There have been plenty of tech announcements over the past few days, what with the Consumer Electronics Show going on in Las Vegas, each one claiming to be more exciting than the last – which gets tedious. So I mean it when I say that, Samsung’s new “Smart Window” is the most exciting thing to come out of CES 2012.

Functionally, the thing works as a giant transparent touchscreen that can be used as a window, or one-way mirror. It’s like every futuristic user-interface we’ve seen since Minority Report, and it looks incredibly cool.

There’s also a “blinds app” to limit the amount of natural light being transmitted by the thing, which people seem to be getting excited about. I’m not totally sure why that is. What is a neat wrinkle to the window tablet feature, though, is the energy-saving use of natural light for backlighting – which means that during the day, it uses about 10% of the power a standard LCD display would use. So you get to feel futuristic and vaguely eco-friendly.

The Smart Window won this year’s CES Innovation Award, which might be contributing to some of the buzz around it.

No release date or price tag have been announced as of yet.