When the world’s first and only rollable TV arrived in the United States and Europe this summer, the 65-inch marvel was met with rave reviews. ; It is “so slick, it hurts,” “might be the best TV you can buy right now,” and “it’s a revelation to see the cutting-edge technology fully functional.”
If there is an air of surprise in these reactions, it may be because the LG SIGNATURE OLED R’s public launch is the fulfilment of a dream – a concept seen as distinctly sci-fi when first unveiled by LG Display at CES 2018. Amid widespread applause for such a futuristic piece of tech, the only question at the time was when and how far it could be introduced as a commercial product.
Flexible form factors might be all the rage for screens of various sizes these days, but Rollable OLED was – and remains – completely revolutionary and was even described as indistinguishable from magic when LG Display initially showed off a 65-inch UHD prototype at CES.
Since then, the 65-inch Rollable OLED has been gathering glittering reviews wherever it goes. Having won numerous “best” awards from a range of publications at CES 2018, it then continued to win accolades at the same Las Vegas tech show in 2019 and 2020. More recently at SID’s Display Week this past May, it received the highest honor of Display of the Year.
So, how does it work? You have a base that acts as both a sound system and houses the rollable display, which unfurls with the option of multiple aspect ratios at the touch of a button “like a window shade,” according to CNET, which added back in 2018 that “you have to see it in action to believe it.” Well, if that is the case, then you can enjoy this impressive scene featuring a whole row of Rollable OLEDs – and then take a deeper dive here.
OLED enables a rollable TV to exist because its self-emissive nature requires no backlight unit and therefore the screen can be extremely thin and flexible – the OLED R’s screen is just 3mm deep. The brilliance of the innovation behind the display is that it can be rolled up and down repeatedly without breaking or losing the crisp sharpness and vivid colors of any other OLED TV. Apparently the OLED R’s good for 100,000 unfurls, which would allow it to be rolled up and down 20 times a day for 20 years.
And apart from the benefit of owning an example of awesome technology, consumers who are able to choose this very high-end TV also have the aesthetic and practical advantage of losing space constraints by making their screen disappear at will.
Having been initially developed and exhibited by LG Display, its sister company LG Electronics released the first Rollable OLED TV in South Korea last October, before rolling it out globally this year – both literally and in the sales sense. It’s fair to say the rollable revolution has truly begun.
