I know everyone is pissed about that iPad ad but I was too busy being excited about those new tandem OLED displays.
Essentially they are just two OLED panels glued together - so what makes them so exciting?
Let me explain 👇
First we need a quick refresher on how OLEDs work.
Instead of using a backlight like transmissive displays, OLEDs use clever physics and chemistry to emit light directly from the sub pixel.
The advantage here is that they don't have a backlight.
This means they can display an almost pure black, making them much higher contrast.
They are also more power efficient because each pixel only consumes as much current as it needs.
But here's the bummer - they can't get very bright. There's a natural limit to how much light each pixel can emit.
This is where tandem OLED comes in. By sandwiching another layer of emissive pixels on top you can almost double the brightness.
Weirdly, this also makes the displays use less power.
Because OLEDs are less power efficient at higher current densities, being able to run each layer at a lower current means you can save power overall for a given luminance. Which also helps reduces burn-in.
But it's not all sunshine and rainbows.
Adding another layer causes the distance between the emitters and the top metal electrode and substrate to increase. These aren't perfectly transparent so they can start to reflect light hitting it at certain angles.
This reflection means a lot of this extra light gets lost internally. This is called Light Extraction Efficiency (LEE).
There are a few ways to get around this and they all try to prevent the light from hitting the substrate at an angle that will reflect it back down.
All these techniques increase the manufacturing cost and complexity which has meant no-one has put these into production. Until now.
Interestingly, we don't actually know yet which technique is being used here.
Anyway, this is pretty huge - they are essentially the perfect display.
If the panel manufacturer can make these cost effective at larger sizes we might see them in the Macbook soon.
Or even a new Pro XDR - which sucks because I just bought one a few months ago.