LG’s futuristic screens are rollable, transparent, and unbelievably thin

If you want to know what the future of computing looks like, it might be best to start with the screen. At a private booth during last week’s CES trade show, LG was eager to show off its next-generation displays, ranging from the practical to the fantastic. Here’s a closer look.

See-through screens have been a CES demo staple for years, but LG says its OLED display achieves greater transparency than LCD-based panels. You might imagine hanging some artwork behind your transparent TV for when it’s turned off, or viewing it from either side, though in reality these displays won’t escape the digital signage realm anytime soon.

LG wasn’t the only company showing off a 98-inch 8K resolution display at CES, though LG’s isn’t not a curved panel like Samsung’s model. Brightness tends to be a challenge with such large TVs, but LG is claiming peak brightness of 900 nits, which is higher than most conventional sets. It looked plenty bright even in a lit room, and of course the extra pixels allowed even the tiniest details to come through.

By bending a single 25-inch panel in two directions, LG believes this screen will be a perfect fit inside automobiles. Aside from just looking stylish, the curves help divide the user interface into sections.

With its extreme 500R curve radius, this 65-inch screen probably isn’t something you’d put in your living room, but it could be it could make for some intense gaming sessions at close range.

OLED display technology already allows for ultra-thin panels, so LG has taken the next logical step and slapped two 55-inch screens together. The whole setup is just 4.9mm thick, which is slimmer than many LED/LCD TVs on the market, though it’s just 1080p resolution for now. With the prospect of watching TV from either side, it might be time to start rearranging your living room.

To make this mammoth display, LG stuck eight of its 65-inch double-sided screens together. The result is a display with crisp images on both the front and back sides. It’s obviously a digital signage application, but maybe there’s a mid-century modern home where it’d fit right in as artwork.

While many of LG Display’s demos seem like pure fantasy, this 15-inch laptop panel seems destined to land in consumer products before long. Measuring 2.3mm thick and weighing just under a half-pound, it’s a prime candidate for ultrathin laptops.

While many of LG Display’s demos seem like pure fantasy, this 15-inch laptop panel seems destined to land in consumer products before long. Measuring 2.3mm thick and weighing just under a half-pound, it’s a prime candidate for ultrathin laptops.

But the star of LG Display’s demo was its rollable display, which measures just 0.18 mm thick. Keep in mind that this demo involves some smoke and mirrors, as LG was hiding a box full of electronics underneath a table. But those computing elements will inevitably shrink, perhaps someday allowing our screens to be as flexible and durable as paper.