15-inch, 4K OLED laptops are coming thanks to new displays from Samsung:
Larger OLED laptop screens are coming sooner than we anticipated. Samsung Displays announced that it has made a 15.6-inch 4K laptop display and will begin producing the panels next month. The company plans on providing them to other manufacturers to put into their premium notebooks.
[...] Samsung's 15.6-inch display has a brightness range of 0.0005 to 600 nits, and its spectrum of 34 million colors is double that of similar, 15-inch LCD panels. Samsung claims that its panel can produce blacks that are 200 times darker than those of LCD panels, and whites will be more than twice as bright. These attributes contribute to the HDR capabilities of the panel, and the company claims that the panel passes VESA's new DisplayHDR TrueBlack standard.
The cost? Don't ask.
Also at Engadget.
Related: SEL Develops 8K OLED Displays for Tablets and Laptops
VESA Expands DisplayHDR Specification to Include OLED and Emissive Displays
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New 8K OLED Displays for Tablets and Laptops: 8.3 and 13.3 Inches
Semiconductor Energy Laboratory, a technology developer from Japan, has developed the industry's first 8.3 and 13.3-inch OLED displays featuring an 8K resolution. The monitors use crystalline oxide semiconductor technology and they are likely preliminary designs for future product commercialization. The company also recently showcased a bendable 8.6-inch OLED panel, potentially for a foldable tablet or smartphone.
Both of SEL's OLED panels featuring a 7680×4320 resolution use a color filter that relies on CAAC-IGZO (c-axis aligned crystalline indium gallium zinc oxide) material. The 8.3-inch 8K panel [boasts] a rather high pixel density of 1061 pixels per inch and has a refresh rate of 60 Hz. The larger 13.3-inch 8K panel features a pixel density of 662 PPI, but has a refresh rate of 120 Hz, which is particularly high for an OLED. The 8.3-inch 8Kp60 OLED was demonstrated last month at SEMICON Japan, whereas the 13.3-inch 8Kp120 OLED currently exists only in SEL's labs.
VESA Rolls Out Updated DisplayHDR Standard for OLED Displays: DisplayHDR True Black
This morning [January 3] the VESA is rolling out an update to the standard body's DisplayHDR monitor performance standard that's focused on expanding the specification to cover OLED displays. Dubbed DisplayHDR True Black, the new performance tiers to the DisplayHDR standard are intended for OLED and other emissive displays, laying out the levels of display performance that the association believes are appropriate for consumer HDR displays.
This update comes just over a year after the original DisplayHDR standard was launched. Intended to simplify the market for HDR displays, DisplayHDR sets a number of tiers of increasing performance, with each higher tier requiring better monitor technology and delivering a better HDR experience as a result. At the time of DisplayHDR's launch, the VESA opted to focus on LCDs, as these displays were already in the PC market and were what the association had the most experience with. The end result was the DisplayHDR 400, 600, and 1000 standards, which covered a range of monitor designs that essentially stretched from not-very-HDR to cutting-edge full array local dimming displays.
The DisplayHDR True Black update in turn adds two more tiers to the DisplayHDR standard: DisplayHDR 400 True Black, and DisplayHDR 500 True Black. Like the tiers for LCDs, the True Black tiers are divided up based on performance; though the gap isn't quite as big as with the LCD tiers. The end result is that displays reaching these standards, besides meeting the DisplayHDR specification's baseline requirements, can also hit a peak brightness of 400 nits and 500 nits respectively.
The need for separate tiers for OLEDs – and other future emissive technologies like microLEDs – is rooted in the fact that HDR itself is as much (or more) about dynamic range as it is absolute maximum and minimum brightness. While LCDs can offer the necessary contrast ratios with the right backlighting technology, they are still backlit displays, meaning that they can't quite hit black since they're always illuminated to a degree. OLEDs, on the other hands, can hit almost perfect black levels since the pixels can simply be turned off entirely – hence the True Black moniker – which means these displays need to be measured on a different scale. Conversely, while LCDs can sustain incredible 600+ nit brightness levels over the whole screen, OLED technology can only burst to these levels for short periods of time, so the maximum brightness offered by OLED displays isn't quite in sync either with HDR LCDs.
Extremely low minimum brightness seems more useful than blinding maximum brightness. Ergo, any display without "True Black" is junk.
Previously: VESA Announces DisplayHDR Specification
(Score: 2) by drussell on Thursday January 24 2019, @09:06PM (8 children)
Screen life? Don't ask about that, either...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 24 2019, @09:16PM (1 child)
But... but... it's organic!
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 27 2019, @01:11AM
And don't eat it too.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 24 2019, @09:40PM
Actually, I'd be less worried about that in a laptop. A good monitor typically lasts through several PCs, but a laptop? The monitor only needs to last until the next upgrade cycle, maybe two if you're good about passing on a second-hand laptop. After three upgrade cycles it isn't going to be useful for much beyond limited web browsing, assuming it hasn't suffered catastrophic impact or spill damage first.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday January 24 2019, @09:51PM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @09:55PM (3 children)
As long as you only use it to watch TV and movies, with no logos in the corner, you'll be fine. Just don't display applications for any length of time, or it'll look like so many 80s CRTs with Visicalc burned in.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday January 24 2019, @10:39PM
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 24 2019, @10:41PM (1 child)
Maybe put it to sleep more often. I tend to keep my non-OLED laptop on 24/7.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 24 2019, @11:52PM
Heck, you don't even have to put the laptop to sleep, just the display. Or use a screensaver - those entertaining relics of from the days when CRT monitors were the norm, and burn-in was a not-uncommon problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @09:10PM (3 children)
This must be what Apple has been waiting for to update the MacBook Pro. Damn thing has barely changed in ten goddamn years.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @10:50PM
The MBP has changed in the last ten years. Unless you subscribe to Apple's "thinner at any cost" mantra, however, none of the change has been for the better.
The display resolution was increased, so a decent-quality 1680x1050 native resolution has been replaced by a really sharp effective 1440x900. (So effectively a step backward. I replaced my 2008 MBP specifically to obtain the higher-res screen when it was introduced.)
Batteries are glued in, so you can't easily replace them.
RAM is soldered, so you have to guess up front how much you'll need down the road and then pay Apple's jacked-up price for it.
Storage, same thing, though they went down the proprietary connector road first to stop you from being able to upgrade later.
Standard, commonly-used ports? Gone. (Apparently there's big money to be made in dongle sales.)
Magsafe connector? Gone. (It's saved me from disaster a few times.)
Decent keyboard? Gone in favor of one that can be effectively rendered useless by a couple of crumbs.
Tactile function/feature keys? Nope, apparently the world needs an emoji bar far more than it needs volume and brightness controls that you can find without looking.
And now it turns out they intentionally chose a crap cable to connect the display to the computer, so owners of 2016/17/18 MBPs will eventually have to pay hundreds of dollars to replace a complete display assembly because a $6 cable fails.
And the price? Jeebus, a maxed-out MBP is over $6000! I hate Win10 as much as the next person, but any number of better-configured Windows machines can be found considerably more-reasonably priced. Sure, they won't be paper-thin, but in a "Pro" machine, that's a drawback, not a feature.
Until Apple remembers that the "Pro" in MacBook Pro is short for "Professional" and starts offering machines that satisfy the name, I have no plans of replacing my ten year old MBP.
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Friday January 25 2019, @01:51PM (1 child)
Glossy or Matte ???
I much prefer a matte screen but don't see any mention of it, shame.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Saturday January 26 2019, @02:29PM
Here's the think - the pixels are tiny now. The reason matte is matte is it scatters light.
This works for the light currently annoying me with a reflection of my shirt as I type this on the glossy screen. In this case, matte would be good.
This scattering also works for light coming from the nice sharp edges of things my screen is displaying, making them blurry. That's bad. What's better, in my opinion? I don't like either and can't choose.
If you thin like I did that matte is worth the tradeoff, try this: Play a 4k video on your 4k display. Now change it to 1080p while playing, w/o stopping the video. Wow, why does that look like shit now... You don't notice this when you just play 1080p - it seems that's as good as you need.
Wait, that's not the topic, sorry. Display an image with some contrasty edges on a glossy high-res screen. Steal a matte filter sheet from your coworker and place it on your glossy screen. Wow, why does that look like shit now... You don't notice this when you just use a matte screen - it seems good enough.
It's because it scatters light, both reflected and outgoing.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 24 2019, @09:36PM (3 children)
One would hope that for a laptop they would use a proper "all colors for every pixel" subpixel alignment, hopefully in traditional horizontal or vertical bars so that standard sub-pixel rendering algorithms would work. From what I've heard though a PenTile or other creative arrangement seems to be the norm on phones and TVs, which causes significant visual anomalies when looking at text, sharp lines, etc. I would be deeply disappointed to put down the money for one of these things only to discover it's not actually well suited for computer use.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @10:34PM (2 children)
On one hand, I don't disagree in the general case -- pentile and friends are optimized for continuous-tone images like photos or video, while uniform triplet arrangements are better for discrete-tone lines and text. And I'd much rather have a computer display optimized for text over video.
On the other hand, it's a 4k, 15" display -- with that sort of pixel density, you're getting to where the differences between subpixel layouts don't matter much, because we're getting down near the limits of human visual acuity at normal working distances for a laptop.
(Obligatory reminder that Jobs lied about "retina" displays, deliberately conflating line-pairs/mm with pixels/mm, and thus introducing a factor of two error. So 15" "retina" displays in the 2500-3000px wide range leave a bit to be desired, but 3840px is getting close.)
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 24 2019, @11:45PM (1 child)
Good point.
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Friday January 25 2019, @11:05PM
Terrible point. Same point as those made by the "no one needs 4k movies, 1080p is fine" people. Had a 4k laptop for over 2 years now. have 4k tvs at 32 and 65".
1080p looks fine. Watch a 4k video and flip it to 1080p in the middle. Wow that looks like shit all of a sudden.
use a 4k laptop w/o font smoothing. Looks great. Now turn it on, use it for a while. Now turn it off. wow all the text looks like shit all of a sudden.
carrot cake. yummy. but not sitting next to chocolate cake.
fish is great and I love to eat it. put that fish next to a rare thick steak - wow that looks like shit all of a sudden.
not that's a good point. the OP's point is this: he hast strong opinions about shit he knows nothing about. the less the less actual knowledge, the stronger the opinion. This is how you get Christians, antivaxxers, and him - most likely a very ugly overweight person with super low self esteem. who's also a little dumb.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @07:17PM
i sure, if i place a fresnel lens on that display, i can see the individual pixels.
i recommend that everybody sit really really near to the monitor and complain that the individual pixels are visible.
maybe this way they will make "bigger displays" but in a much smaller form factor and save the planet from more e-waste ...