iPad Pro M1 iPad Pro XDR display versus OLED

[FasterQuieter]

I currently own a 2018 11" iPad Pro and a Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus. I got a great deal on the Samsung and bought it mainly out of curiosity. I imagined I'd sell it on pretty soon. When it came though, I was blown away by the screen. For watching video, there is no contest with Apple's Liquid Retina display. The contrast, blacks and colors look stunning. For this reason, I use it every time I want to actually watch something. On the other hand, I hate Android. Both the OS itself and whatever part Samsung played in the implementation on this device. I am constantly accidentally invoking screens I don't want. The navigation annoys me. Touch input on all sliders works intermittently. I have no access to messages. A long laundry list of paper cuts that bug me every time I pick it up. It's like it's broken compared to an iPad.

I am curious to know how well the display on the new 12.9" iPad will compare with this OLED display. If I could sell my current pair of devices and buy one to rule them all, I'd be very happy. Does anyone have any insight as to just how good black levels, video, color, the whole lot might compare between OLED and the new iPad's XDR display? I imagine I'll lose Samsung's color saturation, but other than that, do you think they'll be comparable?

 

[rui no onna]

One thing to consider for watching videos, the Samsung's widescreen aspect ratio is more suited for modern videos than the iPad's more squarish one.

 

[toxotis700]

Oleds has 2 main problems... burn in and lower brightness.
They have better blacks though....you earn something, you loose something else.

 

[gnomeisland]

While they aren’t as popular, Samsung has had OLED tablets for a few years now. I wonder what the burn-in rate in the real world is? Brightness is an issue but with true blacks and Apple’s superior anti-reflective coatings it is less of an issue IRL unless you regularly use your tablet in bright, outdoor light.

 

[AutomaticApple]

They have better blacks though....

Which results in much better battery life.

 

[toxotis700]

Not so much...I have tried Samsung s6 and s7 plus tablets, with oled screen, and they didn’t had better battery life than iPads.

 

[loybond]

I currently own a 2018 11" iPad Pro and a Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus. I got a great deal on the Samsung and bought it mainly out of curiosity. I imagined I'd sell it on pretty soon. When it came though, I was blown away by the screen. For watching video, there is no contest with Apple's Liquid Retina display. The contrast, blacks and colors look stunning. For this reason, I use it every time I want to actually watch something. On the other hand, I hate Android. Both the OS itself and whatever part Samsung played in the implementation on this device. I am constantly accidentally invoking screens I don't want. The navigation annoys me. Touch input on all sliders works intermittently. I have no access to messages. A long laundry list of paper cuts that bug me every time I pick it up. It's like it's broken compared to an iPad.

I am curious to know how well the display on the new 12.9" iPad will compare with this OLED display. If I could sell my current pair of devices and buy one to rule them all, I'd be very happy. Does anyone have any insight as to just how good black levels, video, color, the whole lot might compare between OLED and the new iPad's XDR display? I imagine I'll lose Samsung's color saturation, but other than that, do you think they'll be comparable?

It will likely be in between those two, but not exactly in the middle, closer to the iPad than the Samsung. The mini LED will give you a really bright screen for HDR, but it won't look as good as OLED because OLED can make exactly one pixel super bright and the next one absolutely black. Another thing OLEDs do a lot better than any type of LCD is colour volume, so personally I wouldn't expect anything close in this area.

The iPad doesn't actually have that many dimming zones, and even mini LED TVs aren't anywhere close to OLED TVs in picture quality. But I'm hoping Apple will surprise us and it'll be much better than the mini LED TVs we've seen so far.

We have yet to see if the iPad will be able to get super bright outdoors like iPhones, or if it'll be the standard 600 nits and only hit 1000-1600 for HDR content. We also don't know if its a true 10-bit panel (it really should be for HDR) or 8-bit + dithering. Apple has claimed "billions of colours" for 8-bit panels before.

 

[gusping]

Oleds has 2 main problems... burn in and lower brightness.
They have better blacks though....you earn something, you loose something else.

I've never understood the brightness issue. If you run an OLED TV or phone at full brightness, your eyes must be shot to pieces. It's painful as hell and it cannot be healthy...

 

[loybond]

I've never understood the brightness issue. If you run an OLED TV or phone at full brightness, your eyes must be shot to pieces. It's painful as hell and it cannot be healthy...

Well your phone brightness would be cranked up when you're outside, not in your bedroom. It has to compete with daylight.

The tv, well that would with hdr. The idea is that

A) you'll see things with varying intensities the same way you would in real life. Like in an indoor scene, the window with daylight outside would be (comparatively) very bright, just like in real life. Or like lightning being hyper bright. It's not the whole screen being nuclear all the time.

B) with higher brightness you might get greater colour volume and a wider gamut of colours, also resembling real life better

 

[Lucifer666]

No one here knows even a little. Not even a little. Nothing. But I'll be asking questions like this as I wait

 

[Marty80]

Mini LED sits in between LCD & OLED. It a great alternative but in no way superior to OLED or micro led.

 

[toxotis700]

Oled is not generally superior either.

In some cases it is, in other we mention....not.

The future belongs to other technologies, Ike micro led ...

 

[loybond]

Oled is not generally superior either.

In some cases it is, in other we mention....not.

The future belongs to other technologies, Ike micro led ...

We'll see about the future tech when it gets here, and certainly microLED looks to be the most promising tech, but for now... its unanimous from professional display reviewers, calibrators and videophiles that for picture quality, OLED is the best we have at the moment.

There's certain things some people don't like about it, sure, but if picture quality is how you're looking at it, there's no discussion. Just like how the Pioneer Kuro was the undisputed king of TVs in the late 2000s.

 

[JPack]

We'll see about the future tech when it gets here, and certainly microLED looks to be the most promising tech, but for now... its unanimous from professional display reviewers, calibrators and videophiles that for picture quality, OLED is the best we have at the moment.

There's certain things some people don't like about it, sure, but if picture quality is how you're looking at it, there's no discussion. Just like how the Pioneer Kuro was the undisputed king of TVs in the late 2000s.

I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion.

All professional graphic monitors are LCD. Most reference monitors used in video production including the $30k ones are LCD.

 

[iamMacPerson]

Which results in much better battery life.

No it doesn’t. This is why the iPhone 11 and Xr were praised for their amazing battery life over even the 11 Pro Max and Xs Max respectively. It’s even consistently shown that while LED/LCD televisions pull 45-100w, the equivalent OLED TV will pull 65-200w showing the same content at the same brightness level.

Now, maybe you could make OLED more efficient by turning the brightness down and watching dark content and/or using black backgrounds. Remember OLED pixels are only off when black, meaning this website - for example - being done up in mostly dark gray and not black has little to no difference in energy savings compared to showing it in pure white on an OLED display. But most people are just going to leave the automatic settings and not care.

Personally, the lack of local dimming does not bother me that much on my mobile devices and computers. The content I work with and watch is mostly light and bright and Apple always consistently has the best panels and best calibration. Considering the number of dimming zones and how they’re laid out, I’m assuming that if you’re watching widescreen content the iPad is going to be smart enough to turn the LEDs off in the letterbox sections.

The only place OLED would make a huge difference for me is in my actual television, where I tend to watch dark movies and content. No way am I dropping a couple grand on that when I use it at *most* 3 hours a week and spend the rest of the time on my iPad.

 

[AutomaticApple]

No it doesn’t.

Yes, it does. Turning off many pixels in an app that uses dark mode (or maybe a dark scene in a movie, for example) can save battery life. The battery doesn't need to waste its time powering black pixels.

 

[iamMacPerson]

Yes, it does. Turning off many pixels in an app that uses dark mode (or maybe a dark scene in a movie, for example) can save battery life. The battery doesn't need to waste its time powering black pixels.

But most app’s dark mode is not ‘true’ black and that’s the problem.

 

[AutomaticApple]

But most app’s dark mode is not ‘true’ black and that’s the problem.

No, OLED turns off pixels automatically if they're black, as is the case for all dark mode iOS apps.

 

[iamMacPerson]

No, OLED turns off pixels automatically if they're black, as is the case for all dark mode iOS apps.

But they’re not black, that’s my point. Most of the apps - like this website - are dark gray *not* black so there is no savings.

 

[TheRealAlex]

I currently own a 2018 11" iPad Pro and a Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus. I got a great deal on the Samsung and bought it mainly out of curiosity. I imagined I'd sell it on pretty soon. When it came though, I was blown away by the screen. For watching video, there is no contest with Apple's Liquid Retina display. The contrast, blacks and colors look stunning. For this reason, I use it every time I want to actually watch something. On the other hand, I hate Android. Both the OS itself and whatever part Samsung played in the implementation on this device. I am constantly accidentally invoking screens I don't want. The navigation annoys me. Touch input on all sliders works intermittently. I have no access to messages. A long laundry list of paper cuts that bug me every time I pick it up. It's like it's broken compared to an iPad.

I am curious to know how well the display on the new 12.9" iPad will compare with this OLED display. If I could sell my current pair of devices and buy one to rule them all, I'd be very happy. Does anyone have any insight as to just how good black levels, video, color, the whole lot might compare between OLED and the new iPad's XDR display? I imagine I'll lose Samsung's color saturation, but other than that, do you think they'll be comparable?

I’m connecting my MacMini M1, via HDMI to my LG C9 OLED, AND boy things have never looked better.
Ive transitioned my devices to OLED. LG C9, HP OLED Laptop, Note 20 Ultra 5G, Galaxy Watch. All my Displays are OLED.

I know Apple is going OLED. It’s just I can’t wait and $600 with trade in You can’t pass up a 12.9” XDR iPad Pro for $600 that’s just too much value.

 

[AutomaticApple]

But they’re not black, that’s my point. Most of the apps - like this website - are dark gray *not* black so there is no savings.

How can you be so sure?

 

[Digitalguy]

But they’re not black, that’s my point. Most of the apps - like this website - are dark gray *not* black so there is no savings.

I don't have an oled iPhone but on my samsung galaxy phone and oled tablet black is black, contrary to the iPad

 

[Digitalguy]

How can you be so sure?

I think the mistake comes from comparing the screen with the bezels. So the question is, is the screen color, when completely off, the same as the black of the bezels? No, and the screen is off. So how can they be the same when it's on...

 

[iamMacPerson]

How can you be so sure?

Be so sure… about what? I made two points, one that a lot (if not most) apps don’t have ‘true’ black backgrounds or that dark gray background have little to no energy savings on OLED panels?

I think the mistake comes from comparing the screen with the bezels. So the question is, is the screen color, when completely off, the same as the black of the bezels? No, and the screen is off. So how can they be the same when it's on...

Apparently neither of you have spent any time actually using an iPhone with an OLED panel and if you have, you haven’t spent a lot of time looking for differences with gray vs black pixels and reading r/AMOLED. There is a very clear difference when something is gray, versus black.

Settings is the worse offender of this, and a lot of apps are like this. The only actual black portion of the screen are the bars between the sections, that’s the only part that registers #000000 on Pixelmator. The rest is gray or other colors. Dark gray, while great on the eyes, have very little to no energy savings on OLED compared to displaying a pure white image at the same brightness. The energy savings in OLED comes from the pixel being completely off, which can only be done if the signal for the pixel is telling it to display #000000.

 

[Digitalguy]

Be so sure… about what? I made two points, one that a lot (if not most) apps don’t have ‘true’ black backgrounds or that dark gray background have little to no energy savings on OLED panels?

Apparently neither of you have spent any time actually using an iPhone with an OLED panel and if you have, you haven’t spent a lot of time looking for differences with gray vs black pixels and reading r/AMOLED. There is a very clear difference when something is gray, versus black.

View attachment 1764224
Settings is the worse offender of this, and a lot of apps are like this. The only actual black portion of the screen are the bars between the sections, that’s the only part that registers #000000 on Pixelmator. The rest is gray or other colors. Dark gray, while great on the eyes, have very little to no energy savings on OLED compared to displaying a pure white image at the same brightness. The energy savings in OLED comes from the pixel being completely off, which can only be done if the signal for the pixel is telling it to display #000000.

I don't have any OLED Apple device, as I said, so you might be right about iPhone as far as I am concerned. What I am saying is that I don't have this issue with my S10 in dark mode (or my Tab S7+ for that matter).