The best screen at CES might be less than an inch wide

Sure, the 97-inch next-gen OLED TV is jaw-dropping and gorgeous, but I was blown away by something no bigger than a quarter: LG Display’s 0.42-inch OLEDoS high-resolution screen.

The company unveiled its tiny OLED-on-silicon (OLEDoS) microdisplay this week at CES 2023 in Las Vegas. I see it as part of a behind-the-scenes tour of all of LG Display’s latest OLED innovations, of which there are many.I got a lot of inspiration from flexible OLEDs, and TV with powered mobile speakers (opens in a new tab). Still, that little OLEDoS blew my mind.

It’s small enough that, from a few feet away, I mistook it for a smudge on the wall of LG Display’s white tour venue. But as I got closer, I noticed the smudge was moving. I can see it’s a tiny 1024×768 screen. Next to the modest display, LG put one behind a magnifying glass, where I could see up close the LG Display’s astonishing level of detail into the small but surprisingly bright screen (7,000 nits). The resolution is up to 3,500 ppi (pixels per inch), further enhanced by a smooth 120Hz refresh rate.

I guess the bigger question is what are you going to do with such a small, bright, relatively high-resolution screen? Augmented reality and virtual reality immediately come to mind, and LG Display confirmed that this is the target market, but added that it currently has no partners.

That resolution won’t be the highest on the VR market. Meta Quest 2 uses two 1920×1832 screens, but they’re now LCD instead of OLED, and the 100-nit brightness pales in comparison to LG’s tiny OLEDoS display. Meta’s VR display doesn’t even match the refresh rate (90Hz vs. 120Hz).