Some laptops are now being offered with OLED screens. What are the pros and cons of them? Should you buy a PC with an OLED screen for yourself?
Let us talk about the advantages first.
OLED panels deliver a black level where black is really completely black, as there is no backlight bleeding through like on other panels. This in turn makes for a pretty extreme contrast, and as long as the OLED panel also has good brightness, you get an exceptionally vivid image, with colors that look more exciting than the alternatives.
OLED panels also use less power and can help extend the battery life of a portable device, since they do not use energy to illuminate areas of the screen that are darkened anyway. If you are comfortable with the dark mode in Windows, you’ll theoretically have a better experience with OLED panels.
Also, OLED panels are extremely fast as they have low latency. The time it takes for a screen’s pixels to completely convert from one color to another is called response time. A longer response time means that the pixels retain the color for a longer period of time. This retention of color is detrimental to the viewing experience when the screen needs to display fast motion.
The lower latency makes OLED panels popular screens for gaming.
As for the known drawbacks, there are some as well, but you can actually ignore most of them today.
You have probably heard that OLED panels have to deal with “burn-in” issues. Remember back when the logo of your favorite TV station ended up being burnt into the screen no matter what channel you watched? For computers, this meant you could risk having the taskbar permanently etched into the bottom of the screen. Thankfully, new technologies like “pixel shifting” have largely made this an issue of the past that can now safely be ignored.
Traditionally, OLED panels also struggled with low brightness, making them difficult to view in brightly lit rooms or when backlit. However, this has not been an issue with the newer laptops we’ve tested. Just make sure the screen can display at least 400 nits. You can find this information in the manufacturer’s specifications or from the seller (some are quite hard to find).
OLED panels offer better computer battery life, stunning picture quality, and a comparable, if not better, gaming experience. We think OLED panels are a great option, especially for gamers or even regular customers, as their prices have dropped dramatically in recent years.
