Lumina is working on a smart standing desk that has a built-in display

Is there much more space for innovation in desks, I hear you ask? After all, now that we’ve made them go up and down, there are no new worlds worth conquering. Not so, says Lumina, makers of its eponymous AI webcam that’s been described as the equal of a DSLR in some corners. Now, the company is turning its attention to building a smart desk with a programmable, 24-inch OLED screen nestled in its top, designed to offer you a place to put passive data in easy view.

The Lumina Desk, as it’s called, is a powered sit-stand desk, with a display that sits between your laptop (or monitor) and your keyboard and mouse. The idea, as you can see, is to offer you space to add in a view for your Google Calendar, stock view from Robinhood or a Twitter feed. All things that it’d be nice to always have in view, but you may not necessarily want to buy a second (or third) monitor for.

Image of the lumina desk from the top down.
Lumina

Rather than a touchscreen, you’ll control data from a companion app on the desktop, and the whole desk is coated in a layer of toughened, anti-glare glass. The company is also promising a maximum brightness of 1,200 nits, and a 60Hz refresh rate, making it a pretty sweet display all told. There’s also plenty of power coursing through its frame, with two 20 x 20 Qi wireless charging pads on the tabletop, each one able to pump out 100W. Then there six hidden AC outlets with a built-in circuit breaker, and six USB-C ports, each one able to deliver up to 30W.

Sadly, you won’t be able to get your hands on one of these until 2023 at the earliest, and the company is today opening up unpaid reservations to gauge future interest. The price, too, has yet to be decided (although I’m told it’ll be as close to $1,000 as possible, at least that’s the aim right now) but if you’ve been looking for a more sci-fi way to passively collect information, this might be worth a peep.