Crystal clear

Laptops with OLED screens have jaw-dropping displays and emit less blue light

by marc saltzman

No doubt you’ve seen super-slim televisions with gorgeous screens powered by OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology. These amazing displays are also found in some premium smartphones and computer monitors—and now, laptops.

Because they display clean, stunning images, OLED laptops are ideal for content creators, such as digital artists, graphic designers, photographers, video editors, game designers and animators. Computer gamers and movie lovers will appreciate the up to 120-Hertz refresh rates of most OLED screens, which allow fast-moving images to be rendered smoothly.

Dream screen

OLED (pronounced “oh-led”) is a carbon-based semiconductor film layer that emits light when electricity is applied. The result is an amazingly beautiful image; in part because each pixel is its own light source, there’s no backlighting required, unlike other screen technologies, including LCD (liquid-crystal display). As a result, OLED screens produce incredible contrast levels.

Along with producing deep, dark blacks, colors on an OLED display seem to pop off the screen. This is primarily because of the high contrast levels and the ability to display more colors, and with greater color accuracy. According to laptop manufacturer ASUS, its OLED screens can display more than 60 times more colors than its LCD laptops can. That amounts to 1.07 billion compared to 16.7 million.

Other OLED advantages

OLED screens also display a greater consistency of brightness across the screen. They produce up to 600 nits (a unit of brightness); most laptop LCD screens only produce up to 250 nits. This technology provides wider viewing angles and is easier on your eyes; you’re exposed to up to 70% less harmful blue light than with most LCD screens, because OLEDs use only the light needed without the white backlight.

Several factors should go into deciding which laptop is right for you: the processor (the engine that drives your computer’s performance), graphics capabilities (important for gamers), the amount of storage and the kind of drive (hard drive or solid-state) and how much system memory (aka RAM) you need—and you can add screen technology to that list.

Once you use a laptop with an OLED display, it will be difficult to go back to anything else.

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