Electronics

In the past 2022, PC monitors have left us with the impression of "volume". All major brands are fighting a price war. Of course, the continuous roll-in is more a helpless move of display manufacturers in the face of the cold winter of the market. According to Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation, the expected shipment of LCD monitors in 2022 will be 135 million, a decrease of 7% compared with the previous year.

As INTEL, NVIDIA and AMD have successively released their processors and graphics cards, it is bound to drive the display market to usher in a new wave of innovation in the new year, and the display market may usher in new growth.

So in the new year, what will be the new actions of the display brand and the new changes in the display market?

High-end product line: OLED has a strong attack, and high brush has another breakthrough

In fact, if you want to understand the new trend of high-end displays every year, you can have a general understanding by focusing on the CES exhibition at the beginning of the year. In the past CES2023, from the perspective of new products released by various display head brands, the high-end display market in 2023 will probably have two major themes, OLED and high brush.

Let's talk about OLED display first. OLED believes that most people are familiar with it now, because the mobile devices we use, such as mobile phones and tablets, all use OLED screens.

In 2021 and 2022, OLED panels also began to appear in a large number on laptops, which was quite good from the market and user feedback. The unique burning problem of OLED has also been well improved under the increasingly mature technology of manufacturers, and it is basically unnecessary to worry about the burning problem in normal use.

With the good market feedback of OLED notebooks and the increasingly mature OLED technology and the factory's ability to keep up, the promotion of OLED displays has also ushered in a golden period.

From the current news, in 2023, all display head brands will vigorously promote OLED products on high-end product lines. LG will focus on promoting OLED displays in 2023, covering 27-inch to 45-inch product lines. At present, LG has released several OLED game displays, including 2K 240Hz LG 27GR95QE and 45-inch 21:9 240Hz LG 45GR95QE.

Asustek also launched OLED products (ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM, ProArt Display OLED PA32DCM) on the two product lines of ROG and ProArt respectively. In addition, leading brands such as Microstar and AOC Aifeng are also focusing on OLED displays.

In terms of OLED display panel scheme, LG's W-OLED scheme and Samsung's QD-OLED scheme are basically adopted. For example, the two OLED displays mentioned above by ASUS adopt LG's OLED panel.

However, for example, the MEG 342C QD-OLED and 491C QD-OLED curved surface e-sports displays of Microstar use Samsung's QD-OLED panel. However, from the current product information, Samsung's QD-OLED is more of a large size with fish screen, while LG's W-OLED covers 27, 32, 45 and other different sizes. Samsung's 27-inch QD-OLED panel needs to wait.

Because they are mainly high-end routes, the prices of new OLED displays in 2023 are quite high, basically at the price of 10000 yuan. If you want to experience low-cost OLED displays, you may have to wait for the large-scale shipment of J-OLED using the printed OLED technology route.

So in 2023, we should be able to see that the resolution and refresh rate of high-end displays will exceed 4K 144Hz, and more 4K 160Hz displays will appear. To make a digression, NVIDIA's RTX 40 series still uses the DP1.4 interface, which is really a bit confusing. It seems that AMD is indeed right in the future!

Of course, considering the price of high-end panel and the performance of output equipment, the author believes that in the next one to two years, the display with DP2.1 interface will still be dominated by high-end product lines, and it should not be seen that DP2.1 will be relegated to the display at the mid-end price in a short time, Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

Finally, it should be said that although OLED is the main direction of high-end display of head manufacturers this year, Mini LED has not withdrawn from the high-end product line. After all, as a backlight technology at this stage, Mini LED is basically leading in all aspects compared with traditional backlight.

So many high-end LCD displays in 2023 will still use Mini LED backlight, such as the aforementioned ROG Swift PG32UQXR and Samsung Odyssey Neo G9. In addition, the ips black panel appearing on CES 2022 may also have more products this year, which is also worth looking forward to.

Mini LED will grow in an all-round way

According to Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation, in the past year, a few brands launched displays with Mini LED backlight, most of which were expensive. Until this year, the display with Mini LED backlight began to grow in an all-round way, and the price also dropped from more than 10000 yuan last year to less than 5000 yuan.

Mini LED was the first to be used on TV sets, and it didn't appear on monitors until nearly two years ago. It was proposed in 2017, officially started research and development in 2018, and then entered commercial and comprehensive application in 2022. Therefore, 2022 is also known as the first year of development of Mini LED. The reason why Mini LED began to grow in an all-round way this year is that the production capacity in the industrial chain has increased, for example, there are more and more enterprises producing and developing Mini LED backlight beads, drivers, packaging and other supporting facilities; Secondly, the market demand is large, and the market demand for display color and resolution is increasingly high. The Mini LED backlight can make the display easily achieve high brightness, high contrast, and high color saturation. It also has many advantages such as low power consumption, fast response, thin thickness, long service life, and reducing optical mixing distance, which can comprehensively surpass the traditional WLED backlight. It is also these characteristics of Mini LED that make it suitable for the two major segments of display: e-commerce display and professional creative display. These two segments are also the "highland" that various display brands have always wanted to occupy. Although the price of Mini LED display has dropped too much compared with the early stage, it is still more expensive than the general display by virtue of the attribute addition of the two segments of e-commerce and professional creation, which can help display brands achieve high-end positioning and gain more profits.

In addition, from some of the Mini LED display models we have evaluated before, its display body is thicker than the ordinary WLED display. At the same time, Mini LED displays are mostly designed with external power supply. Why? We analyze that this is mainly because the backlight module of the display panel needs to leave more heat dissipation space, because the Mini LED is small and can accommodate more LED backlights in the same size, and more backlight means more heat generation, which puts forward higher requirements for the heat dissipation design of the display.

At present, some second-tier and third-tier display brands have launched some mini LED displays with high performance-price ratio, and some 2K 165Hz mini LED e-sports displays have even dropped to more than 2000 yuan. However, consumers need to pay attention to the number of partitions, although many displays are all mini LED backlights. The price of the mini LED backlight display depends on the number of partitions. The number of partitions of the low-end mini LED display is often only more than 500. The more partitions, the better the control effect of the halo. Of course, the more expensive the price is.

In addition, many brands add a layer of quantum dot filter film between the backlight plate and the panel in order to make the mini LED display have better color performance. With the help of quantum dot technology, the color saturation of the display is higher. From the Mini LED monitors we have evaluated, their standard coverage area of each color gamut can reach more than 95%, and the average color accuracy is within 1, which indicates that the color performance of Mini LED monitors has risen to the level of wide color gamut.

In addition, the leading enterprises in the display industry are also promoting the progress and standardization of Mini LED. For example, BOE (BOE), together with the Zhongguancun Standardization Association and 12 relevant enterprises, issued the group standard "General Technical Specifications for Mini LED Display". Although this is only an industrial standard, it has greatly promoted the development and specification of Mini LED. This standard specifies the terms and definitions, optical characteristics, mechanical properties, environmental adaptability, mean time between failures, safety requirements and other contents of the display screen. The release of this standard can play a positive role in regulating the entire Mini LED market and ensuring product quality.

According to the survey data, the global Mini LED market will grow from US $150 million in 2021 to US $2.32 billion in 2024, and the annual compound growth rate from 2021 to 2024 will reach 149.2%, which can be said to be a huge market potential. It can be predicted that Mini LED will become the mainstream for a period of time in the future. In the next 2023, we will see more and more mini LED monitors with lower prices coming on the market, and consumers will have more choices. Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

The user demand is increasing, and the high-end technology is constantly innovating

In addition, according to the data statistics of OVIROVA, in the second quarter of 2022, China's market refresh rate ≥ 144Hz displays shipped 1.03 million, a year-on-year increase of 45.6%. The display with high refresh rate and high resolution has gradually become the mainstream of the market, and is also the direction for the office crowd to upgrade their equipment. Major brands have deeply explored the market demand, and under the stimulation of low prices, China's E-sports display market has maintained a countertrend growth.

In fact, looking at the new display products in recent years, we can find that the 4K high brush and MiniLED technology that used to be used only for high-end displays have been rapidly distributed to the mid-tier market of two or three thousand yuan. In addition, the connection with various digital devices has also been strengthened. For example, many monitors have added TYPE-C interface, added wireless screen projection function, and strengthened the connection with mobile phones and tablets; Strengthen the optimization of switch, PS5 and other game consoles, and expand the application occasions; Even some monitors have built-in Android operating system and built-in battery, so that the use of monitors is no longer limited to the desktop.

Of course, as a display, the most important thing is not the functionality, but the image quality. In recent years, the efforts of the display in the display effect are also obvious to all. After the popularity of 4K resolution and 144Hz refresh rate, manufacturers have begun to use the extremely high-end MiniLed technology on consumer monitors in order to find more selling points.

MiniLed technology replaces a whole backlight layer of the original LCD with a large number of independent miniature LED elements. These LED light emitting elements form multiple areas, and each area can be finely adjusted. In addition, the application of zoned dimming technology makes its light control effect better, so it can get higher brightness, and also present higher contrast and wider color gamut. At the same time, it continues the advantages of LCD in durability and cost. At present, there are also display products with this material on the market.

In short, compared with ordinary LCD monitors, the MiniLed is better in the most important aspects of brightness, color accuracy, contrast and fineness. At the same time, it can also improve the common light leakage phenomenon in traditional LCD screens, and will also be better in the visual performance, which is very suitable for professional creative people. Therefore, MiniLED backlight is the upgrade of traditional LED backlight industry, and is also a material technology favored by high-end display products at present.

However, despite the outbreak of the Mini LED backlight display this year, it should be noted that the Mini LED backlight technology is still in the development stage, and in terms of the number of backlight zones, the Mini LED backlight display has a large span, ranging from hundreds to thousands. The experience of some low-cost Mini LED backlight displays is even more difficult to describe. In general, the Mini LED backlight display is still a long way from being truly popular.

In addition to Mini LED backlight display, OLED display is another noteworthy aspect of the PC display market in 2022. Thanks to the gradual maturity of J-OLED printing OLED technology, medium-size OLED panels began to be produced and shipped in mass. At present, many display brands have launched OLED panels printed with J-OLED, and the overall display effect is really amazing.

Of course, the price of OLED display is still relatively high even if the printing OLED technology with lower cost is adopted. However, with the maturity of J-OLED technology, LG's breakthrough in the medium and large size OLED panel and the entry of Samsung QD-OLED technology, the price of OLED display is bound to fall further in the future. By virtue of OLED's inherent advantages of pixel-level light control and extremely low delay, it is likely to have a significant impact on the LCD market, which is also likely to become a new inflection point for the future development of displays.

Of course, for our ordinary consumers, the "close fight" between manufacturers is naturally what we want to see. Perhaps in 2023, we can buy products with better experience at a lower price, and 4K monitors will gradually become the mainstream, Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation reported.