The LG C2 OLED TV is one of the most anticipated TVs of 2022, and its 42-inch version – which you can pre-order now if you have a spare £1,399 – looks great for gamers. It's small enough to sit on a decent sized desk and big enough to deliver an absolutely huge in-game experience, and with 1ms response times, HDMI 2.1, G-Sync, 120fps, VRR and more it's an ideal display for next-gen gaming and one of the best gaming monitors you'll see this year.
According to BusinessKorea, which keeps a close eye on TV manufacturing, this is a new trend: instead of OLED TVs getting bigger and bigger, manufacturers are moving to smaller but no less brilliant displays to keep up with the demand from serious gamers.
Small OLEDs are a big opportunity
Sales of smaller OLEDs are growing fast. The report says that in 2020, 40-ish-inch OLEDs sold 167,000 units. That was the first year such displays were available. Sales rose to 949,000 units in 2021, and predicted sales for 2022 are a whopping 1,152,000 units. That's a lot of OLED TVs. LG, which makes OLED panels for other manufacturers too, is expected to sell nearly 3 million sub-50-inch OLED panels in 2025.
According to "industry insiders", you can thank gamers for that trend: because high definition and fast response times are great for gaming, there's a huge opportunity for firms who can make OLEDs that aren't too big for desk-based gaming. With an estimated 3 billion gamers in the world, that's a lot of potential buyers – and the more sets are sold, the cheaper they'll become as manufacturing becomes more efficient.
That's the Achilles heel of smaller OLEDs at the moment: they're comparatively expensive to make, which is why the smallest OLEDs aren't cheaper than larger models from the same range. But as firms change their manufacturing setups to take full advantage of this fast-growing market, that should change fairly quickly.
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