Looking to buy an OLED laptop this year? Here's what you need to know

[Redaktion]

To OLED, or not to OLED: That is the question. Manufacturers are heavily pushing OLED displays in notebooks for 2019, but should you make the leap? We examine the Samsung SDCA029 panel to be used by all 15.6-inch notebooks this year to help you decide if the advantages are worth the drawbacks for your usage.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Looking-to-buy-an-OLED-laptop-this-year-Here-s-what-you-need-to-know.426808.0.html

[Pol Camara]

You mention that OLED as a technology uses PWM at the refresh rate to modulate brightness, but according to 13R3 oled article, that used a 240hz pwm.

60hz is quite low, so even at 100% brightness one can notice the flickering?

[Zippo]

Indeed 60hz pwm seems very unlikely and would look terrible even to less sensitive people. Older panels by Samsung like the one in the Galaxy Book 12 use 240hz, just like their phones.

What is happening is that whoever did the tests at notebookcheck only checked for pwm at
maximum brightness. What they are seeing there is that oled displays are very briefly turned off and the on again at each refresh. What matters is that the time the display stays off is much shorter than for pwm, and so it is not noticeable and does not cause perceptible flickering.

Had they tested for pwm at brightness levels below 75%, I am sure they would have found pwm at 240hz.

[Douglas Black]

Good replies above.

I incorrectly wrote that they all used PWM at the refresh rate (this was my own false conjecture) and I have fixed it now. Different OLED displays, as you noticed, do seem to have different PWM frequencies, though they are always measurable at maximum brightness. I will talk to Allen Ngo (original reviewer) to see if we can do further tests.

[DF]

We'll have to watch reports in the field of how these fare over time.  Thankfully the number of makers using the panel should deliver a far greater sample set than in years past (wider number of vendors and GPU chips involved as drivers).

I'd probably have opted for the tech, but sadly Samsung did not elect to produce a 17.3" panel.  I'm also curious why not bump the refresh to 120Hz if the only thing holding that back is the driver chip.  And since Samsung produces their own chips (as well as chips for a wide portion of the industry), you'd think making a 120Hz driver would have been child's play.

Well with a lot of them out there - the feedback should be coming along soon on what owners think of them.

[Mark von Claustral]

Worth remembering that for a given price point the purchaser of an OLED-equipped laptop is giving up performance somewhere else in the device. Maybe less RAM, a weaker CPU or less storage. It's not just a question of whether the screen is good, it's whether its advantages compensate for losses elsewhere.

[Helium007]

Good article, however I think that mentions of drawbacks in the conclusion are a bit of underestimated.

OLED suffers these two problems:
- pixel/area burn out
- color change

I am using OLED screens on many devices that are about 4-5 years old now. All are flagship models and are used with care.
Burn in areas really develops about 2 years of medium usage. Higher the brightness used, worse burn out areas are. This generally affects things like status bars. Biggest problem on laptops is that most of screen is very often white. This really hurts the OLED and lowers the screen life. Even on devices that are used with variety of displayed content, brightness start to have visible different values in certain areas.

What I see as biggest problem is color degradation/distorsion. Because every OLED color luminophore element ( R, G, B) has different lifetime, color changes after usage. I had two Galaxy Note 4 phones - one 4 years old, one new out of box. Color space was very different and visible by bare eye...

I still compare OLED to old Plasma displays. They are still very common in their pros/cons. Even OLED is getting better, these drawbacks cannot be solved by physics of how these panels work.

IPS/LCD panels are still compared to them without problems if they are manufactured  precisely.

[LHPSU]

OLED also consumes significantly more power than IPS. Some reports say it reduces battery life by about 40%.

[NOT a review editor]

That SDCA029 moniker is not a panel ID. It's merely a controller name. Srsly am I the only one who noticed??

[Douglas Black]

That SDCA029 moniker is not a panel ID. It's merely a controller name. Srsly am I the only one who noticed??

Thank you for pointing this out

[Helium007]

No, it does NOT in general.
It depends heavily on what is displayed on the screen. When all area is black, it really consumes a lot less than LCD (maybe that 40%). But when whole area is white (like web browsing, text editing), OLED consumes MUCH more energy than LCD. So in average use, OLED consumes more energy than LCD.

OLED also consumes significantly more power than IPS. Some reports say it reduces battery life by about 40%.

[Douglas Black]

No, it does NOT in general.
It depends heavily on what is displayed on the screen. When all area is black, it really consumes a lot less than LCD (maybe that 40%). But when whole area is white (like web browsing, text editing), OLED consumes MUCH more energy than LCD. So in average use, OLED consumes more energy than LCD.

OLED also consumes significantly more power than IPS. Some reports say it reduces battery life by about 40%.

I think you read that backwards :)

[LHPSU]

@Douglas - your article on Ultrabookreview actually states 6 hours less battery time on productivity apps - not 2.

[KumaHIME]

Good replies above.

I incorrectly wrote that they all used PWM at the refresh rate (this was my own false conjecture) and I have fixed it now. Different OLED displays, as you noticed, do seem to have different PWM frequencies, though they are always measurable at maximum brightness. I will talk to Allen Ngo (original reviewer) to see if we can do further tests.

if you do some more tests, make sure to do some tests like what i did in this video with the same panel. i don't have nearly as much publicity as notebookcheck, and it would be nice if you guys redid the tests, so that people know what is actually going on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM5q-mR9doQ

also, im getting just over 5 hours on my razer blade 15 OLED of 4k 60fps youtube watching, 50% brightness. this was actually more than the razer blade 15 4k with 2070 by about 30 minutes. i ran the same test on that back when i had it.

[Douglas Black]

@Douglas - your article on Ultrabookreview actually states 6 hours less battery time on productivity apps - not 2.

Very good catch! That's huge.

also, im getting just over 5 hours on my razer blade 15 OLED of 4k 60fps youtube watching, 50% brightness. this was actually more than the razer blade 15 4k with 2070 by about 30 minutes. i ran the same test on that back when i had it.

Thanks for this. We will reference your tests and hopefully consider changing our methodology