In its latest update at the Consumer Electronics Show, LG Display has finally confirmed that its latest OLED panels are utilising Micro Lens Array technology to increase brightness to around 2,100 nits, while providing better energy efficiency and superior viewing angles.
The admission came after LG Electronics and Panasonic announced their latest flagship OLED TVs, promising much improved brightness compared to previous models. Panasonic even mentioned MLA technology itself, but until now LG Display had not said what was behind the increased brightness in the OLED panels it supplies to those companies.
LG Display explained that it uses a dual hardware and software approach to achieve more brightness. The technique is called “Meta Technology” and it combines ultra-fine lenses with a specially developed algorithm to enhance brightness by maximising light emission. In this way, it’s able to increase luminance by up to 60%, the company said. Viewing angles, meanwhile, are improved by up to 30%.
LG Display’s improvements are timely, as its biggest rival Samsung Display launched a next-generation QD-OLED panel at CES 2023 that also bumps up brightness to around 2,000 nits. QD-OLED is a rival technology to LG’s White OLED tech, and was already said to be able to achieve superior brightness.
LG’s Meta Technology will be incorporated within its premium 55-inch, 65-inch and 77-inch 4K OLED panels, as well as its 77-inch and 88-inch 8K panels. Later, it will be added to its smaller OLED displays, eventually becoming the standard panel for all LG Display OLED televisions.
The MLA technology involves using a layer of micrometer sized convex lenses that are able to refocus the light emitted by individual pixels and direct it towards the viewer. Previously, this light scattered in all directions, meaning much of it was “wasted”, so to speak. In the 77-inch OLED panel, there are 5,117 micro lenses per pixel, LG said, meaning over 42 billion lenses are distributed across the entire panel. LG said this not only equates to higher brightness, but also improves energy efficiency by around 22%.
LG Display also spoke about the new “Meta Booster” algorithm, which is said to carefully analyze the brightness information for each scene so it can adjust its output in real-time to optimise brightness and colour expression and boost HDR.
The Meta Technology also enhances the off-axis angle, where brightness halves compared to the maximum output available. According to LG Display, this has now been extended to 160 degrees, representing a 30% improvement over older OLED panels.
“The successful development of our superior ‘META Technology’ evolves the image quality of OLED TVs to a new, unparalleled level,” said Hyeon-woo Lee, Senior Vice President and Head of Large Display Business Unit at LG Display.
In other news at CES yesterday, LG Electronics unveiled its 2023 lineup of QNED TVs, which are LCD TVs that incorporate Mini-LED backlights. The flagship model in this series is the 4K QNED85.
The company said the Mini-LED backlight system has been upgraded compared to last year’s models, and now features over one million greyscales, or 64-times more than conventional LED backlights. This provides more granular backlight control, the company said. The QNED TVs will be powered by LG’s Alpha 7 Gen6 and Alpha 5 Gen6 video processors, which are less powerful than the Alpha 9 chip that’s found in this year’s premium OLED TVs.
In addition, LG Electronics announced a new partnership with Xperi that will see DTS:X immersive audio integrated with this year’s premium OLED and QNED TVs.
