Samsung is well-known for its prowess in making stellar OLED panels, which is evidenced in its top-tier smartphones every year. Now, the display division of the Korean behemoth is aiming for the laptop market with its latest announcement - a 15.6-inch OLED panel with 4K (3840x2160) resolution.
This announcement is notable for a few reasons. For one, OLED displays, despite their prominence in smartphones, are very uncommon in laptops. You may remember that one of the big highlights of CES this year was the AMOLED variant of HP"s Spectre x360. In fact, this 4K OLED panel from Samsung is the first of its kind.
The display also supports HDR, including the new HDR True Black standard, and being an OLED gives it a few advantages over typical LCDs. Brightness levels range from 0.0005 to 600 nits and, in comparison with LCD, Samsung says blacks should be 200 times darker, while whites can be twice as bright. It can offer up to 3.4 million colors (double what a similar-size LCD would have), and it meets the DCI-P3 standard. Samsung also boasts the high color volume if the display, which is 1.7 times higher than that of similar LCDs and provides better outdoor viewing.
Samsung"s newest display will go into mass production next month, and it should be available in premium laptops not too long after that. If you"re hoping to see it in Microsoft"s Surface devices, keep in mind that the Redmond company typically offers 3:2 screens, and not the 16:9 aspect ratio of Samsung"s panel, so this seems unlikely.