Sightful, an Israeli startup, created the Spacetop, an alternative to traditional laptops. The Spacetop is a mixed reality device equipped with two lenses that offer Full HD resolution for each eye and can create a virtual screen of up to 100 inches.
Source: Sightful
The design of the laptop has remained relatively unchanged for years. A foldable format with a central hinge, a 10″ to 17″ screen, a keyboard, a touchpad, a webcam, speakers… Then the introduction of hybrid formats, equipped with detachable keyboards and more recently also with foldable screens, paved the way the way for a variety of design options. However, one question remains: can the laptop take another form?
One Israeli start-up, Sightful, seems to think so. She designed the Spacetop, a product intended to replace the traditional laptop with mixed reality goggles.
The Spacetop: a new horizon for portable computing?
What does the Spacetop promise? Increase our productivity of course! Yes you’ve read correctly. No 13 or 15 inch screen is required. Thanks to Spacetop, you benefit from a virtual screen of 100 inches. Don’t get carried away too quickly, this is a virtual screen and not a personal cinema screen, although the idea may be tempting.
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Technically, the Spacetop consists of two lenses that offer Full HD resolution for each eye, capable of creating a 100-inch virtual screen or multiple screens with a maximum size of 100 inches.
In terms of equipment, the glasses, which weigh around 100 grams, are connected to a keyboard, which is the heart of the machine. Don’t get carried away, it’s just the spec sheet of a smartphone. There’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chip, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1, and a 5G modem. The battery offers an autonomy of “only” 5 hours.
Oculus Quest Pro // Source:
The experience is reminiscent of the latest Oculus Quest Pro headset, footage of which has been widely shared from the workplace. This has been possible with VR headsets for years, whether from HTC or Meta Oculus.
Spacetop Limits
Although the Spacetop is self-contained, its configuration is very lightweight. With an Android system or a GNU/Linux distribution, only light programs are run. On the other hand, the Spacetop should offer applications that can be connected via cloud computing, be it with its remote PC or with remote machines like Shadow. This is perhaps where the deployment is most interesting, but it requires a good connection with low latency and sufficient throughput.
For now, the Spacetop is just a prototype that will be sold to 1000 people or, depending on your point of view, 1000 guinea pigs. It can therefore still be perfected. The real question is whether it is convenient enough to swap out a laptop PC for several hours a day, or whether it can replace a computer on the go, for example at a construction site. With the basic data sheet, one can also ask oneself whether a smartphone would not be sufficient to provide the glasses with images. Why bother with a second machine?
Doubts remain about the comfort of viewing for a long time, as well as about the performance of the machine. This data sheet requires a remote connection to a more powerful PC… Even with 5G, this limits the use of the product.
Will the spacetop replace the laptop? We have doubts. However, we are excited to see how early adopters will use this innovative product. Meanwhile, prepare your favorite headache painkiller…
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