- Inside this crate
(drill whirring)
is the Mi TV LUX Transparent Edition,
a 10-year anniversary product from Xiaomi,
that is only available in China,
and that they are not ceding to the media,
presumably because it's really stupid.
I mean, who out there was thinking,
"Gee, if only my TV was transparent
so I could see all the things behind it,
instead of the content on the screen."
It's priced at a whopping $7,200,
and I bought it,
so that I can share with you guys just how bad it is.
And this video is brought to you by Ting.
Ting is the mobile carrier that's customer focused
and wants to help you save money
by getting you to pay only for the mobile data you use.
(upbeat music)
I gotta say, I'm really excited about this thing.
There was shockingly little information
available about it online,
at least on English websites anyway.
So, full disclosure here, guys.
I don't even know what resolution it is.
$7,000, 55-inch TV here, folks.
Hey, Mathias,
can I borrow you for a minute?
I gotta get the crate off this big waste of money.
(Linus hoots)
Hey, Andy, you around?
Andy, you are my Chinese translator.
Help me, please.
Like always believe the good thing will about to happen.
- Yeah, I mean, if I just
if I knew someone just blew seven grand U.S.
on something this stupid,
I'd think they need a pep talk, too.
I think I've identified a small problem, Andy.
- Which way's the front?
- Yeah, exactly.
- [Brandon] The IO is...
- Is there IO.
Oh, hey, there you go.
Thanks, Brandon.
I couldn't see that from here.
- Hi.
- Hello.
It's the world's most fun COVID barrier.
Transparent TV.
Please don't break.
Oh, this is a lot of pressure.
- [David] Do you want me to hold it?
- No, I'm good. I got this.
Oh, so much static.
(plastic crinkling)
Ah, it shocked me!
Jerk!
Oh, should be careful with it, sorry.
Ow (laughs)!
This thing is so trippy.
Now, this isn't even the first time
I've seen a transparent OLED TV.
That was back in Korea when I was allowed to travel still,
when I went to LG's headquarters.
And while I suspect that this is an LG panel,
because who the hell else
is making transparent OLED displays?
If I recall correctly,
though it has been a while,
this seems quite a bit more clear.
I don't think this is the same generation of technology
that that one was.
Now on a normal OLED, or a more traditional TV,
you would have like a reflective or opaque back layer,
that even if you popped the, you know,
the back off of the chassis,
would not allow you to see through the pixels themselves,
but here, every component of the pixel stack
has been designed to be as see-through as possible.
So the only thing you can really see,
and you can see them if you get close,
is actually the wiring, like the connective wiring
between the self-emissive, organic LEDs.
I think that's about 10 pixels, right there.
So that would make,
.5 at about 100.
I think it's 1080P.
Because if that's about 100,
there's no way that's 4,000.
Did I just spend seven grand on a 1080P display?
We've got 120 hertz support,
and what's funny is in the press release,
they actually talk about the gaming experience on it.
Like you would wanna do that.
We've got a second with eARC support.
eARC means that has at least some subset
of the HDMI 2.1 specification supported,
a third HDMI, then we've got a couple of USB 2.
(blows raspberry) USB 2 ports, really?
Optical Avnet,
I don't think it came with the adapter,
but you could put a composite or component
or whatever that would be, probably composite.
Network and then an antenna port.
Says 220 volt right there. - [Andy] I googled,
and their voltage is like 100 to 240.
- I don't trust, well, okay,
I'm trusting you,
but then why wouldn't they just put that on the product?
We're gonna do it.
You ready?
Hey, there it is.
That's definitely 1080P, man.
Ooh!
Check out these pixels, look at the size of these pixels.
Oh!
I guess you can probably still see the size of the pixels.
They're like kind of huge. They're huge pixels.
Good thing we have Andy.
Okay, so I pressed these buttons, but what does it do?
- [Andy] Yeah, like just have the remote,
closer to this thing and hold those two buttons together.
And wait until you hear a beep.
- Hello!
- [Andy] Pairing.
- It didn't beep, lies.
- [Andy] Beep.
- Is it normal when setting up a Xiaomi product
for me to install their app thing
and for it to try and install three gigs worth
of other random crap on my phone?
- Oh, that's like third party app store.
- I get it, their app is on this app store.
So I had to get this app store first.
Okay, so why don't we try again?
Oh, okay.
So that's why they gave me a whole app store.
Okay, we're taking the tour,
but the tour guide doesn't speak English,
so if you could...
Settings, configuration manual.
- No, this is actually my.
It just say my.
My HDMI input and stuff, you know.
- TV.
- Recommendation or, yeah.
VIP! - Porn.
- Very important porn. (laughs)
- Okay, look at that,
streaming to you all the way from China.
Just standing here,
I honestly kind of forgot it was a see-through TV
and that's what I was supposed to be looking at.
In a darker scene,
I can see right through it, but...
- [Andy] And that's because- - This?
- [Andy] And that's probably
because we have those lights behind the TV.
- Yeah, without that, man.
That's kinda cool, isn't it?
Okay, enough of exploring the ocean.
That's, I'm too wet now.
I was too excited.
So, is there a language option?
- [Andy] Yeah, language. (Linus gasps)
- No, yes!
Yes, confirmed!
Wait, did it work?
- [Andy] Yeah, it says like some sort third-party app
might not support English.
- Oh, oh. - [Andy] But other than that,
you have English here.
- We English now, boys.
Yes!
They've got captive portal support, that's cool.
I mean, Xiaomi does have TVs.
So it shouldn't be that surprising
that they've like got a TV OS that's reasonably fleshed out.
Even if it's on a super weird TV today.
So this has an always on display option
with different styles.
What are these?
Oh, that's pretty, very cool.
So if the idea was to use it as an impressive art piece,
and you're like, you know,
fancy pants home where $7,000 on an art is like,
whatevs, no big deal, I guess.
Then you can do like this or whatever.
- It just feels like I could catch the thing.
Oh my God! - No way!
Nice.
Okay,
MEMC would be motion compensation probably, right?
- [Andy] I'm not sure.
This is English.
- Local contrast.
Why would it have like a local dimming setting
on an OLED?
Okay, can do your own white balance,
tune your color.
Pixel adjustment on, cool, okay.
Let's plug something in.
That was so weird.
So last time it said active signal resolution 4K,
desktop resolution, 1920 by 1080.
What's weird though is it still kind of looks like crap.
Also, we've got a dead pixel.
Dang it!
Right in the middle of my Chrome icon.
You say you won't buy one.
That's it, that's the deal breaker for you?
The one dead pixel, not the $7,000 see through?
- [Andy] Okay, if I pay seven grand.
- It looks like you were right, Andy.
I think only one of the inputs supports 120 hertz,
which is super weird in this day and age,
like 120 hertz, 1080P.
It's like nothing anymore.
It's kind of tedious switching inputs.
Like where's this,
the lag input switch button?
I guess the expectation
is you're gonna do most of your consumption streaming,
like is that the norm?
Input lag, honestly feels better on this input as well,
already, but I still don't see a 120-hertz option.
Let's try doing it as a custom resolution.
Let's just break it.
I've seen displays get pretty F'ed up for like days
from doing this.
Curiously, it seems to be doing
some kind of weird chroma sub-sampling nonsense.
It doesn't look quite as sharp.
You got like kind of a green fringing
on these windows and stuff.
Got another day disappointing update for you, Brandon.
Check this out.
You can configure the display mode,
and the game mode does in fact improve the input lag.
So that feels,
that feels pretty darn good.
Unfortunately, if I don't want warm colors,
it changes me to user mode,
and it's mushy input, again.
Why?
Then making matters worse,
this is super annoying,
I have another dead pixel!
Do you know how much each of these pixels costs?
If you spent seven grand on a stupid, clear TV,
you'd want all the pixels to work too.
Viewing angles are surprisingly decent.
It does turn a little bit bluey greeny
once you get to kind of an extreme angle,
but as long as you're within reason,
I'd say it's pretty darn good.
Let's play some video games, shall we?
One benefit of the hockey puck approach
is that the built-in speaker's actually
not terrible for a TV.
- [Andy] They say they support Dolby Atmos.
- Yep.
- [Andy] Well, I don't think this thing support HDR.
They didn't mention- - Really?
- [And] At least they didn't mention it on the spec sheet.
- It's pretty rough for anyone
who is stupid enough to buy it, anyway.
I think we've got a few more stuck pixels up here.
Oh, those are sloppy.
It otherwise looks great.
We put a black surface behind it.
So just like some black kind of velvety cloth.
And like, I can't even tell it's clear.
I mean, it's not much of a feature
when like the feature is that you can't see the feature,
but, oh, hi, Andy. - Hi.
- Oh, Laura don't fall.
Is she swimming.
(laughs) Going for a little front crawl here.
Conceivably, you could game on it.
I don't know that I would have it in my press release
if I was Xiaomi,
but there you go.
Let's try something more cinematic.
Even at 1080P at this size,
I wouldn't expect that much screen door effect,
but probably as part of trying to make the screen
as transparent as possible,
they actually want the pixels to be smaller.
So you're gonna get more of like
a noticeable grid in between them.
Yeah, this is not a great experience,
which kind of raises the question,
what is the point of this?
Who does buy something like this?
And the answer,
believe it or not, is pretty straight forward.
Commercial enterprises.
I mean imagine if LTTStore.com,
had a display like that in the window.
Wouldn't you want to buy it?
Look at that water bottle.
You can see right through the marketing materials.
Pretty cool, right?
So bottom line,
even if it doesn't make any sense for consumers,
if I was a high-end hotel or banquet hall or a law firm,
and I wanted something really eye catching in my lobby
to make potential customers think
that I was pretty swanky,
something like this could potentially make sense,
even if it does come with a few bugs.
Speaking of bugs, our sponsor for this...
(fist pounding) Hello?
Hey, wait a minute.
Who is that guy?
That's not supposed to happen.
Oh my God, no.
They stuck me in here.
I hope, just give me a second, I just.
Hey, hey!
Shoot, I hate this remote.
Hey, I'm stuck in here.
That's not the real Linus.
Did someone, ah?
No, no stop.
Hold on, I got it.
No, no, don't turn it off!
There we go. Sorry about that.
Just a weird thing.
Bad firmware.
Speaking of weird,
this video is brought to you by Ting.
Ting is the mobile carrier,
it's, they're so weird because if you call them,
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If you enjoyed this,
you may also want to check out our video
on the Kick-Proof TV from China.
We really did not go easy on that thing.
By the way,
if you wanna see our videos earlier
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