We expect a few more companies to unveil tech with transparent screens this year – but they won’t come cheap.
When LG announced the first transparent OLED display at the 2024 CES consumer show in Las Vegas, it made headlines worldwide and sparked awe among consumers.
The display looked like futuristic tech straight out of a sci-fi movie, allowing holograms to appear as they were floating in the air.
To manufacture see-through OLED displays, only transparent materials are used, allowing light to pass through. However, they also have some limitations, such as less brightness and color fidelity.
For the past five years, LG and various other companies have been improving the technology and working to address these issues, moving the screens beyond the concept stage.
A transparent TV for $60K
At last year’s CES show, LG unveiled its Signature OLED T, a 77-inch 4K OLED TV. In mid-December, LG made the TV commercially available for a cool $60,000.
To make the most out of the novel concept, the OLED T has a few modes.
T-Objet is an Always-On Display that transforms the screen into a transparent digital canvas, which LG claims may be used to showcase artwork, videos, or photos. Meanwhile, T-Bar, a sleek info-ticker that appears along the bottom edge of the screen, provides sports results, IoT device statuses, weather forecasts, or song title information.
LG, however, wasn’t the first company to bring transparent OLED TVs to the world.
Xiaomi released its 55-inch transparent screen Mi TV Lux in China in 2020, and sometime later made it available in the US. While the company didn’t specify where it sourced its panel, many speculated that it came from LG.
Xiaomi’s TV was nearly ten times cheaper, but it still cost $7,200, which is far more than a typical high-quality OLED. And, given its price tag, the TV experience wasn’t flawless.
As Linus Tech Tips revealed in its unboxing video review, you could see individual pixels on the screen, and it had dead individual pixels, which were quite visible on a large screen.
Moving beyond transparent OLEDs
In addition to LG and Xiaomi, more companies are experimenting with transparent displays.
Last year, Samsung announced its transparent screen with microLED, a technology superior to OLED in many aspects. The company placed a microLED screen next to an OLED screen at last year’s CES, showcasing its advantages, including brighter colors and a more transparent glass panel.
Considering that microLED is more expensive to make, transparent microLED TVs could also feature a high price.
Transparent screens are also moving beyond TVs. At last year’s Mobile World Congress tech show in Europe, Lenovo showcased its Thinkbook transparent laptop with a 17.3-inch mini LED display. It features a 720p resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate.
The company didn’t disclose whether it would make it commercially available and how much it could cost.
As the new transparent screen technology evolves, we can expect to hear more about it in 2025.
However, due to its high price, it will likely primarily be used in commercial venues. Companies could use transparent displays to advertise their products in supermarkets, restaurants, or expensive hotels, where users' attention could justify the cost spent on the technology.
There are also cheaper alternatives to OLED and MicroLED.
Last year, scientists at the Korean Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM), along with private partners, developed a 100-inch nano transparent screen (NTS) that they claimed could be made at a fraction of the cost of transparent OLED.
The creators of the screen expected it to find use cases across products, such as transparent displays in department stores and supermarkets, smart windows for buildings, and versatile transparent displays suitable for both indoor and outdoor promotional uses.
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