glasses, which include magnetic prescription lenses to help people with vision problems, offer a pixel rate of 1920×1080 per eye.
They are connected to the device via a wire but the whole thing is of a reasonable size and weight that can be carried in a shoulder bag.
Screenless laptop design
Unlike Apple’s Vision Pro, the Spacetop is a more modest and simplified engine for people who want to get their work done on the go — rather than transport themselves into a fully immersive virtual environment. Kahn said he’s been using a form of the device for the past year, with people giving him “surprised looks” whenever he uses it in a public setting. “The hardware does give some messages because there’s a keyboard attached, but people know what you’re doing,” he told CTech during the demo. “You’re not moving your hands.”
So what can you buy for $1900? Basically a screenless laptop with a 79-key keyboard and multitouch touchpad, but no display. Instead it has two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports that you can use to connect peripherals, including the AR glasses that come with the device, though you could also use those ports to connect a portable or desktop monitor.
The glasses feature a pair of 1920 x 1080 pixel OLED displays with a 90Hz refresh rate, 50-degree field of view, and 42 PPD (pixels per degree), as well as support for custom prescription lenses. The XREAL glasses also include stereo 6W open-ear speakers.
With Adreno 740 graphics and a Hexagon NPU, Sightful says the system supports up to 48 TOPS of total AI performance… which would have been more impressive if Qualcomm hadn’t launched its Snapdragon X Plus and Elite chips that deliver 45 TOPS using just the NPU, while also providing CPU and graphics performance that is said to be competitive with Intel, AMD, and Apple processors. The SpaceTop G1 also has dual SIM support, thanks to a nano SIM card slot and eSIM.
Screenless laptop Specifications
The Spacetop G1 also has a 60-watt battery, which supports 63W fast charging with a USB-C power adapter. Sightful says you should get up to 8 hours of battery life on a single charge.
It also has a built-in 5MP camera that lets you participate in video calls at a resolution of up to 2592 x 1944 pixels.
While it’s certainly true that a computer is more portable than a laptop with a 100-inch display, at 1.4 kg (3.1lb), the Spacetop G1 isn’t really that light for a screenless laptop. There are plenty of 13 and 14-inch notebooks that weigh less than that nowadays.
The Spacetop G1 has a magnesium body with a hard cover that helps protect glasses when you keep them inside. The whole thing measures 300 x 231 x 62mm (11.8″ x 9.1″ x 2.4″) at its thickest point, making it a little bulkier than most modern thin and light notebooks (though it’s only 13mm or 0.5inch at its thinnest point).