Something to look forward to: OLED TVs have been around for several years and smartphone OLED panels have been used for even longer. It is now time for laptops to receive the benefits of better display technologies courtesy of Samsung's 15.6-inch 4K OLED panel that is being sent to mass production.
Laptop manufacturers are about to be able to start putting Samsung's 4K OLED panels into 15.6-inch systems. Samsung Display has shared that mass production of its latest OLED panel will begin in February. Once production lines crank out large numbers of displays, premium laptops will begin to make use of the panels.
One of the major benefits to OLED is offering a high contrast ratio while also offering relatively high brightness, making it an excellent technology for HDR. Samsung's UHD OLED panel for laptops can range from five ten-thousandths of a nit on up to 600 nits of brightness.
Color space is also better represented by OLED. Samsung's laptop panels will offer twice as many colors compared to traditional LCD displays at 34 million. For those familiar with color mapping, the DCI-P3 color space is Samsung's target to meet or exceed. Reduction in blue light output during everyday use is also a claimed benefit of the 4K OLED display.
OLED panels are still not perfect replacements for LCD though. Greater efficiency and more pleasing appearances are wonderful, but can quickly be overshadowed by problems such as burn-in. Longevity of OLED panels has also been questioned in the past, but Samsung's track record of producing quality displays speaks for itself.
Although we do not know which manufacturers will specifically be using Samsung's OLED panels, there were several laptops at CES 2019 that contained OLED displays. HP is building its Spectre x360 2-in-1 with OLED and Dell is adding OLED options to the XPS 15, Alienware G Series, and Alienware m15. HP will launch its upgraded Spectre laptop in July, while Dell is planning to release new laptops as early as March.