Can Glasses Free 3D displays go mainstream ?

With the recent Launch of Samsung's glasses free monitor at CES 2024, has the technology broken into mainstream and will we see further manufactures join those selling the concept?

Well it certainly got a good reception at the show winning best innovation for Gaming and eSports https://www.ces.tech/innovation-awards/honorees/2024/best-of/s/samsung-light-field-display.aspx. And the size of the monitor at 37inches was another step forward in the technology. It was also a huge step forward from the version they showed in 2015.

And it is worth mentioning that this is not an isolated product release. Even when 3D displays were not popular with consumers, there have been a stream of 3D displays released for commercial and retail purposes for many years. Magnetic3D and others have been selling such displays (currently in models from 28inches to 100inches https://magnetic3d.com/) with the early work in 2011 having been refined and improved and there are several examples of such companies making the technology more widespread (e.g https://www.akwil.com/). Outside these areas niche areas such as medical and industrial applications have kept the technology under development.

Coming closer to consumer use Lenovo released their ThinkVision 27" 3D monitor in September 2023 https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/transforming-digital-workspaces-devices-software-future-hybrid-work/.

While the marketing on this seems to be mostly focused on 3D Creative professionals it can be used for wider purposes and includes 3D Explorer software that allows viewing 3D videos and files with 3D effects.

Probably the consumer company most pushing this technology is Acer who have two models on sale (gaming and standard use) and are already on the second production iteration of this technology in both monitors and laptops. https://www.acer.com/gb-en/monitors/spatiallabs. Arguably these monitors have had the best reviews for usage, but it is worth highlighting that all these monitors are getting excellent reviews and feedback.

Overall I expect this technology and market to grow significantly over the next 3 years and could well be mainstream again very soon. 3A.