LG’s bendable 48-inch OLED shows the way forward for flexible screens

LG announced it would be showing a hybrid bendable OLED that could shift between flat and curved modes for multi-purpose use at the upcoming CES 2021 expo (kicking off January 11).

While curved screens are largely out of fashion for regular TV use, they still hold power among gaming monitors, given the increase in both immersion and the amount of visual information you can take in through its slanted shape.

LG's 48-inch OLED monitor is the natural evolution of the company's recent forays into flexible screen tech, such as the quite pricey rollable OLED TV that finally launched last year (in South Korea, at least), as well as the rollable and even 'stretchable' mobile phones it has in the works.

This 'Bendable CSO (Cinematic Sound OLED) display' carries a few other tricks, though, including a variable refresh rate of 40-120Hz, and a 0.6mm "film exiter" that vibrates the display to emit location-based audio – in a similar fashion to the actuators used in Sony's Acoustic Surface Audio tech.

A press release shared with TechRadar states that "the company’s CSO technology enables OLED displays to vibrate and make their own sound without the use of any speakers, offering a vivid sense of reality as if the on-screen characters were talking directly to the viewer."

:story: TechRadar