Uber-bright new OLED TVs from LG and Samsung should finally enable PC gaming monitors with full-screen brightness of up to 400 nits

pcgamer.com:

At risk of giving away too much, too soon, it's CES right now and exhibition halls are alive with the sound of OLED TVs. Or at the very least bathed in their wide-gamut glow. Anyway, among the various highlights, one development stands out. Both LG and Samsung, the two big noises of OLED panel manufacturing, have announced new OLED tech that's much, much brighter than before. Huzzah!

For now, it's unclear if these new panels are in any of the newly announced OLED PC monitors also doing the CES rounds (more on that momentarily). But when it comes to latter-day OLED panel technology, what starts in TVs is pretty much guaranteed to hit monitors shortly thereafter. So, what exactly have LG and Samsung announced?

Starting with LG, perhaps the most surprising detail is that the company seems to be dropping its MLA or microlens array panel tech that uses zillions of tiny lenses to focus light and increase brightness. Well, MLA is gone for its new flagship G5 OLED TV series.

Replacing MLA tech is a new so-called 4-stack panel. LG claims this new panel is a staggering three times brighter than its previous best when it comes to the 10% window metric. All told, that should mean a peak brightness on a 10% window of 2,400 nits, which is really getting on some.

Of course, full-screen brightness is arguably where OLED monitors, including LG's own UltraGear 32GS95UE, have really come up short thus far and here the new panel technology isn't quite so impressive. According to HDTVTest, the panel will be 40% better for full-screen brightness compared to the panel in the extent LG G4 TV sets.

That may not be 3x brighter. But 40% is a very large step for a single generation when it comes to full-screen OLED brightness, which typically only improves incrementally. Applied to existing PC monitors based on LG's OLED panels, that would mean a step from 250 nits to 350 nits, at which point you could argue that the problem of full-screen SDR brightness on OLED monitors is pretty much solved.