Gaming TV: LG flexes with curvable OLED screen

Curved is dead. Long live Flex: South Korean TV manufacturer LG has announced a new 42-inch OLED TV that can be curved almost at will at the touch of a button on the remote control: the LG OLED Flex (LX3). Nothing is known yet about price and availability. If that changes, I will update this article.

LG's new TV can be curved from flat to 900R. In the menu, this is shown as a range from 0 to 100 per cent with 20 steps of 5 per cent each. The new feature is more likely to please gamers than film and series aficionados. After all, manufacturers tried years ago to bring curved televisions to the market as the next big thing. The market reacted unimpressed: the promise that curved TVs would give the impression of an immersive, almost three-dimensional picture without using the unpopular 3D technology with shutter glasses was quickly seen through as pure hogwash.

Since then, the curved TV has become the next big thing.

Since then, the TV landscape has evolved. Many manufacturers - but especially LG - are increasingly trying to sell their TVs as gaming monitors as well. With the individually curvable panel, LG actually puts forward a good argument.

Curved TVs: What for?

Why have curved TVs long disappeared from the market, but not curved computer monitors? Colleague Samuel explains to me that the advantage of curved monitors is the even viewing angle: The line of sight from the eyes to the screen hits the display at 90° degrees everywhere. At least, if the screen draws a closed circle with me as the exact centre, if I were to continue to draw the curve of the monitor. This constant viewing angle prevents contrast, colour and brightness shifts to the sides. In addition, one feels more "enclosed" by the display and immerses oneself more deeply in content.

It is precisely this curve that curved TVs fail: as far away as most sit from the TV, the corresponding curvature is likely to be so small that the screen might as well be flat. So there is simply no point in significantly curving the TV screen. The advantage evaporates.

With PC monitors it is different. Most people sit so close to the picture that the imaginary circle with us as the centre is quite small. That's why curved PC monitors make perfect sense. Since classic models have a fixed curvature, the optimal distance to the screen is predetermined. A curvature of 900R, for example, means that the distance from the eye to the display - the radius of the imaginary circle - is ideally 900 millimetres. This is exactly what LG is changing with its flexible variant: you can adjust the strength of the curvature yourself to your distance.

LG OLED Flex is aimed at gamers

It's precisely because LG has been trying to make its OLED TVs popular with gamers for a few years now that the OLED Flex should come as no surprise to anyone. Also because PC hardware maker Corsair recently unveiled its first curvable OLED monitor - in close collaboration with LG, as colleague Kevin reported.

While Corsair is marketing its OLED gaming monitor as just that, LG is taking the opposite approach: the OLED Flex is supposed to be a TV that can also be used as a gaming monitor. Accordingly, features that are particularly interesting for console and PC gamers are important:

• HDMI 2.1
• Dolby Vision Gaming with UHD and 120Hz
• Variable frame rates (VRR, Nvidia's G-Sync and AMD's FreeSync)
• Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM)
• Curvature from flat to 900R

The only question is why LG doesn't design and market the OLED Flex as a monitor right away. Who has a "small" 42-inch TV in their living room complete with console and/or PC and calls themselves a high-end gamer who needs features like a Flex screen? Conversely, the OLED Flex might make sense in gaming dens, where gamers gamble first, then sit back and watch the latest streaming highlights I recommend (was that too shameless?) on the screen that's been flattened again.

We'll test whether my theories are any good in practice as soon as we get our hands on the first flexible screens. What do you think?