A breakthrough OLED technology is more than twice as bright as normal
There’s some hubbub in the world of display tech right now over Tandem OLED. If you missed Apple’s announcement of the new iPad Pro, you’ve probably never heard of Tandem OLED, but it’s already making inroads into other devices. TCL, at Display Week 2024, showed off a slidable Tandem OLED display that could fit into a laptop, and it claims a brightness of more than 2,500 nits.
If you’ve caught our reviews of monitors like the LG UltraGear OLED 27, you’ll know that’s an insane level of brightness. And that all comes down to the Tandem OLED tech. Tandem OLED is so simple that it almost doesn’t seem real. In order to increase the historically low brightness of an OLED panel, you just stack two OLED panels on top of each other to combine their brightness. Simple.
It’s easy to understand, but Tandem OLED has been a nut display makers like Samsung have been trying to crack for a few years. With the iPad Pro now sporting the tech, display makers like TCL are debuting their own takes on Tandem OLED.
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TCL CSOT is showing a “slideable” 14-inch 4K tandem OLED.#displayweek2024 pic.twitter.com/SjGWYUtE2J
— Guillaume Chansin (@GChansin) May 14, 2024
You can see the display in action above. It’s slidable, extending from a 12.6-inch shell to a full 14 inches. TCL showed this off in a highly portable laptop, which cuts the trackpad for a slimmer form. This is just a prototype to show off the display, but it’s not hard to imagine laptop brands will take cues from TCL if they decide to implement this design. According to TCL, this display can reduce the overall size of a laptop by about 35%.
The display itself is no slouch, either. As mentioned, TCL claims it can reach 2,500 nits of peak brightness, but it also packs a resolution of 3,840 x 2,400 and comes with a 120Hz refresh rate. Even more impressive, TCL claims its display reduces power consumption by 30% compared to normal OLED screens and extends the lifespan by more than 3.5 times. That’s good news for anyone worried about OLED burn-in.
Display Week, as you might expect, is a time for display makers to show off their cutting-edge tech, so it might be some time before we see TCL’s screen in a real device. It’s certainly an exciting step for OLED, however, tackling both brightness and burn-in with impressive results.
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Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
MSI Claw handheld hands-on: it’s more significant than you think
MSI is entering the handheld arena, and its debut is more significant than you might think. The MSI Claw doesn’t look dissimilar from the Asus ROG Ally or even the Steam Deck OLED, but the specs underneath mark a significant departure for handheld gaming PCs.
I had a chance to try the device at CES 2024, and it’s definitely a contender. Bolstered with a new chipset, a comfortable design, and software designed to tackle the issues with Windows on a handheld, this might be the portable gaming PC to buy this year.
I saw the second generation of Samsung’s QD-OLED gaming monitors
Samsung is gearing up to release two new QD-OLED gaming monitors at CES 2024. We already knew about the 2024 Odyssey OLED G8 and Odyssey OLED G6 thanks to an announcement from Samsung last week, but I wasn’t expecting to be so impressed by them. It’s Samsung’s first attempt at a traditional 16:9 QD-OLED monitor after the excellent Odyssey OLED G8 and Odyssey OLED G9 last year, and Samsung is coming out of the gates swinging.
If you missed the announcement, there are two monitors here. The Odyssey OLED G8 is a 32-inch display with a 4K resolution and a 240Hz refresh rate. The Odyssey OLED G6 is smaller at 27 inches but has a 1440p resolution and a speedy 360Hz refresh rate. Both are using a second-gen QD-OLED panel from Samsung Display that’s certified with VESA’s DisplayHDR True Black 400 and use a new anti-reflective coating.
Samsung’s new OLED gaming monitor might have a problem
Samsung has a slate of new OLED gaming monitors, too. Two weeks after LG revealed the first 480Hz OLED gaming monitor, Samsung is bringing three displays of its own to the conversation, all of which we’ll see on display at CES 2024. Samsung might be entering the fight with LG at a disadvantage, though.
I’m talking about the new Odyssey OLED G8, or the OLED G80SD. Unlike 2023’s Odyssey OLED G8, this one is a 32-inch, 4K display, the first flat 32-inch OLED gaming monitor that Samsung created. The critical spec here is the refresh rate. Samsung says the display can reach 240Hz, which is great, but it’s not on par with what LG boasts.
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