A Fun-Sized Holographic Display Could Become Your Affordable Portal to the Metaverse

Los Angeles-based Portl makes 'holoportation' devices that allow people to beam themselves in their 3D form from thousands of miles away. Now, with its new device called Portl M, the company wants to let you access the metaverse without the hassle of specialized glasses or headsets. 

Ever since Meta announced its intent, the talk about metaverse is everywhere. From search engine companies to large format retailers, everybody wants a piece of the pie. However, in its current format, the metaverse can only be accessed through virtual reality headsets. While it is great to enjoy games or go shopping in the virtual world, it can be quite cumbersome if you want to pop into an office meeting or catch up with a friend. This is where Portl comes to the rescue by becoming your portal to the metaverse. 

Portl M is a desktop device that can be placed in landscape or portrait mode. We had covered their previous offering when the company was just a year old. Called Epic, the device was seven feet (2.1 m) tall, five feet (1.5 m) wide and two feet (0.6 m) deep, and resembled an elevator opening up right in the middle of your room.

With M, Portl is aiming to replicate the same performance but in a shrunken desktop version. The M comes with an AI-enabled camera on the top bezel, 16GB of system memory, and one TB of internal storage. Making the interaction seamless is the touchscreen display and the company is confident that it can be used for telemedicine, shopping, fitness, entertainment and even getting your hands on NFTs and displaying them. 

While Epic is being shipped at the moment, M will be available in spring this year and can be reserved now for $100. Its final price is still being decided and maybe upwards of $2,000. It might still work out as a cheaper display for your NFT collection than a smart TV from Samsung.

We only hope that there are also some design changes to the box in the final iteration. Right now, it does look like a blown-up PSP.