This week, Xiaomi announced a range of products to celebrate its 10th anniversary. We don’t know what we expected, other than new smartphones and maybe wearables. But what we got is scooters and a… wait for it… transparent OLED TV.
Called the Mi TV LUX OLED Transparent Edition, the TV looks like a slate of glass in a frame, just as you’d expect a transparent TV to look like. So you’ll have a good look at the image on the TV as well as the plain wall and all the cables behind the TV.
But you know what, it’s cool. It’ll make just about any room feel like Iron Man’s lab. But we’re not-so-convinced about the practicality of it. The panel is a 55in OLED transparent display with 93% DCI-P3 colour support and 120Hz refresh rate. According to Xiaomi, it has a “150,000:1 static contrast ratio and an infinite dynamic contrast ratio”. But we reckon whatever’s behind the TV will influence this contrast, and will inevitably make the picture clearer or distorted.
So in this case, it’s more a type of holographic projector, because all of the actual display components are housed in the base of the display. This means you won’t be able to mount it, and the base is non-negotiable. But at least it’ll look cool on your TV stand.
Then we get to the oh-so-important detail — the price of this majestic piece of tech. It won’t come cheap, because of all the weird and wonderful tech inside. The Mi TV LUX OLED will cost a whopping RMB50,000 (which, converted, works out to R125,000 give or take). In the luxury TV market, this isn’t particularly overpriced (if you look at SA), but it’s a pretty penny to dish out on a not-so-practical TV.
Source: The Verge