Tandem OLED freaking awesome right wait hold the phone Tandem OLED what the what so Apple
Geniuses just smash together two OLED panels and a voila a brand new unprecedentedly awesome
new display is born exclusive to the new iPad Pro well not exactly there's more to it than
that but in the end it is great news for all of us stick around let's talk about [Music]
it welcome back everyone I'm Caleb Denison and I'm presently on assignment in New York
that's why with the uh hotel room shoot I've been busy looking at and testing NextGen TVs
from high sense and TCL in fact I first heard about Tandem OLED from a fellow journalist and
friend Jaron Schneider at PetaPixel who texted me please do a video on how QD-OLED and Tandem
OLED differ and what makes each special to which I replied Tandem what I mean I'm a TV expert which
doesn't necessarily mean I'm a display expert but you know maybe display expert adjacent I spent
a lot of time on the bleeding edge of display technology especially anything involving OLED
so imagine my surprise when Jaron and then a host of others started texting me questions
about Apple's new Tandem OLED honestly I knew nothing about it so I immediately began looking
into it starting with Apple's own description basically they said we developed a state of VR
display that uses two OLED panels and combines the light from both to deliver phenomenal full screen
brightness no other device of its kind delivers this level of display quality and then they go
on to explain all the benefits inherent to OLED display Tech and announce it as Ultra Retina XDR
so brass tax what makes the promised performance performance of this screen so remarkable is its
high brightness 1,000 nits full screen and 1,600 nits Peak brightness for HDR highlights that is
awesome indeed but is it the best OLED display you can get in a consumer device and how in the world
does using two OLED panels work is it an OLED sandwiches sort and did Apple really invent this
well to better understand Tandem OLED technology let's start at its beginning which did not take
place in an apple laboratory I found this white paper which was submitted in 2009 as part of the
society for information display or SID display week Symposium that's an inside industry trade
show for the latest in display Tech Tandem OLED or the concept of it at least was developed 15 years
ago folks about 2 years before LG introduced the first consumer OLED TV since then numerous
developments have been made to make it more efficient and several more white papers have
been issued talking about its advancement into a now fully baked technology so if the tech has
been around for so long why haven't we seen Tandem OLED in a device before well let's actually come
back to that first let's talk about the two most popular types of OLED panels at use in
devices today one is called W OLED or WRGB OLED also sometimes referred to as white OLED this is
a panel that uses organic compounds to make red green and blue pixels that make their own light
no backlight needed then a white OLED sub pixel is added to boost up the brightness LG display has
pioneered this technology and for years it was the only kind of OLED panel that you would find in TVs
and PC monitors then a couple of years ago Samsung display came out with a new type of OLED panel
called QD OLED and this just uses a blue OLED pixel to create light then adds red and green
Quantum dots which are tiny little Nano particles that glow when you shine light on them now QD OLED
panels make more pure red green and blue light than W OLED panels so they tend to have better
color brightness and color Purity now overall the advantages of either OLED Tech are as Apple
described perfect black level s amazing contrast incredible pixel response time and Rich accurate
color year after year OLED TVs are named as having the best picture quality that you can
buy so if OLED is so awesome why isn't it used in everything well it's because OLED's Achilles heel
is that it's an organic material so it wears out faster the harder or brighter you drive it that
being the case to protect OLED panels from burning out too soon or burning in TV manufacturers have
had to cap how hard they drive them also the bigger an OLED display is the more power it
gobbles up and in a portable device like a tablet that means it's going to eat up the battery pretty
quickly so while an OLED display might work just fine in a phone it's going to be a bit too power
hungry to work in a larger battery powered device like an iPad enter Tandem OLED it is a
WRGB OLED panel type but it uses two light emitting layers each driven with a relatively
modest amount of power so we're not going to wear those OLED pixels out and since there are
two light emitting layers that also makes Tandem OLED capable of getting extremely bright all the
brightness without all the drawbacks pretty genius now one thing I cannot help demystify you because
I don't understand it myself is how the light from one layer of this OLED sandwich passes
through with the light of the second layer for that information I'm going to have to chat with
some display Engineers familiar with this Tech and I'm already reaching out so stay tuned for
an update on that confusing detail now if Tandem OLED is such a bright idea sorry why haven't we
seen it in a device before why isn't it in TVs and PC monitors why haven't we seen it in a tablet
before well for a couple of reasons I suspect and I say I suspect because I need to verify
this with a display engineer and I'm reaching out to a bunch right now like I said but I think it's
safe to conjecture that one Tandem OLED is clearly fairly expensive to manufacture if it wasn't I'm
pretty sure LG display would be making them in sizes that we could put in TVs and PC monitors
already TVs can provide all the power that's needed but these large sized Tandem OLED panels
are probably just too expensive to put in a TV the second reason is that they need more power than
mobile devices could deliver at least until now the batteries in a tablet or phone are going to
need to be pretty stout to support the processor and the display for any meaningful amount of time
and that my friends is where the massive power that Apple wields paired with Apple's Innovation
comes together to bring us the first Tandem OLED displays Tandem OLED as a technology needed a
cash rich partner to push it into the real world you don't make this sort of thing at a small scale
that's a Surefire way to go bankrupt you need to make display panels at a large scale and making
already expensive new panels at a large scale takes the kind of money very few organizations
have but Apple's got that money but you also need a place to put this new panel technology and an
iPad is the perfect place to put something like an expensive new display see OLED panels start their
life as a giant sheet of what's called mother glass from this massive sheet of mother glass you
can cut any number of combinations of large and small displays for example you could cut out One
88 in big screen and not have a whole lot left over or you could cut out three 65 in diagonal
screens and still have enough left over to cut out six 32in diagonal screens you can easily imagine
then that the yield for something the size of an iPad Pro is going to be exponentially higher
than it would be for something as big as a TV now it's still expensive to make but the yield
is much higher so Apple can recoup a good deal of its cost by building a healthy margin into
each iPad which apparently it has the only problem that it seems only Apple could solve was the power
issue I believe that's where the M4 chip comes in the M4 is such an efficient chip that Apple
can afford to feed the Tandem OLED display what it needs to create that 1,000 nits of full screen
brightness and 1600 nits of peak HDR highlight brightness but I suspect Apple probably did more
than that there were some low luminance efficiency issues Apple's resources likely help to solve and
who knows what else Apple's Mighty engineering muscle did to make putting a Tandem OLED screen
into a device a reality so while Apple may not have invented OLED I think it's fair to credit
Apple for getting Tandem OLED out of the lab at a display Corporation and into a device and
I think we can also credit Apple for making the Tandem OLED screen what it is today and
now that it is in a consumer device well let's just say it's a safe bet that Tandem OLED won't
exclusively in an iPad Pro for long when folks get their eyes on the new Ultra Retina XDR they
are going to want that kind of picture quality from every screen they have to look at that
demand will drive The Innovation we need to see Supply go up and costs go down and trust
me you're about to get slapped in the face with a bunch of reviews talking about how incredible the
new iPad Pro Ultra Retina XDR display is because while there are TVs out now that can do 1600 nits
Peak HDR brightness there isn't a consumer OLED on the market that can do 1,000 nits sustained full
screen brightness there are however professional mastering displays at use in Hollywood that can
deliver that kind of picture and I've seen them they are nothing short of stunning so yeah what
Apple has done here is a really big deal 1,000 nits of average Picture level means you can use
the new iPad Pro in just about any environment even outside 1, 1600 nits Peak HDR brightness
means that the iPad Pro is going to match even the very best TVs on the market for picture quality
and knowing Apple it might turn out to be the best looking consumer display on the market I for one
can't wait to get my hands on one thanks so much for watching everyone what did you think of this
little explainer let me know down in the comments section below don't forget to like And subscribe
I'll see you on the next one and until then here's two other videos I think you might like