Musubi Holographic Frame Hits $149, Ships June

Holographic photos finally fit in a frame, and it won’t break the bank.

Looking Glass’ Musubi is shipping in June and arrives at a consumer-friendly price of $149, a long-awaited pivot from the company’s developer-focused kits. The 7-inch frame, with a glass border and white matte, is marketed as a home for users to upload and display holographic content converted with Looking Glass’ own software. The frame can hold up to 1,000 images or 30-second video clips, and runs three hours on a battery if you’re off the wall, or indefinitely when plugged in with the included wall adapter.

What you put on Musubi matters as much as the frame itself. Content must be converted into holographic files using Looking Glass’ free desktop app before it will display on the device. After conversion, you transfer the files via USB-C, and the Musubi will cycle through the content, presenting multiple holographic images to the viewer. In other words, it’s not a plug-and-play photo frame in the traditional sense; there’s a preprocessing step that determines what you can show.

The hardware is built on Looking Glass’ Hololuminescent Display (HLD) technology, a stack that blends 2D display layers with a 3D holographic volume. The result is holograms viewable by several people at the same time, a core promise the company has repeatedly pitched to mainstream buyers. The Musubi line is positioned as the most consumer-ready iteration to date, compared with prior offerings like the 2023 Looking Glass Go, which carried a substantially higher price tag at $300 and targeted developers and enthusiasts rather than households.

From a product-design standpoint, Musubi is a notable step toward mass-market holography. A 7-inch, tabletop frame with a straightforward USB-C transfer path and a promise of multi-view holography reduces some of the mystique around the tech. Yet buyers should be mindful: the storage ceiling sits at 1,000 images or 30 seconds of video, which is modest for family libraries and quick-capture moments. Battery life of three hours makes it more suitable for display sessions rather than gallery runs, though the option to keep it plugged in eases that limitation.

In hands-on terms, the Musubi package reflects a broader trend in niche holographic hardware: price pressure and consumer-ready packaging. While it lowers the entry barrier, the necessary content workflow—convert, transfer, cycle—remains a potential friction point for non-technical buyers. For households already saturated with smart frames, it’s a trade-off between novelty and ease of use. For those curious about holography, Musubi offers a tangible, non-subscription portal into the format at a surprising price.

Industry watchers will note the broader context: holographic displays have stubbornly hovered near high-end or developer-focused segments for years, and price erosion into the sub-$200 space could test whether the format can sustain momentum beyond novelty. Musubi’s timing, price, and a ready-made consumer workflow will be watched closely for what it implies about future light field or holographic devices aimed at everyday living rooms.

What to watch next is straightforward. Will the content conversion step feel less like a hurdle as the ecosystem grows, and can the 1,000-image/30-second cap feel comfortable in real households with pet videos and travel clips? If Looking Glass can keep the workflow tight and the content formats flexible, Musubi may prove that holographic display isn’t just a tech demo—it’s a photo frame you actually want to keep plugged in.

Verdict: Buy if you want an affordable, real-world glimpse into holography without a subscription and you’re prepared to curate content for display. Skip if you prize instant, plug-and-play photo framing with long-form videos or massive libraries.

Sources

Looking Glass' Musubi showcases its holographic display in a consumer-friendly package