LG pulls a super weird, but potentially revolutionary product out of the hat: a portable battery-powered touch Smart TV for entertaining and working
Announced in July 2021, the new, super weird LG StandbyME portable battery-powered TV will be available for pre-order starting tomorrow in Korea. This is a totally innovative product, however seemingly difficult to understand. In fact, reading the technical specifications and possible applications, you can tell it’s brilliant and potentially revolutionary.
Let’s get one thing straight: LG’s battery-powered Smat TV is more Smart than TV, in the sense that it doesn’t have a tuner for the normal TV signal. But, come to think of it, that’s also a given: if the TV has to be moved around the house, it can’t be tied to the antenna cable. Content, then, comes over the Internet via WiFi connection. But that’s just the playful side of LG StandbyME which, in reality, can also be used as a productivity tool in the modern home-office. A decidedly hybrid product, then, for which probably the Italian market would not yet be ready but that, in Korea, it is very easy to succeed.
LG StandbyME: technical characteristics
LG StandbyME is a 27-inch screen, Full HD LED IPS type, inside which is the LG Alpha 7 processor of the fourth generation also used on many traditional TVs of the Korean giant. The screen is supported by a stand, with a total height of 1.26 meters.
In the base of the stand is the battery, which recharges in about 4 hours and offers a battery life of 3 hours. So you can easily watch a long movie, or several episodes of a TV series on it. The battery operation allows you to move LG StandbyME around the house, thanks to the wheels built into the base, wherever there is an Internet connection.
But watching movies and TV series is just one of the many things you can do with LG StandbyME because the screen is touch and can be rotated vertically. There is also a special hook for the phone, which in turn connects in wirelss mode with the screen, transforming it into a mirror: the phone picks us up and shows our image on the big screen.
The same system can be used to turn LG StandbyME into a big screen for video calls, for pleasure or work. But it is also possible, among other things, to move LG StanbyME in the kitchen to watch a recipe on YouTube while cooking, or have it used by children, for distance learning.
In short, LG StandbyME is almost a giant tablet, with a total weight of 17 pounds and a half (stand included), with a thousand different possible uses.
LG StandbyME: how much it costs
As already mentioned, LG StandbyME will be available starting tomorrow in Korea and it is not yet known if it will arrive on the international market. The price is not low, but it is at least partly justified by the large battery needed to keep the TV on for up to 3 hours.
In Korea LG StandbyME is on sale at 1.29 million won, which at current exchange rates make about 970 euros. If it were to arrive in Italy, or in any case in Europe, it would probably be priced 250-300 euros higher due to logistics costs and taxation.