One of the most important criteria to consider when
buying a new laptop is having a good laptop screen that fits the user's needs.
For many years, LCD screens were the only choice in the world of laptop
screens, until in recent years they began to invade the laptop market around
the world, laptops that include other types of screens, such as laptops that
have OLED screens, which first appeared once in 2016.
Samsung is the first to add this type of screen to its
devices, and then some other companies such as Dell, Razer, and Asus began to
follow this approach and produce computers that include OLED screens within
their components, while other major companies have committed to using LCD
screens in their latest versions, such as Apple Which may raise our doubts
about the feasibility of paying more money for a laptop with an OLED screen. In
this article, we discuss the advantages offered by this type of screen and
answer the question that arises here about whether or not we should pay money
for a new laptop with an OLED screen.
What are OLED screens?
The name OLED refers to displays that rely on what is
known as an organic light-emitting diode, or an organic light-emitting diode, from
which it derives its name, as a source of illumination for liquid crystals.
This type of screen has been used for many years in
many televisions, smartphones, and personal computers, and is similar in its
way of working to the traditional LCD screens that rely on liquid crystals,
which appeared at the beginning of the twenty-first century to replace the
massive, heavy CRT screens that use Cathode ray tubes.
LCD screens have dominated the market for televisions
and desktop computers for decades. Liquid crystal displays work based on the
principle of the possibility of polarization of light, and then arrays of
heat-disintegrating liquid crystals made of a material affected by the passage
of electric current transmit rays Polarized light is controlled and its
vibration levels and intensity are controlled before passing it to a set of
polarizing filters so that the light point finally appears in its correct
position on the screen, or liquid crystals prevent its passage and appear on
the screen as a dark point.
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The main difference between LCD screens and both LED
and OLED screens is the source of external light rays transmitted by liquid
crystals, as these liquid crystals do not produce light on their own, while the
light source in LCD screens attached to most computers is fluorescent tubes.
Which are built into the edges of the screen, the light-emitting diodes or LEDs
are the light source for liquid crystals in the case of LED and OLED screens,
so the last two types of displays can be considered two subtypes of LCD
screens.
OLED screens are an improved type of LED screens or
Light Emitting Diode backlit screens, which preceded them to appear several
years ago, and in order to understand the idea of its
work, we must first understand the idea of the LED screen. An LED display consists of three main
components: light-emitting diodes or backlit photodiodes, liquid crystals, and
color filters.
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Light-emitting diodes or photodiodes are electronic
pieces made of semiconductor materials that are characterized by their ability
to produce colored light from electricity, where the passage of electric
current in them excites the atoms of the semiconductor material, and when the
excited atom returns to its stable state, its electrons are emitted In the form
of luminous rays. These rays then pass through liquid crystals, and then the
RGB color filter, which consists of small individual colored pixels that
reproduce colors so that the images appear as clearly as we see on the screen.
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The OLED screen follows a working idea similar to the
LED screen, except that the LEDs in the case of LED screens require special
settings to produce light in the background, while in the case of the OLED
screen, the LEDs can produce their own light independently as the LED consists
of six different layers so that Two of them have organic properties that allow
it to produce light on its own when an electric current passes through it, and
then transfers it to the color correction component so that the image appears
clear on the screen. The use of LED panels with organic properties that do not
require special settings to produce the light in the backlight makes OLED
screens noticeably thinner and lighter compared to LED screens.
Features of OLED screens
OLED screens have a range of advantages compared to
both LED screens and traditional LCD screens, the most important of which are:
lightweight
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OLED screens do not need an additional backlight
panel, which makes them thinner and lighter than other types, which is suitable
for laptops and reduces their overall weight. This feature also makes some
types of these screens foldable or bendable, and this feature is present in the
screens of some smartphones that use OLED screens, and even mobile devices such
as the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, which is the first laptop in the world to come
with a foldable OLED screen.
image clarity
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OLED screens that are used in laptops, as in TVs and
smartphones, can produce images with brighter and more realistic colors, and
the image has higher contrast levels as it can show high levels of deep black
because of its ability to turn on and off the pixels that make up the image.
Individually, not as groups of pixels, as is the case in LCD screens, which can
never show a deep black color due to the presence of lighting in the background
all the time, which gives the image in the case of OLED screens more accuracy
and clarity.
Energy saving
OLED screens consume energy very efficiently as they
do not require any power to show the black color, which makes them save energy
consumed in operating the additional pixels, so using the black background of
the screen saves the battery life of the phone or laptop.
Image response speed
Due to its need for a separate backlight source,
traditional LCD screens tend to be late in responding to display the moving
image with motion blur on the screen, while OLED screens do not suffer from
this problem because they do not need a backlight source, which gives them the
ability to display the image with a response time. Fewer, faster refresh rates
and wider viewing angles.
Disadvantages of OLED screens
Despite the many advantages mentioned above, OLED
screens suffer from several problems that make their use for desktop or laptop
computers in particular risky, and the most important of these problems are:
Burn-in problem (OLED Burn-In)
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OLED screens initially suffered from the problem of
burn-in, which is one of the common copying problems that lead to some pixels
in the screen permanently retaining a fixed image that the screen has been
displaying for a long period of time, like a channel logo for TV screens. In
the case of desktop or laptop computers, the risk of burn-in and copy defects
is increased because the screen contains many static elements that the screen may
display for long periods, such as the taskbar, menu bars, and background items
on desktop and laptop computers, the game logo or the health bar for For gaming
computers, the newer types of OLED screens are designed to be equipped with
anti-burning technologies, which makes them less prone to this problem than
before.
high price
The purchase of laptops with OLED screens requires an
additional cost due to the accuracy of the design of this type of screen
compared to other types, which may lead to an increase in the price of a laptop
that includes an OLED screen between 100-300 USD than the one that provides the
same specifications except that it contains a screen LCD.
Color oversaturation
In some fields such as photography, graphic design,
and other visual arts, the user may often need to use screen devices that have
large color gamut specifications and color accuracy, and the images produced by
OLED screens may sometimes have a tendency to over saturation and inaccuracy
compared to other types, which may reduce the quality of the device's
performance for such tasks.
sole manufacturer
So far, Samsung is still the only manufacturer of this
type of screen used for laptops in the world, which means that if you buy a
laptop with an OLED screen from any other company such as Lenovo, Dell, or HP,
all of them will use OLED screens made by Samsung, and this It makes the
choices very limited. for example; Samsung has been designing OLED screens for
15-inch laptops only since 2019, so if you want to buy a laptop with a smaller
or larger OLED screen, no company will have this option.
When is it better to use computers with OLED screens?
The quality and resolution of the picture, the bright
and vibrant colors, and the fast rates of refreshing the picture are the most
prominent feature of OLED screens, which made it a likely choice for gaming
computers, so it is currently used in this type of device more than others, but
that does not prevent it from being suitable for many uses. Others, such as
mobile devices for video editors, photographers, or cinematographers. The use
of this type of screen for computers, in general, is still under development in
order to suit more types of users.
Summary
● OLED screens have a number
of advantages that may make the acquisition of a laptop that includes an OLED
screen a good thing, such as the quality and clarity of the image that it
displays, which are more brilliant, realistic, and vibrant colors, and higher
contrast levels, so they can display the black color with greater depth than
their counterparts due to the ability to operate Or turn off the pixels
individually, not as groups of pixels, as is the case in LCD screens, which
cannot display black color with the same saturation, sharpness and depth
because the screen is equipped with a backlight all the time.
● In addition to the above, OLED screens provide lower
response time to the pixels that make up the image and faster refresh rates
compared to LCD and LED screens, and they consume less energy because they do
not need any power to display the black color, as they just turn off the
individual pixels that make up the black part of the image.
● OLED screens do not require
special preparation for the backlight panel, as the light-emitting diodes in
them are composed of six layers, two of which have organic properties and are
affected by the passage of electric current to produce their own light, which
makes them lighter and thinner, and may be flexible than other types of
screens. In some uses, such as some types of smartphones that use OLED screens.
● The disadvantage of laptops that contain OLED
screens is their high price at the present time compared to their counterparts
that provide the same specifications with screens of other types, and the lack
of options available so far, only Samsung produces this type of screen for
laptops.
● OLED screens in their infancy were more prone to
burning problems, in which some of the pixels that make up the screen lose
their brightness and maintain a stable image that the screen displayed over a
long time, but this defect has decreased relatively with the addition of
anti-combustion technologies in the newer OLED screens.
The optimum use of computers with these screens is still limited to gaming computers and some other areas that can particularly benefit from the image quality, clarity and resolution, high contrast levels, and faster refresh rates that these screens offer such as photography and video editing.