Looking Glass’ new line includes a $300 phone-sized holographic display

Looking Glass announced Thursday that it has begun shipping a pair of new displays, with a third arriving in customers’ homes later this month. The larger Looking Glass 16- and 32-inch Spatial Displays are available now. The smaller model retails for $4,000. The Brooklyn-based startup will provide pricing for the 32-inch model upon request.

The most interesting of the trio, however, is the $299 Looking Glass Go. Price has historically been the biggest barrier to entry for the company’s holographic displays. While scaling up production will continue to drive down unit costs, the technology has proven largely prohibitively expensive.

Looking Glass first tackled the problem in late 2020 with the $399 Portrait, a holographic digital photo frame. Like the Portrait, the Go debuted as part of a Kickstarter campaign. The device has a 6-inch display, making it about the size of a smartphone. The device has a foldable base that props it upright for display purposes.

The company has also lowered the barrier to entry when it comes to content. Users can display spatial images using their own hardware — a feature Apple has rolled out to the iPhone 15 Pro and Vision Pro headset. Looking Glass also offers software that can convert older 2D photos into 3D before sending them to the displays over Wi-Fi.

“With the Apple Vision Pro and new 3D spatial capture capabilities in phones, we decided it was time for a headset-free holographic device for mainstream users,” Looking Glass writes on the Go’s product site.

Ahead of the Go’s release, Looking Glass said it had shipped “tens of thousands” of displays. Now that the line’s price point starts at just under $300, the company will undoubtedly grow that number more quickly, seeking to attract people who were curious about the technology but didn’t have the thousands of dollars needed to jump on the bandwagon.