ArduView | The World's First Transparent Handheld!

What happens when a handheld has nothing to hide? The ArduView is see-through from the screen to the circuit board, and it's a lot more charming than a 128 by 64 display has any right to be.

A Handheld You Can See Straight Through

Meet the ArduView, the world’s first fully transparent handheld, at least according to its founder, Babson College student Louis Huang. Louis kindly sent me a review unit ahead of the Kickstarter launch (this article is marked as sponsored for that reason), and I’m really glad he did, because it’s such a fun little device.

We’ve seen transparent and translucent handhelds going back to the ’90s, so the ArduView isn’t the first of its kind in that sense. What makes it genuinely novel is that it has three main transparent components, which add up to an overall see-through experience.

Floating Blue Pixels

Let’s start with the display, a 2.42-inch transparent OLED panel at 128 by 64 pixels. You really can see straight through it, and it feels like magic when you boot up the device and those glowing blue pixels appear to float in front of you. It’s also bright enough, even in broad daylight, that whatever is going on behind the screen doesn’t distract you as much as you might expect.

Nothing to Hide

The second transparent element is the enclosure, probably the easiest to pull off, but it’s made of an eco-friendly resin and feels lovely in the hand, especially on a handheld this small. It’s doing an important job too, because it lets you see the transparent circuit board inside.

You get a full view of the board, the chip, the copper flex cable, the button domes and the USB-C port. You can pick out every trace and solder point, and there are a couple of golden ArduView logos hidden in there if you go looking for them.

Inside is a 130 mAh battery that takes about 50 minutes to charge. A tiny handheld running 8-bit games doesn’t need much power, and keeping the battery small helps hold the whole thing down to 50 g.

Clicky Buttons and a Sharp Switch

The ArduView has five inputs: a joystick on the left for directions, plus A and B buttons. There’s also a reset button, which takes you back home when you want to exit a game, and a power switch on the bottom.

The buttons are probably the least enjoyable part of the experience. They’re very clicky, a little stiff and not as precise as you’d like, and I noticed that certain games don’t map correctly to the A and B buttons, so that’s something to be aware of. If I’m nitpicking, I’d also look for a shorter power switch, as it sticks out from the bottom of the device and is a little sharp if you catch your hand on it.

400 Games and No Sign-In

The ArduView runs an open-source operating system based on the Arduboy platform, although it isn’t officially affiliated with that project. Because it’s built on the Arduino hardware platform, you get up to 400 community-made games pre-installed. Navigation couldn’t be easier: there’s no bloat, no sign-in and no Wi-Fi connection needed. You boot up and start playing, swiping left and right through genres and vertically through game titles.

The one I’d play first is Dark Star, a nice puzzle game, but there are tabletop games on here too, so if you fancy a quick game of chess, the ArduView has you sorted.

It’s all running on an ATmega32U4 microcontroller with 2.5 KB of RAM and 32 KB of storage. These are 8-bit games, but it’s kind of cool that such a small chip can power a handheld like this. And as an open-source platform, it’s open for tinkering too, so if you want to get stuck in, go ahead.

Final Thoughts

Overall, this is a really cool little project, and I’m happy to feature things like this on the channel. Whether you should pick one up comes down to your own judgement. It’s more of a collector’s device, or something you’d give as a Christmas gift. Founder’s devices are due to start shipping in November, while the general public will be waiting until 2027. You can learn more and back it on Kickstarter.

Thanks to the team for sending over this unit.

My recommendation: Buy the ArduView as a collector’s piece or a quirky gift rather than as your main handheld. The floating blue pixels and see-through board are the real draw, so go in expecting a charming curiosity with stiff buttons, not a serious gaming machine.