Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Tandem OLEDmade quite a splash on the newM4 iPad Prowhen it was announced . After all , it seemed to resolve one of the major issues with OLED screen . Having used the display myself , I can say it ’s certainly impressive .
That ’s why I was delirious to see thatWindows laptop were speedily adopting the technologyas well , with the first one announced being the young XPS 13 Copilot+ laptop .
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
But as I dug into it , the more confusing the picture became around what tandem OLED is and how it can be used .
Why tandem OLED?
Basically , bicycle-built-for-two OLED is exactly what it go like — it ’s two OLED panels stacked one over the other . Before we get into why tandem OLED is a honest thing , lease ’s talk about the bedrock .
OLED stand for Organic Light Emitting Diode . alternatively of having a backlight ( an LED , or Light Emitting Diode ) with some number of firing geographical zone shining through a panel of individual liquid crystals ( LCD , or Liquid Crystal Display ) to display an image , each single OLED pel beget its own light and color . basically , that allows OLED show to work each individual pixel on and off and to set up its color , resulting in deep Black , purer Patrick White , and often more accurate colors .
A limitation of OLED has been its special brightness ( good but not great ) , along with its power drawing card , specially when displaying brighter images . Other show technologies , such as mini - LED , offer a lot more brightness , and low - exponent IPS panels , for example , can burn less exponent . This is , obviously , a paramount concern on a laptop .
Tandem OLED aims at resolving one or the other problem , or potentially both at the same prison term . Apple ’s tandem bicycle OLEDimplementation on the latest iPad Pro rivet on brightness , which is particularly authoritative in exhibit great high dynamic compass ( HDR ) depicted object . Apple call its new displays “ Ultra Retina XDR , ” which is a play on the name for its “ Liquid Retina XDR ” mini - conduct panels in the latest MacBook Pro . Another vantage of tandem OLED is that it can help avoid cut - in , because each OLED layer does n’t have to get as undimmed .
The iPad Pro Tandem OLED display can hit 1,000 nit in standard dynamical mountain chain ( SDR ) content and 1,600 nit in HDR . That ’s according to Apple . But Apple makes no claims about its efficiency . The new iPad Pro is thinner than the older mini - lead iPad Pro , but Apple estimate the same shelling life . So , the implication is that the raw display are at least more or less more efficient even while being fabulously bright .
Dell takes a different approach
Dell ’s novel XPS 13 Copilot+ mannequin has a tandem bicycle OLED selection . What surprised me as I forestall this young laptop computer , which use Qualcomm ’s more efficient Snapdragon X elect Arm chipset , is that its display was being used on a laptop that I already reviewed — the Intel Meteor LakeXPS 13released earlier this class .
It surprise me in part because , while that laptop computer ’s display has OLED ’s usual inky blacks brilliant and exact colors , it did n’t hit the kind of brightness that Apple publicize for the iPad Pro . Furthermore , the tandem OLED display was n’t remark in the marketing materials at the metre .
I meet Dell to find out more , and it provided the undermentioned statement :
“ XPS 13 uses a bicycle-built-for-two OLED intent co - rise with one of our showing partner . By using tandem applied science , which pile multiple emissive layers on top of each other , it increase the efficiency of our OLED display . This design allow for higher brightness and a longer life-time with the same power stimulation . Multiple stratum enable these new tandem organic light-emitting diode to accomplish eminent luminous efficiency , meaning the exhibit can create more lighter compared to unmarried - stack OLEDs presently on the market place using the same amount of electric power .
Because OLEDs loosely use up more power than traditional LCD ( IPS ) panels , minimizing power consumption is crucial . The XPS 13 ’s new tandem OLED design lowers exponent consumption for the same luminosity compared to the older unmarried - tidy sum OLED , which helps continue battery life . This new intention , combined with bicycle-built-for-two technology , amend battery runtime by about 10 % while also being thin and low-cal . As a resultant , the novel XPS 13 is more or less 3 % thinner and 5 % light than the old propagation with its senior organic light-emitting diode .
We spec all XPS OLED at 400 nits due to their inherently better contrast proportion compared to liquid crystal display , which are spec’d at 500 nits . The new OLED intent and tandem technology not only achieves lower power white plague , but also feature HDR TrueBlack 500 , with 1,000,000:1 line ratios and 1.07 billion colors . ”
So , Dell ’s approach is to focalise on efficiency instead of brightness . The XPS 13 ’s tandem OLED display come in at 482 nits , which is brighter than some other OLED displays I ’ve test , but nothing like the iPad Pro ’s evaluation . Most OLED displays come in at around 400 nits , so the Dell version is still an improvement over the average .
At the same time , Dell is claiming a 10 % melioration in battery life . The XPS 13 organic light-emitting diode reading bring off 7.25 hour of web browse compare to the IPS version ’s 14 hours , and it ’s around the same as other OLED simple machine with Intel ’s Meteor Lake chipset . I ’m just not sure whether there ’s a 10 % improvement .
Things aren’t always as they seem
Arguably , Apple ’s effectuation of Tandem OLED is the more impressive — at least , on paper . All that brightness is awesome if it does n’t come at the cost of importantly come down battery life-time . But that ’s something I ca n’t avow one elbow room or another right now .
Dell ’s approach is also good in hypothesis . But it ’s hard to say that the XPS 13 ’s jolly more effective tandem OLED presentation get a meaningful difference in that laptop ’s battery life .
Either way , I ’d get laid to eventually see Windows laptops ( and even MacBooks ) adopt bicycle-built-for-two OLED board for the goal of accomplish good brightness — perhaps even on gaming laptops where battery life is less of a selling stop .
