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I love gadgets with literal names. And they don’t come much more literal than The No Glasses 3D Tablet from US retailer Hammacher Schlemmer. In case you can’t guess what it does… no, I’m not going to insult your intelligence with that. Instead, let’s get to how it works.
It’s similar to the Nintendo 3DS in that it uses a parallax layer laid atop the 8-inch screen. This sends a different image to each of your eyes, which combine to give the illusion of depth.
Don’t worry if 3D tends to give you a headache, as it’ll work in 2D as well. Or you can convert your bog-standard 2D films and TV shows into fancy 3D, if you like.
Us Brits can buy it now, for $349.95 (£214). Hammacher Schlemmer does ship to the UK, a spokesperson has confirmed to me, though when I asked how much shipping would cost, all they’d say is it’ll be “figured at the time of the order”.
It’s all gone a bit quiet on the 3D telly front of late. The glasses were one of the main hindrances of the tech, but so far these specs-free parallax screens have failed to impress. They’re fine on smaller devices like the 3DS, but on bigger screens you have to sit in the sweet spot, dead-on to the screen. Veer an inch either side, and you’ll be faced with a hideous mishmash of an image.
3D aside, the tablet has some pretty middling-to-poor specs. It comes with 16GB storage, though you can bump that up using a microSD card or USB flash drive. The 8-inch screen is not 1080p Full HD, with a mediocre resolution of 1,280×800 pixels. On imaging duties, it has a 2-megapixel camera on the back, and a 0.3-megapixel front-facer.
The battery only lasts for between five and seven hours, which is about half what you’ll get from the iPad Air. Though it’s a lot cheaper than the Air.
Would you buy a 3D tablet? Or does the idea of it give you a headache? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.
Update: A previous version of this story stated The No Glasses 3D Tablet had a 1080p screen. This is not the case.
