LG and Samsung announce new TV OLED panel tech cranking out 4,500 nits of brightness, but don't expect anything like that for PC monitors
TV and PC OLED panels are related, but not quite the same.
(Image credit: Samsung)
Both Samsung and LG, the two big makers of OLED screens that go into TVs and monitors, announced new panel technology at CES 2026 with 4,500 nits of peak brightness. Question, will that tech appear in a PC monitor any time soon?
The answer is yes and no. Yes, the technologies seen in the new panels are headed for PC monitors. But, no, you can't expect to see PC monitors anything like that bright.
LG Display showed off its new WOLED panel tech for TVs. (Image credit: LG Display)
As for LG, it announced its latest Tandem WOLED tech at CES, also topping out at 4,500 for peak HDR brightness, though it didn't indicate full-screen brightness performance.
It's currently not entirely clear what the specs will be for this technology when translated to PC monitors. LG has also announced a slew of new OLED monitors at CES, branded UltraGear Evo. But not only is it not entirely clear how they relate to the TV panel generation announced at CES, for now LG is only saying that they are VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certified.
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That standard requires full-screen brightness of 300 nits, something which the very latest LG monitor panels already achieve. My understanding is that peak HDR brightness for the new generation will edge up to 1,500 nits. Full-screen will probably be in the region of 350 nits.
Where things get complicated with LG panels concerns its new RGB-stripe panels. Those screens removed the white subpixel and so actually offer lower peak brightness ratings. Again, we don't yet know how extensively LG is going to apply RGB-stripe tech to its monitor offerings. But for now it's just a single 27-inch 4K panel model.
But speaking of monitor panels, why exactly are they so much dimmer than their TV equivalents? There are several known reasons, known knowns in Rumsfeldian terms, and likely some unspoken known unknowns that may become better understood over time, and then possibly some unknown unknowns that we'll never learn about.
