Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. Features

This 3D laptop screen was the coolest thing I experienced at CES 2023

By
CES 2024
Read and watch our complete CES coverage here

I won’t blame you if you hear the phrase, “3D laptop screen,” and roll your eyes. I was skeptical about it too.

This 3D Laptop Display Blew Me Away!

But I experienced two demos of these 3D laptop screens at CES 2023, and came away totally blown away by how immersive this technology was. The first experience I had with it was an actual gaming demo in an Acer Predator Helios 300 gaming laptop.

Recommended Videos

The technology is called Spatial Vision and comes from a company called Dimenco. Using eye-tracking cameras in the top bezel of the laptop, the system can precisely follow your face to create a perfect 3D image just for you. That means no headset and no 3D glasses.

Related

Acer has been experimenting with it in a couple of models over the past few years, and it feels like it’s finally coming to a maturation point. But that’s not the demo that really sold me on the tech.

The zSpace stylus being used with the 3D screen on the ProArt Studiobook laptop.
Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

Over at Asus’ CES booth, the company showed me an example of the 3D display that really caught my attention. Asus has integrated the 3D screen into the ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED — it’s even coming to a cheaper Vivobook model — and in the demo, combined it with a stylus from zSpace. Using a third camera that attached to the laptop via USB-C, it could track my use of the stylus in 3D space. In other words, I could now interact with these virtual objects in 3D space.

The demos were simple. In one, I was just moving around a flapping butterfly or some leaves in a forest environment. In a medical use case, I could inspect a virtual heart, seeing the arteries and rotating it in 3D space. I don’t know how practical any of this stuff is, to be honest, but the technology itself is stellar.

The 3D screen on the ProArt Studiobook laptop.
Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

The quality of the display was a big reason why it was so compelling. The ProArt Studiobook 16 has a 3.2K OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, meaning these environments and 3D objects were sharp and smooth, even when bringing them right up to my eyes. More lifelike animation and resolution goes a long way toward selling your brain on the idea that what you’re seeing is real — at least it did for me.

In a world that’s failing to sell people on putting headsets and glasses on their faces, the mixed-reality potential of 3D displays like these make me really excited for the technology — especially once some more practical use cases are developed.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Luke Larsen
Luke Larsen
Senior Editor, Computing
Luke Larsen is the Senior Editor of Computing, managing all content covering laptops, monitors, PC hardware, Macs, and more.
The one AMD 3D V-Cache processor you should avoid at all costs
Pads on the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

AMD has three high-end 3D V-Cache chips out in this generation, but only one stands out like a sore thumb. There's the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X3D. There's also the best gaming CPU, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. And then, there's the often overlooked middle child -- the Ryzen 9 7900X3D.

While it may seem like an upgrade from the Ryzen 7 alternative, the Ryzen 9 7900X3D is a little bit deceptive in that regard. Here's why you'd be better off going for the Ryzen 7 7800X3D.
A twist on 3D V-Cache
Understandably, most people would also assume that the 7900X3D should show a marked improvement over the 7800X3D. However, most benchmarks will tell you that is not the case, and the underlying cause lies in the architecture of the chip.

Read more
Nvidia turns simple text prompts into game-ready 3D models
A colorful collage of images generated by Nvidia's LATTE3D.

Nvidia just unveiled its new generative AI model, dubbed Latte3D, during GTC 2024. Latte3D appears to be ChatGPT on extreme steroids. I's a text-to-3D model that accepts simple, short text prompts and turns them into 3D objects and animals within a second. Much faster than its older counterparts, Latte3D works like a virtual 3D printe that could come in handy for creators across many industries.

Latte3D was made to simplify the creation of 3D models for many types of creators, such as those working on video games, design projects, marketing, or even machine learning and training for robotics. In Nvidia's demo of the model, it appears super simple to use. Following a quick text prompt, the AI generates a 3D model and shortly after finishes it off with much more detail. While the end result is nowhere near as lifelike as OpenAI's Sora, it's not meant to be -- this is a way to speed up creating assets instead of having to build them from the ground up.

Read more
I tested 3 years of mini-LED gaming laptops, and I was shocked by the results
Three mini-LED laptops playing an HDR demo.

The displays on gaming laptops have come a long way over the past few years. Well, that's the easy thing to say when you look at the specs we have today. A few years ago, most laptops shipped with basic IPS panels, which sometimes stood out with a particularly fast refresh rate. Now, you'll commonly find mini-LED and OLED options, all with speedy refresh rates, low response times, and exceptional HDR.

But how far have laptop displays really come? I've been testing three laptops from the last three years, all outfitted with a mini-LED display, to compare what we have today with what was available just a few years ago. By the numbers, not much has changed, but when it comes down to actually using these displays, it's clear that mini-LED has come a long way in a short time.
Three years of mini-LED laptops

Read more