LG’s gaming OLEDs are taking on QD-LED – and could set an incredible new speed record

If you thought 480Hz gaming monitors were fast, LG Display would like a word

A young man playing a game in front of an LG RGB Tandem OLED gaming monitor
(Image credit: LG Display)
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LG Display's RGB Tandem OLED panels are now in production for 2025's gaming monitors – and one version is capable of 540Hz, rising to 720Hz in HD.

The new panel technology could set a new standard in the industry.

LG Display has started production of the first monitor panel based on its RGB Tandem OLED technology – and it's developed a version of the same panel with astonishing refresh speeds of up to 720Hz.

This isn't far-future display tech neither, it's first 540Hz panel will appear in gaming monitors later this year, and 720Hz could follow after.

LG Display provides the panels for a wide range of manufacturers, and its RGB Tandem OLED panel is in TVs such as the LG G5, Panasonic Z95B and Philips OLED910 and OLED950. These new panels are for PC monitors rather than TVs, and they promise impressive performance.

LG's RGB Tandem OLEDs are WOLED displays that organise the light source into four stacks: two blue, one red and one green. That enables the panels to deliver significantly increased brightness by amplifying the amount of light produced by each layer, making them much brighter than other OLED panels. They're also more energy efficient.

A diagram showing the four layers of LG Display's RGB Tandem OLED compared to the three layers of current OLEDs.

LG Display's RGB Tandem OLED has a four-layer light source that's both brighter and more energy efficient

(Image credit: LG Display)

LG RGB Tandem OLED is taking on QD-OLED

The first of the new gaming monitor panels will be an RGB Tandem OLED with a diagonal of 27-inches, resolution of 2,560 x 1,440, a refresh rate of 280Hz, a response time of 0.03ms, and up to 1,500 nits of peak brightness.

According to FlatPanelsHD, the panel is designed to compete directly with QD-OLED gaming monitors, and both Asus and Gigabyte have announced plans to make models using the panel in 2025.

The second display is faster than Samsung's 500Hz QD-OLED, and LG Display says it's achieved the previously impossible: "Exceeding a 500Hz refresh rate had been considered a virtually unbreakable threshold due to the associated drop in picture quality," it said in a statement.

"LG has successfully overcome this limitation by developing and applying a new proprietary algorithm."

This algorithm, coupled with LG's proprietary Dynamic Frequency & Resolution technology, enables even faster refresh rates at lower resolutions – the panel is capable of a whopping 720Hz in HD.

Although LG display hasn't explicitly said that its super-fast panel is an RGB Tandem OLED, Asus let the cat out of the bag with its announcement of new gaming models in May. When asked if its promised 540Hz gaming monitor was an RGB Tandem OLED, Asus confirmed that it was.

Carrie Marshall
Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).

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