Goodbye Micro Lens Array OLED TV, we hardly knew you

With one wave of a wand, LG created Microlens array OLED display technology is disappearing, replaced by LG Display’s all-new quad-layer panel technology.

Premium TVs have been an obsession in recent years getting brighter and brighterand for good reason, to be honest. Brightness increases color saturation, which increases the range of colors that a display can produce. It will also struggle with any ambient light, an aspect of living room viewing that OLED screens struggle with compared to Mini LED.

But thanks to this new quad-layer panel technology, it could – at least for more expensive models – increase the need for OLED. Samsung display QD OLED The technology was intended to be a competitor to OLED as it could deliver higher brightness levels, but with a 4-layer OLED panel, LG’s premium OLED can match or even achieve higher brightness levels with the upcoming S95F. In terms of bragging rights, this would give LG and LG Display an edge.

And when a group of journalists met at an event (which I’m not allowed to talk about yet), there was some buzz that perhaps this increase in brightness could prompt Sony to move from QD-OLED to a 4-stack panel. . This is just a wild rumor, but I’ll leave it here in case there’s something serious to it. After all, I was half expecting a TV announcement from Sony at CES, but it’s been quiet on that front.

This new quad stack panel is different from the previous one Tandem OLED Apple uses it in its iPad (a panel also created by LG Display). How it works, LG Electronics is not very keen to disclose information yet. Another journalist explained this to me, but I must admit that I forgot most of the technical details. Even during the briefing I attended at CES 2025, LG was reluctant to talk about specific nit numbers, but LG was confident enough to say that the G5 is three times brighter than the B5.

In what sense is it brighter? Peak brightness? Average brightness? Again, LG didn’t specify, but after seeing the new M5 and G5 during the presentation, the brightness level was impressive, so bright that it seemed too bright in the room I was watching in. Complaints about OLED being dim are likely to be dispelled once the G5 hits the market.

But the G5 is an OLED TV for the few, not the many, given its expected price. The C5 is the model that is the most popular among buyers, but it will not have the new brightness-enhancing technology. It will be brighter than the C4 was, but the difference between the C5 and G5 will remain. I thought it would be interesting to see if LG would apply MLA to the C-series, but alas, that won’t happen.

This is a shame for me. The C5 looked very good in the demo I saw, but I think everyone is craving more brightness from this model, and adding MLA to this model could give buyers more incentive to buy the C5 over other mid-range OLEDs.