Samsung Shows Off Transparent Laptop: Cool But Why Would You Want One?

Samsung is trying to impress at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas with a transparent laptop.

The Samsung Mobile Display’s prototype 14-inch notebook is billed as the world’s first and largest transparent OLED prototype. The screen is 40% transparent, which as the image from Engadget above shows, allows you to see your hand through the screen.

It’s cool tech, but why would anyone want a transparent laptop to begin with? What possible use case is there for a transparent laptop screen? Sure, you might think augmented reality, but this is a laptop, not a mobile phone. You’re hardly going to wander around pointing your laptop at things for some augmented reality goodness, and anything a transparent screen can do could easily be replicated by an outward facing camera on the rear anyway.

The video demo from Engadget as follows. I’m filing this in WTF