Samsung To Push OLEDs for Laptops

What They Say

A hat-tip to DSCC for pointing me to a move by Samsung to boost the OLED panels it plans to supply for notebook applications. Digging around, I found the video below that Samsung put out in January. Yonhap said that Samsung will present up to ten new OLED configurations between 13.3″ and 16″ and including a 15.6″ FullHD model. The panels are claimed to support 120% of the DCI-P3 gamut.

Yonhap quoted a spokesman saying that Samsung plans to quintuple in volume from 2020, which would make total panel sales of around 5 million.

What We Think

Once you see an OLED-based notebook, you want one. There are just the issues of cost and reliability. OLEDs can be incredibly thin and light, but historically have not done so well in terms of power consumption in productivity apps. For example, my display is probably 80% white at the moment, whereas showing video, a typical brightness of content is around the 20% region. There are also potential issues of image retention where the content on the display is relatively fixed for long periods as it is in IT applications. Still, I would be tempted to go for an OLED next time. (BR)