Laptops with OLED screen – Is there a breakthrough coming?
OLED TVs are getting cheaper and smartphones with OLED screens have been commonplace for years. However, the technology does not want to break through in the market for laptops and monitors. For a few years now and then manufacturers have tried it, but it was always an exception. During this year’s CES, four manufacturers announced laptops with an OLED screen. HP, Lenovo and Razer have each shown one model with such a screen and Dell has already indicated that it will equip four laptops with an OLED panel.
So we can safely speak of a small breakthrough. Never before have so many laptops with an OLED screen been announced at the same time. It is not entirely coincidental that these are 15.6″ laptops in all cases and they all have an OLED panel with a 4k resolution of 3840×2160 pixels and a refresh rate of 60Hz. HP and Lenovo do not mince words and speak of an amoled panel, which makes it clear that Samsung is the manufacturer, Dell and Alienware won’t clarify that and won’t answer questions about the screen’s provenance, but it’s likely that the four manufacturers all use the same Samsung panel.
According to a rumor from the beginning of this year, Samsung is indeed the manufacturer and the arrival of the laptops with OLED screens is the result of an improvement in the production of the panels. Samsung would use an inkjet technique, which makes producing the displays cheaper than before. It is striking that Samsung itself does not have a laptop with a 15.6″ panel in its range and although the South Korean manufacturer has announced laptops at CES, there is no model with an OLED panel.
Not done yet
So there are several laptops with an OLED screen at CES and we have been able to view almost all of them in recent days. The first thing you notice are the popping colors and the high contrast, as you may be used to from telephones or TVs. If we look further, it also appears that the laptops are still prototypes that do not work properly. For example, with the demo models from Dell, Lenovo, and Razer, we couldn’t adjust the panel brightness in Windows.
It seems that the control of the panel with the drivers is not working properly yet. That may be easy to fix, but it does show that the laptops with OLED screens are not quite ready yet. The laptops with OLED screen will therefore not be in stores for the time being. HP says its model will be released in March and according to Lenovo, the C730 with OLED screen will be released in April.
Advantages, but also disadvantages
The big advantage of an OLED screen is the extremely high contrast. After all, unlike LCDs, there is no backlight, the pixels themselves are the light source. This results in a perfect black reproduction, something that is not possible with LCDs. In terms of maximum brightness, OLED screens have to beat LCDs, but that is something that mainly applies to TVs and laptops do not seem to be the case for the time being. The 15.6″ OLED panel that is now coming to laptops has a maximum brightness of 500cd/m 2 and very few laptops can achieve that.
OLED screens are also known for their large color range. Colors can be rendered with much more saturation. That is also something we see with the laptops with OLED screens at CES. The colors popped off. However, bright color reproduction is not necessarily correct and it is hoped that manufacturers will also offer the choice to set the screen for accurate color reproduction.
In terms of image quality, OLED screens are better than LCDs, but there are also disadvantages to the technique. So burn-in remains a risk. This phenomenon is caused by the prolonged display of static images, such as logos or icons. The organic LEDs wear out over time, and if certain parts of the screen are on longer than others, the wear is uneven.
The burn-in of an OLED screen is a greater risk with laptops than with TVs, because laptops often display static elements on screen for a long time, such as a browser or the taskbar in Windows. The laptop manufacturers are probably wise to come up with software adjustments in Windows themselves to make such elements less bright. Lenovo did this earlier, for example, with its Yoga X1 variant with an OLED screen , which we published a review about in 2016. Lenovo also tells us that there have been few complaints about burn-in with that model. The representatives also say that the new Yoga C730 will probably also be subject to software adjustments to prevent burn-in.
The consumption of OLED panels can also be a disadvantage. With a dark interface with a lot of black, or displaying movies, an OLED panel is economical. For images with many light or white elements, an OLED screen uses more than an LCD. Software such as word processors and browsers have a lot of white in the image and that does not benefit the battery life of a laptop with an OLED screen. This is also something we saw in our review of the Yoga X1, which scored well in terms of battery life in the video test, but mediocre in the browsing test. We also expect the new models to compromise on battery life compared to comparable laptops with an LCD.
Which laptops get an OLED screen?
HP was the first manufacturer to announce a laptop with the new 15.6″ panel. That laptop itself is not new, it is the Specter x360 15, a convertible that can be equipped with up to a Core i7-8750H and a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. Cheaper versions have Intel Whiskey Lake processors and an MX150 GPU. It is not yet clear in which configuration the OLED screen will be available. HP is also not yet commenting on the price. We do know that the existing version with 4k ips panel costs about 1800 euros.
Razer is considering putting an OLED panel in its Blade 15. That is a relatively thin gaming laptop, with a hexacore CPU and GeForce video cards. Last year we published a review of the Blade 15 , then a model with GTX 1070 GPU. Razer is releasing new variants with RTX video cards this year, up to the RTX 2080 Max-Q. The manufacturer does not yet announce when a version with an OLED screen will appear.
Lenovo has one laptop with OLED panel ready: the Yoga C730, a convertible with 15W processor. It is the successor to the Yoga 730 that came out last year and apart from the screen, the new model seems to be the same as its predecessor. Lenovo will not release the model in the US, but in Europe. This seems to indicate that the manufacturer still sees OLED as a kind of experiment. The Yoga C730 with OLED screen should be available from April.
For the time being, Dell is the only manufacturer that plans to put the 15.6″ OLED panel in several laptops. The screen will be available as an option in the existing XPS 15 and in the Alienware m15. In addition, the manufacturer wants to split the screen into two stopping new gaming laptops announced at CES, the G5 and G7. Only the latter was actually shown at the show with an OLED panel.
What will it cost?
The arrival of more laptops with an OLED screen is said to be due to lower production costs, but the big question is of course what it will actually cost the consumer. For now, only Lenovo has named a price. That manufacturer wants to offer its Yoga C730 for a price starting at $ 1649. It is not yet clear what specifications you get for that money, but comparable Yoga 730 laptops without the OLED screen can be purchased for just over a thousand euros. An additional price of hundreds of euros for the OLED panel is therefore plausible.
As OLED screens become more commonplace in laptops, that price may fall further. Whether that will really happen in the short term remains to be seen. The fact that there are now four manufacturers who all promise to release laptops with OLED screens is in any case positive and a sign that something is about to change on the market. We hope that this time it will actually continue and will not remain with exceptions again.