First Glimpses of LG OLED Display Impress

Like its brothers from Samsung and Sony, LG's OLED display boasts amazing color reproduction, 180 degree viewing angles, and tight pixel density.

First off: There were no new commercial OLEDs displays being unveiled at CES. I know, we’re disappointed too. Despite giving the industry an entire year to catch up, Sony remains the only manufacturer with a commercial OLED television set available to buy right now.

That said, there are still some impressive demos out there. Having drooled over Samsung and Sony screens last year, I wanted to check out LG’s freshman effort in the new technology. Not surprisingly, the company’s concepts hit it out of the park.

Right now, the company is only showcasing one OLED display: a 15-inch model it has pinned up to panes of glass to showcase how stunningly thin these screens can really get. How thin? Just 0.85mm. Given a quick glance, the image almost appears to be embedded in the glass or expertly projected onto its surface somehow. It’s an impressive effect, for sure.

As with other OLED displays, LG’s truly shines in viewing angle and color reproduction. Still images look so good from all angles that you may be tempted to think it’s not a TV at all but an illuminated piece of signage, and colors looked so vibrant and spot on that tomatoes looked as if they were sitting right there on the other side of the glass. Although the models in question only had 720p resolution, packing that many pixels into such a tiny display creates an incredibly tight pixel density, and even with your eyes just inches away from the screen it’s virtually impossible to pick out individual pixels.

LG reps wouldn’t pin down an exact launch date (“Maybe next year… if not that then the year after that…”), and of course price remains a giant question mark, but I suspect consumers will be waiting for these screens with cash in hand when LG kicks production into gear.