A lot of strange things happened in 2020, so it’s probably the perfect year for Chinese tech company Xiaomi to announce the world’s first fully transparent TV. And if you’re wondering what the point is, we’re here to tell you that you are not alone.
The aptly named Xiaomi Mi TV LUX OLED Transparent Edition is available from August 16 in China, and costs ¥ 49,999 ($ 7,200 / £ 5,500), offering “an ultra-immersive viewing experience” in which “images hang in the air” . That is, we assume, as long as your TV is not against a wall. Check out our best 4K displays for some brilliant opaque displays.
In a blog post on her website (adorned with various images of women in extravagant ball gowns standing behind transparent TVs, why not?) Xiaomi calls the TV “a new way to consume visual content previously only available in science fiction movies were seen “. Unlike traditional televisions, the Mi TV LUX Transparent Edition “creatively embeds all processing units at their core”. The TV sports a 55-inch OLED panel with a refresh rate of 120Hz and a static contrast ratio of 150000: 1.
Transparent OLED displays have actually existed for a while as a niche item, sometimes used for characters, for example. But Xiaomi is the tech’s first mass producer, and the first to bring it back to consumers. According to Gizmodo, transparent TVs are pretty useless for anything with dark colors, so it hardly sounds like an adequate replacement for your existing TV.
Technological advances, why would you want such a thing?11 August 2020
Xiaomi even seems to recognize this somewhat. Confidently, towards the end of its announcement, the company says that the Mi TV LUX “is not a TV, but an art piece” (despite ‘TV’ in the name), suitable “not only for houses but also for galleries, museums, shopping centers and theaters “.
When it comes to TV design, the internet does not take kindly to any attempt to reinvent the wheel – so widely suspected vertical TV of this year from Samsung. We’re all for innovation and ambition for design (here are 8 mind-blowing Apple patents we’d love to see realized), but sometimes it’s just as important to remember, if it doesn’t break, don’t repair it.
For those of you on the hunt for a TV that actually, well, works, here are some great deals in your area.
Read more:
