expiredjosephjosephson posted Apr 15, 2023 05:55 PM
Item 1 of 5
Item 1 of 5
expiredjosephjosephson posted Apr 15, 2023 05:55 PM
110” Class MICRO LED Samsung 4K with Smart Hub TVs - MNA110MS1ACXZA - $149999.99
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I wanted to share my knowledge about the future of the technology. I also want to help answer the questions:
What is "microLED"? And how is it different than other display technologies like OLED, LCD, miniLED, laser, etc?
First off, there are currently no true "microLED" products widely available on the market (unless you include the TV in this post). MicroLED can also be referred to as μLED or uLED. (Not to be confused with ULED from Hisense, where the 'U' stands for 'Ultra'.)
Apple Watch is expected to be the first mass-produced consumer tech to use microLED technology. I believe they are now targeting a 2025 release, but the date has been pushed back many, many times.
We will see microLED in small displays first. Watches, then phones, then possibly laptops and TVs. However, I have serious doubts as to whether we will ever see microLED TVs like the one in this post in the average living room. The benefits don't justify the cost. OLED or laser will win the TV battle in my opinion.
MicroLED may also power new technologies like augmented reality (AR) glasses and transparent displays. Laser-based or possibly LCOS may be alternatives. However, it is known that major technology like Apple, Google, and Meta are all pursuing microLED as the first solution for AR displays. Research in this area is shrouded in secrecy, but it is likely we will see consumer microLED AR displays appear shortly after watches. Many prototypes already exist.
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Definition
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TVs are usually classified by either
1) The medium/material the light is originally generated in.
OLEDs fall under this category. You will often see older LCD TVs simply marketed as "LED" TVs because of the use of LEDs as the backlight. However, nowadays there are many different color-conversion/backlit technologies that all use "LED" under the hood, so they must instead be classified by the conversion technology.
2) The conversion technology (how the backlights are converted to colors and delivered to the viewer).
Almost all of these technologies use blue/white inorganic GaN-based LEDs to generate the initial light, and then convert it to colors.
LCD uses liquid crystals to convert the white/blue light into additional colors, and remains the most common display format. Newer quantum dot (QD) or "QLED" TVs use QDs to convert colors instead of LCD. "Mini-LED" or "local dimming" uses smaller LEDs prior to conversion to improve contrast. Aside from OLED, most TVs are named and marketed based on the conversion technology they use.
MicroLED is similar to OLED in that it is a "direct view" display, meaning that no color conversion is used. You could think of it as ILED where I stands for Inorganic (but then people that buy organic-only wouldn't buy it—I wish I was joking). MicroLEDs are smaller versions of the LEDs that power conversion displays like LCD. However, they use red, green, and blue LEDs directly, as opposed to converting the light from only blue LEDs.
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Cost and performance
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MicroLED beats OLED and conversion (LCD) displays in essentially every metric, EXCEPT cost. I will not go in depth as to why, but the high cost is because every single microLED pixel must be individually placed and electrically connected to the larger display, which is extremely difficult and time consuming. More efficient manufacturing methods are necessary to reduce cost, and are what big tech companies like Apple, Google, and Meta are exploring behind the scenes.
For LCD and OLED, as the size of the display increases, the cost/area tends to decrease. They scale well. For microLED, this is not true. Each pixel requires 3 microLEDs (1 red, 1 blue, 1 green), so a 4k display requires 3840*2160*3 microLEDs to be placed, roughly 25 million. Standard LCDs only use a handful of LEDs around the outer perimeter of the TV, and do not require separate red, green, and blue LEDs.
MicroLED offers
-higher efficiency (more battery life)
-purer colors
-higher resolution/pixel density
-smaller form-factor (compactness)(AR glasses do not want to be bulky)
-higher brightness
-longer lifetime/higher reliability
-Resistance to extreme conditions (e.g. high temperature)
-higher refresh rate
Only laser-based technologies can match the performance of microLED. This is because lasers are actually made from the same materials as (micro)LEDs (InGaN and AlInGaP).
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Outlook and applications
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Current displays would undoubtedly be better with microLED, but does it justify the cost? The cost is best justified if the display benefits from ALL improvements microLED offers.
TVs would not take advantage of most of the benefits of microLED. This is why my opinion is that we may never see microLED TVs.
-They are plugged in, so battery life and efficiency are unimportant
-They are indoors, so high brightness and resistance to extreme conditions is not necessary
-Resolution at 4k/8k is already good enough and can be achieved with OLED/LCD. Moving to higher resolution offers no benefits.
-Improved color gamut is nice, but it can be matched by laser or newer quantum dot conversion technologies.
-TVs could be more compact/thin but not noticeably more than OLED.
-refresh rates are good enough already in existing technologies for most applications
-small microLEDs can make curved or flexible displays, but so can OLED
Now consider a watch. Most of the points for the TV I listed above now become major benefits.
-battery life better than LCD or OLED. The display is one of the main drains on battery life.
-higher brightness makes the watch easily viewable even in direct sunlight
-Although the resolution itself does not need significant improvement, small microLEDs leave extra room for additional sensors and features in the unoccupied space between pixels. Sensors (face/touch recognition) can fill this space to create an even more compact (thin) and lightweight device
-Improved refresh rate and responsiveness
-more resistant to environmental factors than OLED
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Augmented reality
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While current displays can be improved, the real draw of microLEDs is that it can enable future technologies that could not previously exist due to the limitations of LCD and OLED.
Augmented reality (AR) glasses are the ultimate example of this. Without microLED or a laser-based solution, AR glasses may never exist (some may argue LCOS is an option, but my biased opinion believes it is a temporary band-aid solution at best).
-AR glasses use complex optics to create an image. This image creation process has high losses. High losses must be compensated by high brightness for the display to be viewable in daylight. OLED and LCD will NEVER be able to reach the brightness necessary.
-High brightness means high power usage. MicroLED is also much more efficient than OLED or LCD. Longer battery life.
-Pixel density must be extremely high. Higher than OLED or LCD can provide. Many pixels packed into a small area is necessary to reduce the size (the goal is for the optics in the AR glasses to be small enough to be indistinguishable from normal glasses). High pixel density also is needed to produce a clear image and increase field of view. Because the image is so close to the eye, pixel density must be much higher than on phones, TVs, watches etc so that the image is not pixelized.
-Refresh rate much higher for microLED (more important for virtual reality than augmented reality)
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Conclusion
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MicroLED (and laser) is likely the future of displays, and you should be excited about it. However, TVs like this are the least exciting application, and probably will not become reasonably priced for an average household anytime soon (probably never in my expert opinion, unless a breakthrough in manufacturing occurs). OLED will always be cheaper (it's still a relatively new technology and continuing to get cheaper) than microLED, and it's difficult to envision how the the small benefits for standard TVs could offset the cost.
Apple Watch will probably be your first chance to buy a device with microLED. They have been working on microLED since at least 2014 when they bought LuxVue, but likely earlier than that. Original release target was as early as 2020, but has been delayed many times. 2025 is now the target. Phones probably a couple years after if the watch is successful. This will be a pivotal change, since Apple has always previously purchased displays from Samsung (maybe LG as well?).
MicroLED isn't just a better looking display. MicroLED could be the key to augmented reality (AR). My belief is AR will be one of the most transformative technologies in our history, alongside computers and smartphones. Constant access to information while freeing your hands, and the ability to augment or modify everything you see around you. The possibilities are endless, and we won't really have a good idea of how AR will be used until the hardware is actually widely available.
The fact that the biggest companies in the world are all investing heavily into microLED production is evidence of it's future. Meta changed its named to Meta because of it.
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Then again, a significant segment of Apple fanboys place form over function, and would spend the money just to show off. They're the silly people you see camped overnight at Apple stores during product launches. And then whine when Apple drops the price just weeks later (true story, Google it).
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