The first monitors built with LG Display’s new RGB Tandem OLED display technology are on the way, as the company has confirmed that it’s now mass producing them for customers.
In addition, LG Display said it also has 540Hz OLED panel in the works that can hit 720Hz at lower resolutions, and it should be ready before the year is out.
The announcement follows the launch of the first televisions featuring the company's new RGB Tandem OLED panel, which can be found on models such as the LG G5 OLED TV, the Philips OLED910 and OLED950, and the Panasonic Z95B.
While those panels are, of course, pretty hefty things, the RGB Tandem OLED displays for monitors will be much smaller at just 27-inches, the company said. They’ll have 2560x1440 resolution, with a blazing-fast 280Hz refresh rate. They’ll be able to hit 1,500 nits peak brightness in a 1.5% window, the company said.
The first monitors to feature LG Display’s smallest RGB Tandem OLED panel will launch in the second half of the year, and brands including Acer and Gigabyte have already confirmed models in the works. LG Electronics will almost certainly ship an RGB Tandem OLED monitor too, and most likely there’ll be some other brands that do so. These monitors will compete with those that feature Samsung Display’s latest-generation QD-OLED panels, which currently dominate the market for high-end gaming monitors.
According to LG Display, the new panel has a special “anti-glare coating” that uses a special film to block up to 99% of light reflections, aided by an “improved internal panel element structure.” You can watch this video to learn more about RGB Tandem OLED and see why it's such a big deal:
Perhaps the more exciting news concerns LG Display’s upcoming 540Hz panel, which surpasses the 500Hz refresh rates found on Samsung Display’s newest QD-OLED tech. That display is also expected to be based on the RGB Tandem OLED tech and it will have a 2560x1440 resolution and 0.03 milliseconds response time, combined with a much higher refresh rate. What’s more, if you’re prepared to drop the resolution down to 720p, the refresh rate can be cranked up even more, to 720Hz, way faster than any other consumer-focused monitor is capable of.
LG Display has not yet begun mass production of the 540Hz panel, but it’s expecting to do so later this year, so we should see the first monitors before Christmas.
In a statement, LG Display said the industry has long considered the 500Hz threshold to be “virtually unbreakable” due to the drop in picture quality when running at such high frame rates. But it says it has now overcome this limitation thanks to a new proprietary algorithm. As a result, it has developed a 540Hz panel that goes beyond the highest standards of professional gamers. It also claims the panel will achieve VESA’s ClearMR 21000 rating, the highest tier.
“Meanhwile, LG Display’s proprietary Dynamic Frequency & Resolution (DFR) technology enables ultra-high refresh rate modes of up to 720Hz in HD resolution,” the company added. “DFR allows users to select their preferred refresh rate model depending on the content.”
While LG Display has not explicitly stated that its 540Hz panel is based on RGB Tandem OLED, Asus told TFT Central in May that it is. We’d be very surprised if Asus got it wrong.
