Key takeaways:
- Spacetop, the world’s first augmented reality laptop, is now taking pre-orders for its $1,900 computer. Shipping starts in October only to U.S. addresses.
- Users of Spacetop don AR glasses, tethered to the laptop, that lets them see a 100-inch screen. They type on a normal keyboard laptop, but one with a ‘reality mode’ key that instantly hides the virtual screen.
- It runs on SpaceOS, Sightful’s spatial computing operating system.
Sightful is now accepting pre-orders for Spacetop G1, its augmented reality (AR) laptop without a display, and it will start shipping in October but only to U.S. addresses.
The $1,900 laptop comes with AR glasses that enable the user to see a 100-inch AR display. How it works: Flip open the laptop, put on the glasses and you’ll see a big AR screen that you can populate with different windows. Use the laptop keyboard and trackpad for typing or moving the cursor around.
The AR glasses are OLED display panels showing 1080p resolution. The glasses weigh a quarter pound (106 grams) and are tethered to the laptop; they cannot be detached. Custom prescription lenses are available.
There is a special ‘reality mode’ key on the keyboard that hides the AR screen so the user can see the full surroundings. Sightful partnered with XReal to design its glasses.
As for sound, the laptop speakers offer virtual surround sound (spatial audio) and there is also a 3.5mm headphone jack. There are two open-air speakers as well in the glasses. In addition, there is a microphone and a webcam offering up to 5MP.
Spacetop weighs 3.1 pounds and is 0.51 inches thin. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, KRYO CPU, Adreno 740 GPU and NPU AI chips. It comes with 16GB of memory and storage of 128GB UFS3.1 (102GB available). It has 2 USB-C ports that can accommodate up to 10 Gb/s.
Sightful says the laptop battery can last up to 8 hours a day. It charges up to 85% in less than two hours, the company claims. When closed, the laptop has a rounded top.
Spacetop runs on SpaceOS, the company’s proprietary operating system that enables spatial computing. Sightful claims that anything a user can do on the web, it can do using SpaceOS.
The founders of Sightful are former executives from Magic Leap, maker of AR glasses.
“Spatial computers are going to change everything from the ground up,†wrote Sightful CEO Tamir Berliner, in a blog post. “Suddenly my calendar is always there, always at the same place, ready for me to jump into the action no matter what I’m working on, or have been working on. It’s positioned in my space, no searching needed, as if it’s been hung on my wall.â€
