CES’s best screen may be less than an inch wide

Sure, 97-inch next-gen OLED TVs are eye-popping 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 the itty-bitty OLED on silicon (OLEDoS) microdisplay this week at CES 2023 in Las Vegas. I saw it as part of a behind-the-scenes tour of all LG Display’s latest OLED innovations, of which there are many. I got a big kick out of the flexible OLED and TVs with motorized, moving speakers (opens in new tab). Still, that little OLEDoS bowled me over.

It’s small enough that, from a distance of a few feet, I mistook it for a smudge on LG Display’s white tour venue walls. But as I got closer, I noticed the smudge was moving. I could see that it was a tiny, 1024×768 screen. Next to the unadorned display, LG put one behind a loupe where I could get close and see the surprising level of detail LG Display packed into the small and shockingly bright screen (7,000 nits). The resolution measures out to 3,500 ppi (pixels per inch) and is further enhanced by a smooth 120Hz refresh rate.

I guess the bigger question is what would you do with a tiny, bright, relatively high-resolution screen like this? Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality immediately come to mind and LG Display confirmed that’s the target market but added that there are no current partners.

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