tonari
p/tonari
life-sized video portals: be together in-person, anywhere.
Taj Campbell
tonari — life-sized video portals: be together in-person, anywhere.
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tonari portals provide natural, effortless, life-sized communication that feels like being together in-person. built on next-gen hardware and software with 10x more fidelity than video calls, sub-100ms latency, true eye contact, and room-scale immersion.
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Taj Campbell
Hunter
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Our goal is to make tonari portals ubiquitous over time, and today we’re making two major product announcements that will help bring tonari to many more places: a free-standing option to enable fast and easy setup of tonari without construction; and location hopping for instantaneous travel between tonari portals. With tonari we’re attempting to solve the curse of distance: the fact that humans are built to be together, and yet we often live and work apart. Travel has gotten safer and faster, but is still costly, time-consuming, and stressful for our bodies and environment. Video calls offer convenience, but they don’t facilitate enough empathy, creativity, or trust. The idea for tonari portals — with their floor-to-ceiling size, ultra low latency, and natural eye-to-eye contact — is to make people in two locations feel like they’re really together in-person. We’ve engineered and refined our hardware and software from the ground up to be over 10-times faster and higher fidelity than all other video communications. We’ve also packaged everything into a seamless and elegant design that is natural and universal: tonari portals are as intuitive for toddlers and the elderly as they are for students, teachers, executives, and co-workers. tonari is already providing great value for many companies and organizations. Across Japan and Southeast Asia, businesses use tonari to overcome language and cultural barriers, and improve hiring and retention abroad. Startups in Japan, Europe, and the US are using portals to expand globally, access new markets and partners, and reduce business travel and emissions. Universities, incubators, and co-working spaces use tonari to strengthen communities, share more, and spark new collaboration. We'd love for you to celebrate these launches with us! Visit our freshly updated website for new videos and details about tonari.
Pradhumn Vijayvargiya
@tajc Honestly this is super amazing, just like rotunda of gateways in Sanctum Santorum of Dr Strange. It can boost the connectivity across timezones. Are you live anywhere in India or planning to?
Taj Campbell
@prad_vv thank you! we don’t yet have a portal in india, but it’s a high priority for us! we’re actually talking with a prospect now about connecting their offices in bangalore and tokyo. we’d love to find more opportunities like this, so please share if you know of businesses or institutions that would be keen!
Taj Campbell
@owenfar thank you for the kind words! regarding the “busy” state you pretty much guessed it! we run a lightweight local model for realtime pose and face detection (no recognition so still anonymous) to understand the position of people and infer things like when the portal is in use. :)
Aris Nakos
This is a cool story. Congratulations on the launch. why not holograms though ? Are they still more expensive than large panels ?
Taj Campbell
@aris_nakos thanks! lenticular holographic displays trade spatial resolution for angular resolution, meaning you need to divide the image into as many angles as you want but then you get less resolution when viewing from any given angle. in practice we didn’t feel the benefits were strong enough given the increased costs and trade offs in image quality. display technologies will keep improving though so there could be a point in the future where it would make sense to build a holographic tonari portal! we see our future product lineup continuing to both push the boundaries of what’s possible at the highest-end, and providing lower-cost options for remote education and homes, so we’ll look forward to these developments.
Patrick
Super cool idea, I saw similar things like a robot which walks around with a screen which is controlled by someone. Wondering if this is custom produced or if you actually leverage the hardware?
Nikola Djordjevic
Congrats on this exciting launch! Tonari seems like a great solution for bringing people closer together, no matter the distance. Wishing you all the best! 👏
Itamar Stollman
Looks amazing. Definitely part of our future. Quick question, how much such a kit costs currently and what is your price point you want to get to?
Taj Campbell
@itamar_stollman thank you! tonari portals start at $24,999 - keep in mind they are physically large (floor to ceiling display and about 100kg of hardware) and very high quality, and actually only about half the price of a typical Cisco meeting room! with the current product, we're targeting businesses and institutions that need high-connectivity either overseas or domestically, and already spend significantly on business travel and other tools to try to keep up connectivity and engagement. with our current customers, we've seen that tonari pays for itself with even small reductions in business travel, and by helping organizations improve team-building, expand hiring and accelerate onboarding, and decrease employee turnover for strong performers who would otherwise feel more disconnected from the leadership and happenings in HQs. we've seen a lot of success with companies in creative industries, manufacturing, finance, consulting, construction, and even in startups and SMEs that are expanding abroad to access more hiring, sales, BD, and partner opportunities. this said, we're committed to expanding our product line and driving costs down without compromising on quality, so that we can get tonari portals into homes, remote education, eldercare and healthcare, and many other facets of our daily lives where emotional connection is crucial to the quality of relationships and services. this has always been our mission and purpose. with new developments and economies of scale, the next milestones are to bring a sub-$10K product to market, and then again a product in the few thousands of dollars. in the consumer market, we want to see tonari portals become as commonplace as TVs and other large home appliances, so that families and friends, and especially elderly folks with less mobility, have more options to be emotionally connected with loved ones.
Piyush Tiwari
This is impressive. Glad to a Doraemon's Anywhere door in real life. Love the Concept. Would definitely get a combo version for my family and friends. The best part is you can connect to anyone, Anywhere and moreover it supports zoom. That's interesting. I'm disheartened to see Tanori on #3. I WISH IT WINS THE PRODUCT OF THE DAY AWARD
HackerQED
Just like Doraemon’s Anywhere Door, the video demo looks good. Besides, it would be good for remote teams, as people can do a meeting or team-building event just like face to face.
Rizky Ge
@alisaun @alvaroarregui congrats on the launch! This could really change the game for remote work and virtual events.
Alvaro Nuevo Tokyo
@alisaun @rizkyge Thank you very much!
Yanlin Wu
Congrats on the launch! It feels like communicating with teammates face to face even though they are not in the same place.
Mitha Amala
Yo, Tonari is actually pretty mind-blowing. It’s like video calls on steroids — life-sized portals that make it feel like you’re literally in the same room as someone, even if they’re across the globe. The sub-100ms latency means no awkward lags, and the true eye contact feature? *Chef’s kiss*. This is definitely next-level for remote teams who need to feel connected beyond what Zoom or Teams can offer. Plus, no more scheduling headaches — it’s like an always-on window for quick, spontaneous convos. Honestly, this could change the game for how teams collaborate, especially when you need to vibe together without the travel.
Zevanya Vaneca
Congrats on this exiting launch!!Tonari seems like a great solution for bringing people closer together!! i wish all the best for Tonari on the future💗
Ankit Sharma
Now this is something interesting and unique. Congrats for the launch team!
Nippon Viajero
Congratulations 🎉 So proud of the tonari team! This world needs more innovative human connection friendly technology. If you're a company with multiple locations you must invest in a tonari.
Rishabh Kumar
Tonari is impressive for users . It's an amazing platform for companies and users. Tonari is very useful for future use. I have used this and have had a great experience with its portal.
Alvin Chandra
This tech gives serious sci-fi vibes. Life-sized, high-res portals that let you make eye contact and feel like you're in the same room? Crazy! It’s perfect for teams that need that face-to-face energy without being stuck in one location.
Landon Powell
This is such a unique concept! The ability to feel truly connected without the problem of scheduling calls could make a big difference for remote teams.
Stan Xu
Super cool, best choice for remote meetings! Congrats on the launch!
toniko
Wow, tonari sounds like the future of communication! This could really change the game for remote work and virtual events. Does it have high network requirements?
Taj Campbell
@toniko thank you! re network, tonari needs a stable connection with wired internet. we recommend business fiber lines where available, but we've seen tonari run well on residential fiber too in some cases. 60Mbps is recommended for the best quality. you can find more info on our installation requirements here: https://tonari.no/get-started we've also done a lot already to cope with some amounts of packet loss and things that would normally occur on these networks, and we'll continue making more improvements. thankfully, internet is getting better everywhere too and we're excited to see fiber rolling out faster across the world, as well as improvements to systems like 5G and starlink which will likely work well enough for tonari at some point in the near future.
Kyrylo Silin
Hey Taj, I'm curious about the claim of true eye contact in video communication. How exactly does tonari achieve this? Many video call solutions struggle with this aspect due to camera placement. Regarding the sub-100ms latency, how does tonari maintain this over long distances or with varying internet speeds? Congrats on the launch!
Taj Campbell
@kyrylosilin thanks for checking us out! - re eye contact the camera is hidden inside the screen. users within a certain range of positions more centrally will get true eye contact, which is easily achieved when using portals 1:1 or in small groups with the right furniture setup. users at the edge of the screen will not always get perfect eye contact though. - re latency, tonari’s system is incredibly fast before adding network latency. within domestic japan, we can achieve sub-100ms essentially across all islands. this would be generally true between most locations with good backbones within 1000km of each other. japan to san francisco or LA though (5000km) would add about 50ms of internet latency, bringing tonari’s glass to glass latency to around 140-150ms. this is still within a threshold where for most people it’s imperceptible.
Olivia Rose Thompson
Congrats on the launch! tonari sounds super promising. The idea of real eye-to-eye contact through portals is a game changer for remote collaboration. Good luck with everything! 🙌