For all those harried by the lack of privacy on flights or cafes while working on their laptops these days, Israeli startup Sightful has a nifty solution in the store. Using augmented reality (AR), the company is taking on the challenge of protecting privacy by projecting a display in front of the user’s eyes and away from everybody else’s.
Laptops are a boon for users who need the mobility of a workspace and do not want to be confined to an office desk. Even after years of innovation in smartphone and tablet design, a laptop is still something that users go to when they need to do some serious work.
However, working with a laptop comes with its own drawbacks. There is a trade-off that users need to make with regard to the size of the screen and weight that needs to be carried around everywhere and even if one is ready to carry the extra load, the bigger screen makes information visible to all prying eyes.
Sightful’s solution is quite insightful, to say the least, and addresses both the weight and privacy issues associated with laptops.
The end of laptop displays?
Sightful is calling its solution the Spacetop and uses AR glasses to project 100 inches (254 cm) of the screen visible only to the wearer. This is being done with two 1080p displays and the projection experienced will be similar to the resolution of a full 2K real-world display.
Unlike Zuckerberg’s highly ambitious bet of taking work to the metaverse in the future, Sightful is offering users a chance to take it private in the world now. Since the technology leverages AR, the display is overlaid over the user’s environment, and ensure that the user remains grounded in his surroundings and does not miss something important.
In comparison to a conventional laptop, a Spacetop is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset and Adreno 650 GPU. It will also feature 8GB RAM and 256GB storage, use Wi-Fi 6, and support Bluetooth 5.1.
These specifications are similar to those used on smartphones these days. Spacetop won’t be running Windows but use its own operating system instead which is based on open-sourced Android.
Instead of laying different windows on top of each other, Spacetop OS allows them to be opened side-by-side on the virtual screen, which it refers to as a “Canvas”.
In the absence of a conventional display, the Spacetop will weigh around 3.3 pounds (1.5 kg) and is reported to cost $2,000. Currently, there is no date for when the Spacetop will be available but there is no upfront payment to sign up for the device either. If you are ready to wait, this is a practical solution that could solve your work woes.
