At risk of giving away too much, too soon, it's CES right now and exhibition halls are alive with the sound of OLED TVs. Or at the very least bathed in their wide-gamut glow. Anyway, among the various highlights, one development stands out. Both LG and Samsung, the two big noises of OLED panel manufacturing, have announced new OLED tech that's much, much brighter than before. Huzzah!
For now, it's unclear if these new panels are in any of the newly announced OLED PC monitors also doing the CES rounds (more on that momentarily). But when it comes to latter-day OLED panel technology, what starts in TVs is pretty much guaranteed to hit monitors shortly thereafter. So, what exactly have LG and Samsung announced?
Starting with LG, perhaps the most surprising detail is that the company seems to be dropping its MLA or microlens array panel tech that uses zillions of tiny lenses to focus light and increase brightness. Well, MLA is gone for its new flagship G5 OLED TV series.
Replacing MLA tech is a new so-called 4-stack panel. LG claims this new panel is a staggering three times brighter than its previous best when it comes to the 10% window metric. All told, that should mean a peak brightness on a 10% window of 2,400 nits, which is really getting on some.
Of course, full-screen brightness is arguably where OLED monitors, including LG's own UltraGear 32GS95UE, have really come up short thus far and here the new panel technology isn't quite so impressive. According to HDTVTest, the panel will be 40% better for full-screen brightness compared to the panel in the extent LG G4 TV sets.
That may not be 3x brighter. But 40% is a very large step for a single generation when it comes to full-screen OLED brightness, which typically only improves incrementally. Applied to existing PC monitors based on LG's OLED panels, that would mean a step from 250 nits to 350 nits, at which point you could argue that the problem of full-screen SDR brightness on OLED monitors is pretty much solved.
If "pretty much" isn't good enough for you, well, get a load of the QD-OLED panel in Samsung's new S95F TV. It's rated at 390 nits full screen, tantalisingly close to the 400 nit marker that we'd say surely qualifies as "job done" for full-screen SDR brightness.
Samsung says this jump has been possible thanks to modifications to the EL or electroluminescent layer. It also seems that Samsung is getting one up on LG by presenting this new QD-OLED panel as offering 5-stack technology, referring to the the number of layers of light-emitting diodes and beating LG to the tune of one.
For the record, Samsung is quoting 2,000 nits on a 10% window for this new panel. So, it's brighter full-screen than LG but doesn't quite hit the same highs, on paper at least.
Now, it's worth remembering that TV panel specs don't translate directly into figures and capabilities claimed for PC OLED monitors, even when ostensibly based on the same panel technology.
There are various reasons for that, including differing panel sizes and resolutions. Somewhat confusingly, as far as we can tell the latest 27-inch 4K OLED monitors are being marketed as offering Samsung's latest 5-stack panel tech and yet do not offer improved full-screen brightness, being rated at the same 250 nits as existing QD-OLED monitors.
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It may be that the super-small pixels inherent to squeezing the 4K resolution into a 27-inch as opposed to a 32-inch or larger OLED panel have implications in terms of brightness. Perhaps that's why Samsung waited until now to do a 27-inch 4K option.
Or maybe the new 27-inch 4K QD-OLED panel doesn't have exactly the same new panel tech as the new Samsung S95F TV. All told, there's still a little to shake out from all this.
But the key takeaway here is that both of the big players in OLED tech are making big claims when it comes to full-screen brightness for their latest panels and that can only be a good thing for upcoming PC monitors. These are big steps in brightness performance by the standards of OLED technology.
We'd be surprised if these new panels didn't make PC monitor with at least 300 nits full-screen brightness possible and something close to the magic 400 nit number seems at least viable.
