Turn Your Laptop Screen as Touch Screen with Airbar

Recently at CES, Neonode showed off the AirBar, a $49 peripheral that connects to a USB port and gives any display touch capability with company planning to ship the AirBar in May 2016. If your laptop doesn't have a touchscreen, you don't need to replace your whole computer to get the functionality.

Airbar is unobtrusive and fits just under the display. It's a thin, black rectangle that rests on the bezel underneath the screen and if you have a black or gray laptop, you may not even realize that it's there. It uses invisible light to detect where your finger is on the screen and provide that feedback to the computer.

The AirBar’s a slim sensor that magnetically latches onto the bottom of your Chromebook or Windows laptop’s display and connects via USB. Once it’s hooked up, it’s plug and play, with no extra drivers needed the device casts a beam of light across your screen, and you can poke, pinch, zoom, swipe and scroll around with your hand the way you would on a touchscreen PC. 

Neonode says that the AirBar will work with laptops running Windows or Chrome OS. The AirBar will come in four sizes to support most displays: 11.6 inches, 13.3 inches, 14 inches and 15.6 inches.

The device is plug and play you just have to plug the AirBar into a USB port, align it on the screen, and you're ready to touch. Few other demonstrations were with other objects, including a paintbrush and a chopstick.

AirBar’s price is certainly right, but that’s only one part of the equation with input as visceral as touch. The device has to nail the feeling of actual touch input if it truly wants to succeed.