Millions of people around the world earn their money by staring at a computer monitor all day, and it's likely that many dream about some kind of distraction from the daily drudgery they face.
If that sounds like you, a startup called Visual Instruments may well have made something to your liking, having developed what it says is the world’s “first transparent monitor”, and it really is quite different from anything else like it.
Transparent displays and TVs are nothing new, of course. LG Electronics sells the insanely expensive Signature OLED T, for example, and has created all kinds of transparent display prototypes for use in subway trains, sliding doors and shopping mall floors. There are other options too, such as Xiaomi’s Mi TV LUX OLED Transparent Edition, which debuted long ago in 2020. But the way they achieve their transparency is very different to what Visual Instruments is doing.
While LG’s and Xiaomi’s displays take advantage of the properties of OLED, which uses semi-transparent materials that humans can see through, they’re not perfectly crystal clear. In fact, the transparency of most displays so far is only rated at about 40% – so the effect is more or less as if you’re looking through a thick fog or mist at whatever is behind the display.
Visual Instruments, on the other hand, says its new Phantom monitor is totally, 100% transparent, because it doesn’t use OLED at all – rather, the monitor display is made from nothing but glass.
How did it manage that? Through simple optical tricks. Rather than relying on semi-transparent pixels, it projects the images from a light source below the glass display. The company explained that there’s a display panel inside the base of the Phantom monitor that beams the images onto its specially coated and highly reflective glass, which acts like a mirror, angling the light towards the user’s line of vision.
As a result, the user is actually a reflection of the image on a sheet of perfectly translucent glass, and the impact is said to be quite something, creating the illusion that the graphics on the monitor are basically floating in mid-air. It merges the physical world with the digital universe, so users can quickly switch their focus from what’s on-screen to whatever is happening in the background. Ideally then, you might want to set up your Phantom in front of a window with a view.
There’s something else about the Phantom, though. Visual Instruments said the transparency is “optional” and that users can set the level to zero. It uses technology similar to the heads-up displays used by pilots in modern aircraft, so users can crank up the “tint” to make the display opaque when they want to be free of distractions.
However, the company claims that transparency is the way to go in most situations, if only because it helps to reduce eye strain. Unlike typical monitors, which force users to constantly focus at a near distance, the Phantom does not. Because someone can look through the display at any time, they can focus on objects at much further distances, and this helps to reduce eye fatigue during long work sessions, it said.
As far as the specifications go, the Phantom is a 24-inch widescreen monitor with a 16:9 aspect ratio and 4K resolution, and it’s capable of hitting an impressive 5,000 nits peak brightness in HDR mode. It promises vivid colours too, with 100% coverage of the sRGB colour palette, and connectivity options include USB-C, DisplayPort and HDMI.
Note that the company did not specify if those are HDMI 2.1 ports or standard ones, and it does not mention the display’s refresh rate, so it’s perhaps not going to be the best gaming monitor.
With regard to availability, if you must get your hands on the Phantom you’ll need to be quick, at least if you want to own one of the first “Founders Edition” products. Visual Instruments said it’s limiting production to just 10 monitors to begin with, and they’re available to pre-order now, with shipping slated for later in the year.
Pricing will be determined by the user, to an extent, because the company said each Founders Edition Phantom will be “individually configured” to the buyer’s preferences, so we can assume there may be all kinds of accessories and customisations and calibration thrown in, for a price. Still, the company said the base monitor will be priced comparably to the Apple Studio Display, which currently costs around $1,599 for the standard model. That’s surprisingly affordable, but the customisations may still set you back a pretty penny.
It seems that the Phantom’s limited edition run is just Visual Instrument’s way of testing the waters to see what kind of demand there is for a truly transparent monitor. It’s certainly a cool and interesting gimmick, and there may indeed be benefits in terms of preventing eye strain, but aside from that, it’s hard to think of any truly practical reasons to want a see-through monitor.
