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Tom's Guide
29-05-2025
- Tom's Guide
This AR software has been a game-changer for my productivity — here's why
I've been a working journalist for over 15 years, and along the way I've been lucky to travel the world covering events like CES, Computex, Gamescom and more. It can be a fun part of the job, but it also tends to leave me with a week's worth of neck and back aches from hunching over my laptop the whole trip. If I'm lucky I can bring a cheap laptop stand with me and use voice dictation to work a little more comfortably in a hotel room, but when you're covering a major event you're often stuck staring at your laptop all day—and that wreaks havoc on my body. But I recently started testing out something that gives me hope for pain-free work trips in the future: Spacetop, the new augmented reality productivity software from Sightful. When launched on a compatible Windows 11 laptop with a pair of Xreal Air 2 Ultra AR glasses plugged in, Spacetop shows you an adjustable workspace that's roughly 100 (virtual) feet across floating in front of you. Spacetop requires a compatible laptop, a pair of $699 AR glasses and a $199/year subscription fee, but in return you get a piece of software that launches an extended AR workspace any time you plug in the glasses. That's a bit more useful than the default way Windows 11 behaves with AR glasses, which is to simply mirror your desktop and show it to you floating in front of your vision. With Spacetop you can drag and drop apps and windows anywhere on the massive floating "wall" in front of you, where they remain until you move them again. AR software like Spacetop unlocks a new level of computing in comfort. So when I booked a trip up to Seattle last week to cover Microsoft Build 2025, I figured it would be the ideal trial for Spacetop. At an event like Build I tend to spend hours sitting in conference rooms listening to people speak as I type on my laptop, which leads to hours of craning my neck down (interspersed with brief bouts of wandering around) followed by hours more of writing in my hotel room. If Spacetop works as well as advertised, I reasoned, it would be a huge help at Build because I could do all that work without having to constrain my neck. So after I booked my tickets and packed my bag I threw the Spacetop review unit Sightful loaned us into my carry-on and hit the road. Now that I'm back, I'm pleased to report it was the most comfortable work trip I've ever taken — thanks to Spacetop. Put simply, I wish I could use Spacetop or something like it for every work trip I ever take again. While there were times I wanted to take the glasses off or disable the software, in general my three days at Build were more comfortable and less painful than any working trip I've taken in decades. Even if you don't feel comfortable putting on a pair of bulky AR glasses in the middle of a work meeting, just having access to the Spacetop software when working during breaks or after hours in my hotel was such a relief. Sure, I felt like a giant nerd working on a laptop with AR glasses on in a hotel bar, but any social stigma was worth it for the sweet, sweet relief of being able to work for a few hours without feeling like someone had taken a 2x4 to my back and neck. The real trial by fire came during Microsoft chief Satya Nadella's Build keynote, which I helped cover live from deep within the bowels of Seattle's Arch Convention Center. I've liveblogged more than a few tech company keynotes in my day, and it's never been easier or more comfortable than it was for me at Build 2025. With Spacetop running I could sit in the audience and watch Nadella walk around the stage hitting his talking points, seamlessly glancing over at my Chrome tabs floating around him whenever I wanted to jot down a quote or respond to a coworker's Slack message. It was a little surreal watching Microsoft's head honcho walk through the ghostly AR browser window where I was drafting a story. It was a little surreal watching Microsoft's head honcho walk through the ghostly AR browser window where I was drafting a story about how Microsoft is all in on AI at Build as he was talking about the company's AI plans for 2025. It felt like I was in the future, and by the time we entered the second hour of the Build keynote my neck and back were so grateful to be there. Sure, it does get tiring to wear the Xreal glasses and stare at glowing AR displays for hours. And the $200/year subscription fee on top of having to lay out $700 for a pair of AR glasses is a big financial hurdle for lots of folks, myself included. But my time covering Build with Spacetop was such a game-changer that I'm already pining for more AR adoption, more competing productivity software and more applications of AR in the workplace in general. Maybe it's just that I'm pushing 40, but I've never felt more passionately how important it is to create ergonomic, comfortable workspaces — and AR software like Spacetop unlocks a new level of computing in comfort.
Washington Post
14-05-2025
- Washington Post
We tried AR glasses. They were great, until they weren't.
Technology We tried AR glasses. They were great, until they weren't. May 14, 2025 | 6:43 PM GMT XREAL's AR glasses, in conjunction with Sightful's Spacetop app, lets you view your workspace in a 3D setting. It may sound strange at first, but The Post's Chris Velazco shows why this is a great it works.
Gizmodo
12-05-2025
- Gizmodo
Spacetop Review: Working in Augmented Reality Strained My Eyes
I was first introduced to Spacetop when the company making it still believed laptops could be different. Sightful, the creators of the $1,900 Spacetop G1 promised the next evolution in laptop design wouldn't sport a screen at all. Instead, the laptop would use a pair of augmented reality glasses and a custom operating system to navigate an ultrawide AR space for your apps. It was perfunctory—and its OS seemed barebones—but I couldn't help but admire the gumption of trying something truly new in the laptop space. It's been one year since then, and Sightful—which was established by a few ex-Magic Leap developers—claims lightweight 'AI PCs' are now good enough they can support AR software natively. Whether that's true or not, and as much as I miss the self-contained G1 AR laptop, Spacetop is now a software solution. Sightful proposes AR aficionados should buy a $900 app and Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses combo that runs on regular old Windows 11 (there's no Mac version yet). The software package offers a year's subscription to a kind of virtual pegboard in AR space where you can individually place all your windows and apps. Your laptop display will still show your desktop, but all your apps now appear in front of your eyes in AR space. Spacetop If all you wanted was a quick and dirty AR environment for your PC, it works, but eyestrain remains a lingering issue. Pros The software with Xreal glasses are good enough to read text The software with Xreal glasses are good enough to read text Software makes it easy to move around windows in AR environment Software makes it easy to move around windows in AR environment Far more innocuous than a VR headset Far more innocuous than a VR headset Cons Eyestrain becomes a big problem very quickly Eyestrain becomes a big problem very quickly Limited FOV forces you to look around more than other VR setups Limited FOV forces you to look around more than other VR setups Occasional glitches mar a seamless experience Occasional glitches mar a seamless experience Yearly subscriptions only In effect, the virtual desktop can become whatever your preferred monitor setup is. If you're somebody who codes on three vertically-oriented screens at once or prefers an ultrawide display to house multiple browsers in landscape, you can do it with Spacetop. The real question is: would you want to do it on Spacetop? If I had the choice, I would sooner work on a single monitor than strain against a screen an inch from my eyes. For review, Spacetop provided me with a preconfigured HP laptop and a pair of Xreal glasses. The software currently only supports Intel Core Ultra Series 1 or 2 CPUs, and you need at least 16GB of RAM and access to a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 USB-C port. The big problem is immediately apparent as soon as you put on the bundled Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses. The 52-degree field of view on the glasses' micro-OLED panels is so minuscule that it forces you to turn your head completely to look at any one of your apps at a time. I can't just glance at my emails on another browser like normal; I have to wheel my noggin around, feeling like a submarine captain staring through the narrow view of a periscope hunting for the one app I need. While in the office, I do most of my work on a MacBook Pro connected to a 34-inch ultrawide monitor. Two screens are enough for my Slack feed, two large browsers, plus any other extraneous apps I need. I tried to recreate the same layout on Spacetop at home, and after two hours the inevitable eyestrain set in. I sit 30 inches away from a computer for nine hours every Monday through Friday, and I still felt more fatigue in just two hours of doing the same amount of work with Spacetop. The Xreal Air 2 Ultra allows for single-click image dimming, but nothing could fully eliminate the pressure building between my eyes. It's a typical downside of having a display right in front of your eyeballs. It's the same issue I have when trying to work in a mixed reality headset like the Apple Vision Pro. Apple's $3,500 'spatial computer' has an FOV of around 100 degrees, twice that of the Xreal Air 2 Ultra. While it's better for multitasking when you can see more of your apps at once, it will still inevitably result in eye fatigue. The Vision Pro has the capability to mirror a Mac screen in an ultrawide format that can stretch from one end of the room to the other. The Xreal glasses are much lighter and more comfortable, but still I found I would need to put them down at around the same point my head would get tired supporting a Vision Pro or Meta Quest. The benefit of Sightful's solution is it is far more innocuous than a Vision Pro when you're in a public space (although you'll be looking around so much you'll look like you're tracking a flying insect only you can see). Spacetop has other smaller issues that make it far more annoying to use than it needs to be. Every time I open up a new window—such as when I open a photo—I have to go fishing for it when it randomly appears in an open space at the top of the AR view. When I hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete, I encountered a glitch where the new window appeared on the desktop view rather than in its own window, which also made the mouse cursor disappear. Hopefully, these problems will be ironed out in future updates. Spacetop could be just another solution that's looking for a problem, but as it stands, AR is still better off for mirroring a single screen at a time. I find the Xreal Air 2 Ultra's displays are high quality enough that I had no problem reading text, and it would be a fine time watching any streaming content from the comfort of a couch. I could imagine a person on the go, whether on a train or plane, could make use of a wider canvas for their apps and browsers. Let's get even spicier. A person at work who really doesn't want their boss watching them play video games on their PC may find safety in the world of AR. I didn't have the opportunity to test how much the AR environment impacted PC performance, but you would still need a hefty GPU to run both the AR environment alongside any other graphically intensive apps. Sightful promotes some laptops like the 2024 Dell XPS or an Asus Zenbook S14 with Intel Lunar Lake chips that would work well with Spacetop. While the Xreal glasses themselves cost $700 individually, the actual software and glasses bundle costs $900, and it comes packed with a $200 12-month subscription to the Spacetop software. There is no option for a monthly subscription, though Sightful told me they were hoping to add that in the future. The lack of a cheaper subscription is a hard pill to swallow. There's less of a chance for a refund if you don't like Spacetop, and it implies there's less guarantee you'll recoup your money if the app's services ever go down. I still trust that AR glasses will improve, and perhaps with a different type of display, Spacetop's eye strain may improve. Spacetop does what it sets out to do, but in a way that leaves me desperate for a typical multi-screen experience. This could be the solution for on-the-go workers, but perhaps there's a time and place for buckling down on that work project. Perhaps you should leave the grindset at home and take that travel time to relax. The screens aren't going anywhere.
CNET
05-05-2025
- CNET
I Always Dreamed of Expanding My Desktop With Glasses. This Software Made It Real
The fantasy is this: I have my laptop -- or tablet, or phone, whatever's nearby -- and by plugging a small pair of display glasses into it, all the things I need can expand on a big virtual display, making seemingly infinite monitor space for myself. Why? To get more space for myself without having to carry anything big. Headphones for your eyes, in a sense. Display glasses like Xreal's and others already work as plug-in displays for lots of devices, and show a virtual monitor that can feel big and TV-like. But they can't do multi-app multitasking, and that's why my recent test-drive of Spacetop's software got me so intrigued. I can see a future forming here, if other software companies figure out a way to work better with things like glasses. Spacetop is made by Sightful, a startup that I met with several years ago when the concept was a display-free laptop keyboard base bonded with tethered Xreal glasses that became the laptop's monitor. That product never happened: instead of using custom-made Chromebook-like laptop bases with Qualcomm processors, the founders pivoted over to using more AI-focused "NPUs" on recent thin AI laptops with processors made by Intel, which Sightful's team says has offered better performance without needing to make a new device to work with glasses. "The moment we saw [Microsoft's] announcements about AI computers -- that everyone's computers, in the coming few years, are going to be AI computers -- it made perfect sense to say we can enable the audience earlier and faster than if we built our own integrated solution," Sightful's founders, Tamir Berliner and Tomer Kahan, told me when Spacetop transitioned to its new business plan last fall. Instead of a whole new "AR laptop," Spacetop is subscription software that runs on certain Windows laptops and connects with a particular model of Xreal Air 2 Ultra smart glasses. I can't shoot photos to show what I saw, but think of it as a larger-size curved space where apps can be laid out from your laptop. Scott Stein/CNET The experience: A 180-degree floating desktop What you get, running this software layer, is a curved desktop space that floats in the air, indicated by small arrays of dots, which you can open Windows apps onto, drag around, and resize as needed. It feels like a desktop for my laptop, but one that's larger and doesn't need my laptop screen at all. Provided you're OK wearing display glasses, this is the way I'd prefer to work: Making my own screens wherever I go and feeling like I've got a larger-scale office without needing to prop open anything else. Spacetop opens up the conversation around what glasses could be doing when connected with our own computers. That's the part that's missing on most phones and laptops and tablets right now. Xreal's most recent glasses, the Xreal One, already can fix a curved display in space. Spacetop's software pushes the capabilities more by having more of a handshake with the software on the laptop, which manages what apps will show on-glasses. Qualcomm began working on this type of software with Spaces, which ran on Android phones and interfaced with connected glasses. Google's upcoming Android XR software looks like it could possibly do the same down the road. Apple's Vision Pro, which can run a variety of iPad apps and float them anywhere while simultaneously mirroring a Mac monitor, is a bulky device in comparison, and you need both a Vision Pro and a MacBook to float apps around in the way that Spacetop's software enables. Spacetop's rendering isn't exactly how I saw it, but it's close enough to describe the effective experience (the field of view in-glasses is smaller, but you can turn your head to see apps all around you). Spacetop You can't do much more than open individual 2D apps up, though. That's fine for everyday work, and Spacetop's software is aimed at business subscriptions, for people who might want to get more work space beyond their laptop screen while on the road. I could see a use for this in meetings or in situations where you'd want to be looking at something in the real world while floating windows in the air around you. That might sound bizarre, but I used the Xreal One glasses back in January to take notes on my phone while watching a presentation: my notes app just hovered off to the side of the live speakers I was in the same room with. Clever details and awkward moments Spacetop's little software touches are clever. A little toolbar handles app launching, and a duplicate of your laptop display rests on the bottom of the floating desktop, lining up mostly with the actual laptop display that's open. I found that I could glance around at the open floating windows and then go down to the laptop screen and adjust settings if I needed to without feeling strange. My mouse cursor came along with me, either floating in air or appearing back on the laptop screen again as needed, mostly automatically. The glasses connect via USB-C cable to one of the laptop's Thunderbolt-enabled ports for video and audio to work. Scott Stein/CNET That doesn't mean there aren't quirks: I found the pop-up displays sometimes were slow to launch or didn't launch at all, something Sightful suggested I unplug and re-plug the glasses in to fix. There's also the limited field of view on the glasses to consider. As good as Xreal's glasses are at projecting a quality OLED display in the air, the viewing area is still limited to what feels like a boxed-out rectangle in the middle of your vision. It feels like about the same dimensions as a medium-to-large monitor, and can fit a couple of windows (or one large one) into view easily, but to see the rest of the floating apps around you you'll need to turn your head around to make sure the other parts of the curved desktop come into view. The Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses can also make your surroundings dimmer like sunglasses, or turn the glasses more transparent as needed, and they have their own speakers. Prescription inserts are needed for me to use these Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses, adding an extra layer of thickness. But there are adjustable nose pads. Scott Stein/CNET A potential future for glasses (but ideally without a subscription) The Spacetop subscription is $200 a year, on top of needing a specific pair of $699 Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses (Sightful is selling the glasses and one year of the software together for $899). Sightful needs these particular glasses because they have full-room tracking capabilities built in, which can be used in a travel mode to make sure the floating monitor stays centered wherever the laptop is. The software also needs to run, for now, on particular Windows AI laptops with Intel NPUs. I tested on an HP Elitebook. It's hardly something for the average person right now, but it does show me exactly what I really want: ways for my own laptops and tablets and phones to work better with glasses-as-displays. I think it can happen. Microsoft, Google, and Apple are going to have to wake up and play a better part. In the meantime, Sightful's Spacetop is making some things happen on its own.
Tom's Guide
05-05-2025
- Tom's Guide
I just tried Spacetop's new AR platform with Xreal smart glasses — and it feels like the future of computing
If you've ever wanted to work at your laptop without having to crane your neck down to see the screen, Spacetop might be the AR productivity solution for you. I say that because I've been testing it for a little over a week now with a pair of Xreal Air 2 Ultra AR glasses, and Sightful's Spacetop software, which makes using Windows in augmented reality a lot more comfortable than it is by default. You might remember Sightful as the makers of that eye-catching screen-free Spacetop G1 laptop I wrote about a couple years ago. The G1 prototype looked like a decapitated laptop, with a pair of Xreal AR glasses nestled in a carrying nook where the laptop's screen should have been. Back then the goal was to design a mobile workstation that gave you all the versatility of a modern laptop with the freedom of a huge virtual canvas only visible to you via a pair of AR glasses. I tried it myself and it was neat, albeit limited by the fact that the early hardware ran on Android. In the years since I tried that prototype, Sightful has pivoted to being a purely software company that aims to sell Spacetop as an AR productivity app for Windows PCs (and one day, hopefully, Mac). In fact, you can order the software from Sightful right now as part of a $899 bundle that comes with a pair of Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses ($699 MSRP) and a 12-month Spacetop subscription ($199/year). That's right, now it's not just software—it's a subscription-based platform, and it requires a laptop with at least a Core Ultra 7 Intel Meteor Lake CPU. Sightful claims it was always intent on being a software company, and while I'm a little sad it won't be selling screen-free laptops, I can definitely see the value in selling this software to folks who already own laptops they love. Plus, it's nice to have a screen you can switch back to if you get a headache working in AR. I've been testing Spacetop for a week or so now, and while I do sometimes get fatigued and have to take the glasses off I can generally work for hours without a problem. In fact, I'm writing this entire article via Spacetop, with my feet up on the coffee table and my head lolling back on the couch like the lazy writer I am. Is it ergonomic? Probably not. But it's a heck of a lot more comfortable than craning my head down to stare at the screen, and I think it might be my new favorite way to use a laptop. The way it works, in my experience, is that when you plug the AR glasses into your laptop you see a big virtual 100-foot "canvas" floating in the air in front of you. You can open apps and drag windows around on this canvas just like it was your Windows desktop, except it's floating in the air. So right now I have Chrome floating above my TV while I lay on the couch, and the browser is easily 4x as large as my 65-inch LG C2 OLED. The canvas itself is even larger, and extends beyond the Xreal Air 2 Ultra's field of view in every direction. My neck feels better than it ever has after a few hours working on a laptop. That alone makes me hope we're on the verge of a new way to work." Admittedly, I have to crank Chrome's zoom level up a bit to be able to comfortably read what I'm writing while it appears to be floating ten feet away. But it's an easy adjustment to make! I've also tried playing some light PC games through Spacetop, and it works well enough. When a game is in full-screen mode it just sits in a window in the center of the canvas, but if you switch it to windowed mode you can drag the game around the canvas like any other app. The scope of the canvas is defined by a grid of faint white dots that fade away when your cursor isn't nearby, so you can get a good sense of how much "room" you have to work with without being distracted by the dots. You can click and drag or use keyboard shortcuts to move the Spacetop canvas around, moving it up and down or side to side as well as closer or farther away. You can also change the angle a bit, so you can "tilt" the top of the canvas towards you if you want it to feel more comfortable while looking up or tilt it back to make the canvas stand tall and flat like a wall in front of you. At the bottom edge of the canvas sits the Spacetop launcher, a small bar that plays host to a list of open apps, a battery level indicator, the time and an app launcher—basically a truncated version of the Start menu that opens when you hit the Start button. Within that menu there's also a toggle for Travel Mode, which you can turn on if you find the Spacetop canvas too hard to use while you're in motion. So if you're on a plane or a train, enabling Travel Mode tells the software to tap the laptop's NPU and sensors to try and keep everything steady while you work. In my limited testing it works well, but I'm hoping to keep putting it through its paces in different venues and vehicles to see how well Spacetop can improve on the default experience of plugging a pair of the best smart glasses into your laptop. But of course, what's nice is that you can just close the Spacetop software if you'd rather go back to the default "desktop hovering directly in front of your eyes" Windows AR experience. There are some good reasons to switch it off sometimes, too. While I think Spacetop improves on the baseline Windows AR experience in key ways, most notably by letting you lean your head back while working, there have definitely been times when I would trade the extra space of the Spacetop canvas for the reliability of having my desktop hovering right in front of my eyes no matter how I move my head. And of course, I'm not happy that you have to pay $200 a year to use this software. That makes sense for a business ordering this stuff in bulk, but as an individual I'm not sure it's really worth the price unless you plan to spend a lot of time working in AR. But Sightful is clearly making a play to put Spacetop into workplaces worldwide, starting with the U.S. and Germany. The company has worked with Intel, SHI International and Deutsche Telekom to fine-tune its software and start rolling it out this year, with plans to expand to more countries throughout 2025. After only a few weeks with this software I'm still not sure I'm ready to make the switch to working in AR full-time, but I can already see the benefits—and I think my eyes are starting to get more comfortable working for hours in the Xreal glasses. While my eyes are adjusting to the strain of AR, my neck feels better than it ever has after a few hours of working on a laptop. That alone makes me hope we're on the verge of a new way to work—you might look goofy in AR glasses but believe me, your neck and back will thank you.
