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LG.Display Unveil OLED META Technology 2.0 for 2024 with Updated and New Technologies

Simon Baker
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Introduction

This year LG.Display are promoting their latest generation of META technology for their OLED panels, dubbed META 2.0. At the moment this seems to be heavily focused on their TV-sized panels, and will be reserved for their top-end, flagship panel options for the time being. It does however give us a taster of things to potentially come in the future in the wider TV and monitor panel space, as technologies are developed further and more widely adopted across their product range. It’s also useful to understand what META 2.0 offers now, and what is and isn’t available in the monitor space at this time.

Generation Nomenclature and New Technologies

LG.Display’s generational naming scheme is a little confusing, even more so when you start to try and consider the monitor panels which were released many years after their TV panels, but slotted straight in to their “third generation” of the technology as they call it.

They refer to META as their 3rd generation of OLED technology, although now you’ve got META 1.0 and the new META 2.0, which are both part of that same generation confusingly. This infographic explains their naming scheme for their three official generations overall:

You can see that there are 2 distinct updates, and 1 completely new technology that form the foundation of their latest META 2.0:

  1. ‘Micro Lens Array+’ (MLA+), an update from their previous MLA technology
  2. ‘META Multi Booster’ which is an update from regular ‘META Booster’ that came before it
  3. The new ‘Detail Enhancer’ technology, unique to META 2.0

Related to this subject of naming schemes and generations, from a monitor panel point of view, we recently broke down all the current and future LG.Display WOLED panels and gave them appropriate generation names in our video here: An Update on All the OLED Monitor Panels

Headline Performance Specs

We will explain the updated and new technologies in a bit more detail below, but there are some key headline specs being promoted by LG.Display now as part of this new META 2.0 technology:

  • Peak white luminance up to 3000 nits, an increase of 42% compared with the META 1.0 panels which reached 2100 nits.
  • Peak colour luminance up to 1500 nits, an increase of 114% compared with before

Remember as ever that these “peak brightness” specs are based on small APL area % measurements, in this case 3%. The luminance that can be reached will be different depending on the content shown and the APL of the image. You can see how the marketing of OLED is still almost entirely based around these small % APL measurements and the “peak” capability, which is something we discussed at length recently.

It is interesting that LG.Display are actively pushing colour luminance as well, something which has been a challenge on WOLED panels compared with competing QD-OLED panels from Samsung Display. Further clarity on what they really mean by the “1500 nits colour brightness” is needed though. Is this suggesting each RGB colour could reach 1500 nits independently, or is it some kind of additive total for all three?

MLA+ (Micro Lens Array Plus)

As LG.Display put it, MLA is “inspired by the eyes of a dragonfly”. Considering their 77” sized 4K resolution OLED panel as an example, MLA+ creates a pattern with 5,117 micro lenses per pixel, so for this 3840 x 2160 “4K” resolution panel that gives you a total of 42.4 billion lenses!

The process of creating billions of microscopic lenses in a pattern is extremely technically challenging but based on data about MLA accumulated over the past year, the updated MLA+ features an optimized lens angle that emits even the minimal light that would have been lost previously due to internal reflections. This allows them to deliver the increased peak brightness (luminance) that is so heavily part of their marketing. It also apparently helps improve the viewing angles of their panels a little too.

META Multi Booster

This technology offers an algorithm that precisely analyses brightness information and makes adjustments in each scene dynamically. This should allow higher levels of accuracy where peak brightness increases LG.Display say.

Detail Enhancer

Simulated image to demonstrate the idea behind this feature, provided by LG.Display

This is a new feature for META 2.0. Detail Enhancer technology which “helps articulate subtle differences in natural brightness through pixel dimming for both light and dark areas to achieve richer image expression. Using dithering technology for every pattern position based on OLED pixel dimming technology it enhances colour accuracy and apparently also widens colour gamut. This allows the delivery of images with full-range HDR detail, accurately representing objects with distinct colours, true to the creator’s original intent.”

Video Overview

This video provided by LG.Display gives a decent overview of the technologies and specs associated with it:

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META 2.0 Panels

LG Display unveiled its 83-inch OLED TV panel featuring META Technology 2.0 for the first time at CES 2024 in January. As demand for ultra-large TVs continues to increase, the company plans to apply META Technology 2.0 to its lineup of large-sized and ultra-large OLED TV panels, including the 55-, 65-, 77-, and 83-inch 4K OLEDs and the 77- and 88-inch 8K OLEDs they say.

According to this LG.Display page, it’s the 4K panels that will reach the advertised 3000 nits peak luminance, with other specs also provided for 10, 25 and 100% APL in the table:

The 8K panels are listed as featuring META but only have up to 1500 nits luminance according to the table, although this could still be finalised and updated later. We’ve contacted LG.Display to double check this spec:

“META Technology 2.0 represents the pinnacle of displays after surpassing the limitations and boundaries of OLED to create the perfect harmony between humans, nature, and the environment,” said Hyeon-woo Lee, Senior Vice President and Head of Large Display Business Unit at LG Display. “We will firmly establish our technological edge in the OLED TV panel market with the latest evolution of our META Technology.”

What does this mean for the OLED Monitor Panels?

At this time it’s a little confusing as to whether these technologies are being incorporated in to the company’s current or planned future range of WOLED monitor panels. We’ve contacted LG.Display for clarification and information, but at the moment this is what we can gather.

On the one hand even their latest monitor panels to go in to production this year including the 32″ 4K 240Hz and 27″ 1440p 480Hz panels are referred to by LG.Display themselves in their press releases as “META”, with no mention of “2.0” anywhere. Likewise they talk about “MLA”, but not “MLA+” in that press release. In the main press release announcing META 2.0, there was no mention of monitor-sized panels either, only the flagship TV panels we’ve discussed above.

However you may note that on this LG.Display site, the current monitor panels are shown in a table with the “META 2.0″ naming scheme (shown above), but it’s hard to know whether this to be accurate especially when some of these panels (27″ and 45″) are older panels from last year, before META 2.0 was even a thing. We know LG.Display have recently updated their 27″ panel, and the 45” is due an update later on, but it’s hard to believe that all of these panels would really be part of the META 2.0 line-up. There’s also nothing else in the spec here that suggests the new technologies of MLA+, META Multi Booster or Detail Enhancer are being utilised on these panels. While some improvements are being made to brightness of their latest monitor panels (reaching 1300 nits peak, oddly not even listed here!) they obviously don’t get anywhere near the higher brightness levels they are promoting in their marketing material for META 2.0.

Additionally in a recently released promotional video of the upcoming LG 32GS95UE monitor, which uses the 32″ 4K 240Hz panel with dual mode support, LG Electronics refer to the screen as featuring “MLA+” in the video itself and the description. Here’s the relevant screenshot with MLA+ mentions highlighted from the video (click for larger version):

So LG Electronics are referencing MLA+ in that promotional video, even though on their own product page they do not mention the terms META or MLA at all. In that video they don’t make any mention though of META 2.0, or any of the other related technologies like META Multi Booster or Detail Enhancer. Remember that this is LG Electronics, the manufacturer of the display itself, not the panel, and so it’s certainly possible they marketing has gotten muddled or exaggerated.

It is of course possible that this is correct, and MLA+ is being used on the new 32″ panel and others, and perhaps this update is what is allowing them to push to the higher peak brightness specs of 1300 nits. But there’s certainly a lack of clarity on the matter and lots of contradicting information between the two parts of LG. Even if MLA+ is being used on these panels, it won’t deliver the full new brightness capability that is being promoted as the key benefit of the update (“reaching up to 3000 nits for TV panels”) so the best we can hope for if it is being used, is perhaps some smaller brightness increases or efficiency and small power saving improvements. It is unlikely that the other META 2.0 technologies are also being used here, which is perhaps why they’re mentioning MLA+ but not talking about META 2.0 fully.

We are sceptical about whether any of the monitor-sized panels really fall under the META 2.0 generation or feature any of the new technologies at this time, but we have asked LG.Display for clarification so we will update this article as and when we get more information.

LG.Display Monitor Panel Generation summary

Below is a summary of their currently produced panels and our own naming scheme for each generation, which is explained in our round-up video in more detail:

Click for larger version

We know that LG.Display have other monitor panels planned for 2024 and 2025 as shown below, and it’s unclear at the moment if any of these new META 2.0 technologies would be incorporated in to those future panels. Time will tell:

Click for larger version

Further Information

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