Samsung Unveils 15.6-Inch Ultra-HD OLED Display for Laptops

I'm using an OLED Thinkpad X1 Yoga as my primary laptop, and I was afraid of burnin, though almost two years in I have not had any problems.

Admittedly, I was very concious of the burnin issue from day zero and have the screen setup to hide toolbars etc off the screen. I always go into full screen mode with the terminal.

The colors are gorgeous and I feel such a raw sense of visceral delight when using the OLED screen.

At least at the two year mark, I see no problems. Separately I've had an OLED TV for 4 years and I have seen no burnin problems there either.

I have wanted to switch to a newer laptop but I dread going back to a non OLED screen.

This is a great development, and if the choice is between me being a bit more concious of tweaking software settings to go fullscreen and hide toolbars vs. amazing colors, that's a limitation I'm willing to deal with.

If burn-in is a serious threat to the usable lifetime of the display, I wonder whether the laptop could be configured to display a continuously varying image in an attempt to save the screen.

How bad is it?

I ask because I'm interested in a tv and the prices are starting to enter the realm of sanity (IMHO).

I have a 2010 Plasma, and people said that would suffer from burn-in. The only issue I ever had with it is when I left a game or menu up for several hours, and a shadow image would be left. The smudges went away pretty fast when something else got displayed, and all is well 9 years on.

So ... does anyone know how bad the OLED problem is? Is it a bit overblown like the concerns about SSD writing shortening their useful lives? Or is this really something to be concerned about, and the industry is trying to brush it under the carpet?

I thought OLED burn-in was something I'd have to just deal with down the road when I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro S (windows tablet), and that the machine was going to be on a two year countdown before becoming annoying.

So far it's been about 30 months with, no issue. I've taken no active steps to fight against burn-in, but also haven't completely disabled the default screensaver (a wobbling word art thing that displays the name of the tablet model after about 5 minutes of disuse). I've been checking for burn-in periodically as I'm suffering from a bit of upgrade-itus, and that would be a fantastic excuse.

No worries, the batteries don't last long anyway.

You're right. For how nice it is, OLED is really a stopgap tech.

The reason samsung never invested in OLED tvs is due to cost and poor longevity.

MicroLED is the same concept as OLED but without the degradation. OLED was simply easier to engineer given current tech, vs manufacturing tiny LEDs.

OLED will be supplanted by microLED. However if samsung can make these displays cheap enough, they will be nice in the interim. I don't expect to see microLED in mass market devices for quite some time.

What you want is a laptop with a matte screen. Not a "glossy treated for reflection/matte like", which is what you find on most expensive laptops like those from Apple, but actually matte.

It's kind of hard to find because it doesn't sell well because the colors are very much toned down on it, but you can have the sun right behind your screen and it won't matter. I still have one from ~2012 (from the french store LDLC, which are rebranded custome made Clevo) that I gave my GF, and for work purpose and always being at top visibility the screen destroys anything else I've used since.

I'm genuinely weirded out that as far as I know there is no major work brand like XPS or MBP offering true matte screen as options anymore ...

PS: if you haven't seen one before, it's truly no reflection/competition with the sun at all, and it's truly washed out colors.

EDIT: I would at least like to know why I'm downvoted ? A true matte screen is vastly better when facing sunlight, which is what I'm answering to

> I can only work on it with bright IDE theme.

If you can set your pointer color to inverted, it's a tremendous help (even if you only occasionally rely on it). Also, of course, as big as possible.

I recommend using polarised sunglasses. The macbook screen is polarised the correct way for most sunglasses, so it doesn't dim your screen half as much as it does your surroundings.

Something like ePaper would be fantastic for outdoor work.

Sadly, currently, the refresh rate is very slow and it has no viable color options.

Reading this right now on the beach on my iPhone XS and wearing sunglasses

Have had an S3 for 3 years, S5 for another 3 and now an S8 for one, and haven't had any burn-in issues.

Though I mostly find max brightness to be uncomfortably bright, so I usually keep it down in the 10-30% range (auto).

My gf likes to illuminate half the block with her phone though, and we both got the S8 at the same time, so will be interesting to compare.

> that windows has far more static elements than Android

Android has a status bar at the top that's displayed over most applications. And applications on Android are far more likely to be maximized, which makes the common design elements and widgets more likely to be in the same place.

To the best of my knowledge and research, though, the current generation of OLED screens and controllers manage to avoid image retention.

My 6 year old oled phone that I used daily until last year (I would say 'used heavily' but then compared to some people, it might have been moderately) did not have any such issues.

Switch to a black scheme, saves power and avoids burn in

Does Windows not have burn-in prevention?

I have an Alienware 13 r3 (QHD OLED Touch display) and so far I've had absolutely no issues. The screen is just amazing. I've had the computer for over 1 year and the screen is as good as the first day. This is a gaming laptop, so I've tried lots of games and I haven't seen any type of flickering.

Currently that is an issue yes but linux 4.21/5.0 is adding a console font designed to be used on hiDPI screens at the tty.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4....

Yes, it feels like almost if you need a microscope

Pixel density is pretty low, so that wouldn't be a problem I would be concerned with 8k screen.

Does such resolution even make sense on 15.6" screen? You won't see any pixel difference with a lower resolution most likely (unless you look at the screen from a very close range).

I want 120+Hz display and I will gladly give them whatever they will ask for it

And two mail clients, a good one and the Samsung one

And two calendars, a good one and the Samsung one

And two browsers, a good one and the Samsung one

And two text editots, a good one and the Samsung one

And a camera application, a good one and the Samsung one

Why do they bother?

I have this on my Dell XPS 15. It's really nice, except for the fact that I need to have everything magnified 200% for anything to be readable..

Most consumer laptops are probably used quite often for watching movies, but this shouldn't be an issue. My laptop has a 3:2 screen and I don't even notice the black bars when watching a video. An OLED display would be even better for this as the bars are as really black.

Guess we'll see in a year or so. My OLED phone had burn in after a year and I can see the Android status bar when I watch full screen videos.

I'm not sure about the TV across the room, but I certainly see the pixels on a 2k 23" monitor. I'm using two now and every second I'm itching to get back to my Macbook's Retina display. Everything else about these monitors is fine... except pixel density.

In Windows this is better (for me) because I personally like the subpixel rendering there - it's aligned to pixel boundaries more often and looks clearer to my eyes.

Few things:

1. TV sizes are getting bigger and bigger. You mightn't notice the pixels at the size of your current TV, but your current TV might be considered small by the standard of increasing screen sizes.

2. You mightn't be able to see the pixels on your 16" 2k screen or on a 4K TV, but your eyes aren't the only ones on the planet. To my eyes, 2k is old news; my 13" has 1600 pixels vertically. My left eye can barely see anything thanks to keratoconus, but with both eyes open I can still discern the difference between 720p, 1080p, and full 4K content on my TV — mainly in games and Blu Ray movies.

3. You don't need to rewrite every single application to support HiDPI displays — Windows already has scaling baked into the OS (and has for years), and the majority of apps support the feature with no issue; macOS has had Retina display support since late 2012 and only apps ported from Linux exhibit any weirdness.

4. All of the Galaxy phones have had OLED displays standard for years, long after 720p was considered a high resolution for a phone (back in 2011). Even some of the non-flagship models have HiDPI OLEDs and aren't particularly expensive.

The main point here is to gain improved resolution on text where it's quite noticeable going from 140 PPI to 280 PPI - many developers will appreciate it.

It should be fine for the kind of work you're doing though, are you using tools that don't support DPI scaling?

I disagree - I have a Dell 15.6" with a 4k screen and there is a noticable difference over my work Retina 15" Mac and my Pixelbook.

Of course you're not supposed to run at 1x UI scaling.

My 4k 15" in 1080p is much sharper looking than a native 1080p screen, but I prefer to run 4k with 2x scaling.

I'm not sure how much laptop companies are in control of the battery life of laptops. I mean, they could always add more batteries, but those cost weight and their doesn't seem to be a market for that. X86 CPUs, screens, and wifi connections all take up a certain amount of energy. I think most companies are doing the best with what they have to work with.

Where's the problem with charging your device overnight? As long as it gets you through the day I think it's fine.

You may be able to find some at panelook.com

You can't.

Have you looked at this new Samsung screen in person, or what makes you say that?

How about the HDR screen from the X16G?

But the addition of 'dedicated GPU' is what drives sales, unfortunately. I don't think nVidia's x20/x30 GPUs for mobile improves anything. Anybody that actually needs power would opt for x50 or higher, and anything less would be served by integrated graphics.

On my desktop I have a 27" 4k monitor (3840×2160) and I'm a bit intrigued on how this resolution is not enough for a 15.6" monitor, what do I miss here?

4k with 2x scaling is much sharper and easier on the eyes.

Full-HD is ~140 PPI, that's not low but not so high more wouldn't be a noticeable difference. Not really needed for general use IMHO, but also not just hype.

> I assume you can not tell any difference between 2k and 4k from the distance a laptop is supposed to be used

My 2013 13" macbook pro retina has a resolution of 2560x1600. I absolutely can tell the difference compared to 'Full' HD, just in crispness of image, beautiful font rendering etc.

So a 4K screen at 15.6" doesn't seem outrageous to me.

Font rendering is the big one. It has a massive impact on the readability of complex characters at small font sizes.

Your question is entirely valid -- there is a point of diminishing returns. The GS8, for instance, has a resolution of 2960 x 1440. By default it runs the screen at 2220 x 1080 and the overwhelming majority of customers will never know the difference. I have a Lenova 720 with a UHD screen (like the linked), and the vast majority of time I run it at 1920x1080 to halve, and halve again, the load on the GPU trying to run so many pixels (not to mention the occasional irritating software incompatibility with the resolution, leading to interfaces for ants). It is generally an imperceptible difference, and one of the very few times I go back to the native resolution is if doing an extended reading session of dense subject matter, where there's a minuscule advantage in type clarity.

There is a placebo effect as well, so someone with their shiny new ultra high resolution screen may feel that there's a compelling difference, but I have doubts it would hold up under legitimate blind testing. We see the same thing with color perceptions now -- that OLED and a good LCD (e.g. iPhone XR) will be calibrated to close to identical color performance, and in blind testing will likely be very difficult to separate on that basis, but it's very common to hear OLED users laud color performance.

There is no question that OLED absolutely owns when it comes to contrast, especially in dark environments where the difference between LCD grey and OLED black is without question.

My understanding is that this is pentile, meaning each ‘pixel’ is either R+G, or G+B; not the R+G+B pixel you’d expect. In practice this means 4k brightness detail, but only 2k colour detail.

That aside, 1080p isn’t past the threshold of imperceptibility. 4k totally is, but doubling a common res means you get all the benefits without non-integer scaling issues or changes in screen real-estate.

The pixel density always needs to be considered together with the typical viewing distance.

A UHD 15.6" display with a viewing distance of 34 inches (86cm) results in 170 pixels per degree which is quite high.

It's a very subjective thing. Some people value it higher than others.

For example going from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 on your 5.8" phone screen provides only limited value, yet many people still go for it.

I hope that some manufacturers (hello HP!) will use that slim bezel 15,6" screen in a 14" body format without those hideous number pads I have to buy and never use. The laptop in the article looks perfect, just add three physical buttons around the touchpad as in HPs ZBooks.

I prefer laptops to be thin, light and something that I can carry around in my hands. 15.6 inch is the perfect size for a portable laptop.

It offers the best tradeof in screenspace to portability and current thin bezel 15.6 laptops fit in standard size laptop backpacks.

Obviously it's not for you, but anything less is no good for my eyes.

Look at the picture of the laptop. Without top and side bezels, it has the same footprint as a normal 14" laptop.

> Black display hinges break the silver line of the chassis. Two black buttons on the left do the same. Big black touchbar type thing coupled with white keyboard keys. Small trackpad that's not color matched to the chassis. Also, 'SAMSUNG DISPLAY' branding trashes the beautiful edge-to-edge display... Aside from the display, it looks like a bad MacBook knockoff. Samsung can do better, they have on some of their phones.

This is about the display. The laptop it's attached to is probably just a proof of concept demo platform for the display.