Clear plastic gadgets had a moment in the ’90s and early 2000s, and the see-through Game Boy still goes for silly money on resale sites. Most of them only made the shell clear, though. You could see the board, but the board was the usual green, and the screen was a normal screen. The Arduview, a Kickstarter keychain console from a small team in Hong Kong, makes the board and the screen transparent too, and that one change is why I kept reading the campaign page.
It’s doing well so far. When I checked, the campaign had raised $33,417 on an $8,926 goal, with 29 days to go. Louis Huang, one of the co-founders, says it started as his college project, and his explanation of the idea is the line I keep coming back to, “I wanted a console where the inside is the best part.”
I like that idea a lot. Whether it holds up as something you’d still play after the first week is another question, and the page only answers part of it.
The screen and the games
2x Arduview | Kickstarter Special
The screen is a transparent OLED. Lit pixels show up cyan and the unlit ones stay clear, with the board visible behind the game, and when the console is off the team says the panel looks like smoked glass. It makes its own light, and the FAQ claims it works in daylight and in the dark. I’d want to see it outdoors before I fully believe that part.
I was a little surprised there’s no emulation at all. The Arduview runs games written for the ATmega32U4, an 8-bit chip, and it comes with more than 300 of them from the Arduboy community library. You can’t load Game Boy games, and the FAQ says no to DOOM as well. I think that’s the right call, since games made for this exact chip are more likely to run properly than a pile of ports.
Getting new games on it means plugging it into a computer over USB-C and using the Arduboy web flasher in Chrome. There’s also a seven-part tutorial on the Arduboy forum that goes from installing the free Arduino editor to a working Pong, and I like that the team points people to it.
Physically, it’s about as long as a credit card and 13 mm thick. The team says the buttons use tactile switches.
The parts I’m less sure about
The biggest worry is that it’s still a prototype. The team has built three, and every photo on the page shows one of them. Pledges pay for molds, tooling and the first production run, and that stage is usually where crowdfunded hardware gets into trouble. The creators admit in their risks section that clear parts make dust and flow lines easy to spot, which matters far more on a console you’re meant to look through.
The product page leaves a few questions unanswered. The main screen image is labeled as a render, with a simulated display. Battery life is another unknown. The 130 mAh cell takes around 50 minutes to charge, but there’s no runtime estimate. The shipping date has also slipped from February 9 to early 2027. So at $148 plus $19–$39 for shipping, I’d rather hold off until the battery figures are available.
Who it’s for
I mostly game on my iPhone, playing Call of Duty on the sofa, so I’m not exactly the target here. The people who should look closely are Arduboy owners, because their existing games run on the Arduview without any changes, and anyone who likes the idea of learning to make a small game. Someone who wants a clear Game Boy without paying collector prices might like it too.
My take for now
I’d be much more comfortable spending $89 than $148. Yeah, the game library gives the Arduview some appeal, but there’s still a prototype to consider and no battery-life estimate to go by.
Grigor Baklajyan is a copywriter covering technology at Gadget Flow. His contributions include product reviews, buying guides, how-to articles, and more.
