Apple has rolled out its newest iPad Professional and aside from the brand new M4 chip, which is fairly attention-grabbing in its personal proper, the spotlight is undoubtedly its new dual-layer OLED show, recognized in Apple parlance as Tandem OLED. Able to 1,000 nits sustained full-screen brightness and 1,600 nits peak HDR, it blows away any OLED PC monitor for sheer brightness. Even one of the best present OLED large-format desktop panels prime out at about 250 nits full display screen.
So, the fast query is whether or not Apple’s dual-layer OLED tech might make the transition to desktop or even laptop computer PCs. However that appears unlikely. The primary causes are value and complexity.
For starters, the Tandem OLED panel makes use of two OLED panels stacked atop each other. Present PC OLED displays are costly sufficient with only one. The price of two panels in a single monitor does not bear excited about. And that is earlier than you contemplate the complexity of producing such a show. The 2 panels will have to be very carefully aligned to make sure sharp picture high quality.
Then there’s the issue of driving two panels in parallel. Very exact management over picture replace and timing is required. Certainly, Apple’s new M4 chip has a model new devoted show controller block designed to do exactly that. That timing and synchronisation problem is just going to be extra difficult in a premium desktop PC context the place you may count on a refresh price of 240 Hz or extra.
Think about attempting to replace two panels in good synchronicity 240 or extra instances in a single second. Get it even infinitesimally mistaken and you are going to have every kind of response and picture blurring points. So, it is doubtless that any dual-layer OLED monitor would want an costly bespoke management chip to drive the panels.
What’s extra, it is also price contemplating whether or not the achievement of 1,000 nits full-screen for a PC monitor even is smart. A tool like an iPad must work nicely in a wider vary of settings and eventualities than a desktop monitor or arguably even a laptop computer display screen.
Critically for the iPad, that features open air, the place critically excessive brightness is required to offset the glare of broad daylight. Indoors, a full-screen functionality of 400 nits might be lots, any extra could be uncomfortable. Sure, you need greater than 400 nits for a correct HDR expertise. However not sustained brightness throughout the entire display screen. No person needs a 30-inch-plus panel hammering their retinas with 1,000 nits of sustained full-screen sizzle.
Furthermore, present large-format single-panel OLED screens can already obtain 1,000 nits or extra in small home windows. So, for these vital HDR highlights, OLEDs like our present fave, the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM, get the job carried out very properly.
Likewise, in a traditional indoor setting, the return when it comes to perceived brightness does not scale linearly with the nit score. A display screen with double the nit score does not subjectively look twice as brilliant, extra like 25%.
So, that will all quantity to including an enormous quantity of value to extend brightness to ranges that hardly anybody needs and signify diminishing returns in a typical desktop context.
The fact is that the most recent desktop OLED panels are fairly first rate for full-screen brightness. Certain, to be good you’d most likely need one other 100 to 150 nits full-screen punch. However the big value and complexity of a dual-layer panel nearly definitely is not the appropriate answer. As a substitute, just a little extra iteration on present single-panel tech will most likely get us there whereas decreasing prices as a substitute of including to them.
In the long run, Apple’s Tandem OLED tech is an answer to a really specific downside. Little question it appears beautiful. However as tempting as it’s to want the identical expertise for the PC, it simply does not make sense.
