WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF
The future of computing shouldn’t be the crappy laptop, this is way cooler and getter better with every version.
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Sometimes when you’re on a long haul flight in Economy it can be cramped – too cramped to get out your work laptop and get on with whatever boring task you had in mind. But, if you were using Sightful’s Spacetop G1 you’d have no such space invader worries at all. This is an augmented reality laptop, and by that I mean it’s a pair of customized AR glasses from XREAL connected to what looks like the bottom section of a laptop with a keyboard and trackpad. There’s no physical display – just a 100-inch virtual screen you can see through the glasses, floating over the real world.
If this sounds familiar, that might be because the company came out of stealth mode almost exactly a year ago and launched the Spacetop as an early-access product. Those interested could apply for a unit and beta test the machine as the Israeli startup tweaked and improved the hardware and software.
See it in action.
Now, a year later, it can be preordered today for $1,900. The Spacetop G1 has a more polished design, new software features, and will ship in October.
First off, this new version is much slimmer than the original. Tamir Berliner, cofounder and CEO of Sightful, says that the first version couldn’t fit in every backpack, but the G1 shouldn’t have issues because the keyboard chassis is thinner. I’m still sceptical because of the … big bump on the machine, which is where the glasses are stored. It looks like an abscess ready to pop.
The next most obvious change is how you store the glasses. In the original model you instinctively want to fold the glasses and store them in the cradle in front of the keyboard. Berliner noticed this and said that’s how it should have been designed in the first place. Instead, the original forced you to keep the glasses unfolded and bring the cover over as it sits in the cradle. It was awkward.
That’s no longer the case on the G1. Now, you can fold the glasses, stow them in the dedicated cave baked into the lid, and bring the lid down. Much more intuitive. There’s no neat way to store the cable, but the company insists it’s intended to sit messily above the keyboard – there’s a curve in the lid to accommodate the cable, ensuring it’s not pressing any keys when the Spacetop is closed.
The glasses are a newer version from XREAL, but these are still customized for the Spacetop’s needs. Namely, the cameras that shoot out into the real world for augmented-reality sensing are specifically pointed slightly downward to detect the Spacetop. This helps with a handful of new software features (see below). More importantly, moving from the early access model to the G1, I immediately noticed the improved comfort, lighter weight, and overall better wearability of the newer model. You’ll be able to get a prescription insert so you can take your glasses off and don the G1 without worry.
Boot up SpaceOS and the 100-inch virtual screen, and everything immediately feels smoother. The dual OLED displays (1,920 X 1,080-pixel resolution per eye, with a 50-degree field of view) now support a 90-Hz screen refresh rate, which helps make the content appear more fluid as you move around the operating system. Things look pretty sharp, too, though bring text super close and it’ll look a bit fuzzy.
It also helps to have an upgraded processor. The Spacetop G1 is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon QCS8550, a sizeable jump from the Snapdragon 865 in the original – Sightful claims a 70 percent boost in performance. There’s even a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) to handle machine learning tasks; more on that later. It packs 16 GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage, and a 60-watt battery that supposedly lasts around eight hours, another bump over the five hours Sightful claimed on the early access model.
The screen itself is brighter, but this is aided by the ability to dim the glasses via the push of a button. Like Transition lenses on sunglasses, you can dim the G1’s glasses to two different levels, and this was impressive. I stared out the window on a sunny day in New York City and had trouble seeing the augmented virtual screen. However, after dimming the glasses, the world around mostly faded to black and the screens were perfectly legible. Safe to say, it feels like you can use the G1 in nearly any lighting condition.
Many of the other features are the same as the original. The keyboard and trackpad feel nice; there’s still a tiny display built into the keyboard to show additional information. The machine has two USB-C ports and a built-in webcam at the top center of the lid. While the headphone jack didn’t make the cut, other internals now match the latest standards, such as support for Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3, and 5G via the SIM slot. The speakers also got a boost, and they sounded OK in my limited time watching a YouTube video.
SpaceOS is built on Chromium, Google’s open source web browser project. Anything you do on the web, you can do on the Spacetop G1 in SpaceOS. It’s more or less like a Chromebook minus the Android apps. And it’s important to remember that while there’s a more powerful processor in the G1, this is still not going to be a machine designed for intensive workflows like video editing. Again, think Chromebook.
When in SpaceOS in the demo there were more than five browser windows open and laid out around. You can set this up however you’d like, and SpaceOS will always remember it. The field of view on the G1 can feel a bit small, but several software improvements make interfacing with the OS feel intuitive.
First off, you will never “lose” your mouse’s pointer. Trained on some machine learning algorithms, the system now knows to move the cursor where you want it immediately. Even if you left it off on the far right of the virtual screen, if you look to the far left and move the mouse on the trackpad, it’ll immediately appear – no need to swipe your fingers and bring the cursor from the other side. I wish this was a feature on every computer.
The trackpad also now supports gestures. A three-finger swipe to the left will move your entire virtual screen horizontally. Unlike Apple’s Vision Pro, where you have to physically look to the left or right to see your apps placed on the sides of the virtual screen, the Spacetop G1 lets you just move everything to the center with this horizontal scroll function. Smart! Use the same gesture but move forward and back on the trackpad to push your virtual screen far out or super close, letting you get a bird’s-eye view of your screens or hone in on a specific task.
Finally, if you hit Control and use the three-finger gesture to swipe forward on the trackpad, you can move the virtual screen upward. This lets you lie down in bed and move the screen accordingly so you can continue working. It all feels quite seamless.
Then there’s Travel mode. Berliner was keen to highlight this feature and says it utilizes the cameras on the glasses and the company’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) models to remember where the Spacetop is to make sure your virtual screens stay in place.
You see, the virtual screens are fixed in your space. When you get up from a desk, you can walk up to your screens and view them from a side. They don’t follow you around. This is problematic when you hop into an Uber or take off on a plane; your virtual screens will just fly past you. That’s why Apple’s Vision Pro has a Travel Mode that uses the device’s accelerometer to understand when you are moving and ensure your screen stays in place.
While the Spacetop G1 is a big improvement over the original the reality here is that it might take a few more generations before it starts to appeal to most people.
The post This game changing Augmented reality laptop lands this October appeared first on Matthew Griffin | Keynote Speaker & Master Futurist.