Curved for games, flat for TV

Since LG exhibited its first scrollable OLED TV at CES 2019, and perhaps even before that, the vision of these flexible screens was that they could span any curved surface to provide a screen with a vivid color profile in line with the state of – art OLED technology. At the time, that meant watches and other similar accessories, but as LG promoted these flexible screens for TV a lot, it made sense that at some point they would come up with a curved gaming screen. The trick is to make it work for both TV and games.

One of the first announcements for this year’s CES remote show is that LG’s latest flexible screen is a 48-inch model that can be used flat to watch regular TV, or as a 1000R curved screen for gaming. This means that in both viewing modes, the screen aims to offer a uniform viewing distance with comparable depth and quality, even with a radius of curvature of 1000 mm. This is a closer curvature than many gaming monitors currently on the market, such as the 1200R to 2000R models, and these only serve the curved screen gaming community. LG doesn’t say what the resolution is, however, they confirm that the screen has a variable refresh rate range from 40 Hz to 120 Hz, along with a supposed response time of 0.1 millisecond.

Combined with this, the display implements LG’s CSO technology, which allows the display to vibrate to create sound, rather than having external speakers. This is due to a new thin-film ‘exciter’ (the part that really vibrates), which LG claims to have managed to reduce from a thickness of 9 mm to 0.6 mm. The screen also has a low-light blue mode to reduce eye strain.

As is often the case with these promotions for CES, we expect LG to take about 3 to 9 months from the commercial launch of the product. LG did not give details on how the screen changes from curve to flat, for example, and did not even mention the price. Cutting edge features like this are likely to be of added value.

Interested in more industry news? Check out our homepage of CES 2021!