LG Display announced that it has developed the world’s first 88-inch 8K OLED display. This industry-leading product will be showcased at LG Display’s booth at CES 2018 in Las Vegas this month.

(Image: LG Display)

The newly-unveiled largest OLED display in the world boasts the highest resolution with 33 million pixels (7680×4320) – 16 times more than FHD (1920×1080) and four times more than UHD (3840×2160). This expansion of its OLED product portfolio reflects LG Display’s commitment to lead the high-end premium TV market.

“The successful development of the world’s first 8K OLED display is a milestone for the 8K era and underscores the exciting potential of OLED,” said In-Byung Kang, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at LG Display. “OLED is clearly a next-generation technology leader and for this reason, LG Display is accelerating its research and development into OLED so that we can provide differentiated products to customers and markets.”

The significance of ultra-high 8K resolution panel development is higher resolution without compromising brightness. Higher resolution is achieved by reducing the size of each pixel and in turn aperture ratio*, unavoidably reducing brightness. As OLEDs are self-emissive and therefore less affected by aperture ratio, they are optimal for 8K panels. On the other hand, non-emissive LCDs should improve the performance of their backlight units when achieving higher resolution in order to compensate for the drop in aperture ratio and brightness. This leads to an increase in power consumption and material costs.

The 8K OLED displays can also maintain their slimmer design, as the self-emissive OLEDs do not need backlight units. LCDs with 8K resolution, however, inevitably get heavier and thicker because backlight units need to be placed directly behind the panels to achieve the same level of brightness and picture quality as 4K products.

As LG Display, the sole large-size OLED display maker in the world, uses its in-house innovations in panel design and fine processing to create 8K resolution OLED displays, the company is set to lead the extra-large and ultra-high resolution panel market.

The 33 million self-emissive OLED pixels in each 8K OLED display create the more delicate images and unmatched picture quality that are already highly regarded in the UHD TV industry. OLED TVs are well-known for their superior picture quality with perfect black, more life-like colors, and wider viewing angles.

In fact, DisplayMate, a professional, US-based display-testing and rating body, praised OLED TVs in a recent report as visually indistinguishable from perfect with the highest absolute color accuracy, the highest absolute luminance accuracy, and the highest contrast ratio. In addition, OLED TVs have consistently won top rankings in quality and performance evaluations conducted in North America, Europe and elsewhere.