Why Apple May Be Struggling to Make the iPad Pro's Fancy New OLED Screen

Apple's OLED iPad Pro was meant to be here in March, then April, and now we're going to have to wait until May. What's going on?

The entire iPad line has gone for more than a year without any updates. Apple was, according to reliable sources, planning to fix that in March with new OLED iPads Pro, and M2 iPads Air—perhaps a week or two after the announcement of the M3 MacBook Air. Now, these new models won't arrive until at least May. Why? It's probably the OLED screens, which are, apparently, really hard to make.

"According to reports, this is because Samsung finds it difficult to produce these OLEDs. Apple wanted a tandem-structure OLED—basically two layers of emitters one on top of the other, which is better in terms of efficiency, brightness, and lifetime. But it's more difficult to produce," Ron Mertens, CEO of OLED and microLED-tracking company Metalgrass, told Lifewire via email.

Screen Time

We've heard plenty about the as-yet-unannounced new iPads. The iPad Air, for example, will get an M2 upgrade (from the current M1 chip), and a new, larger 13-inch model, to offer a bigger display without needing to pay for a Pro.

And we expect the iPad Pro to move to the latest M3 chips, move its FaceID and FaceTime cameras to the long edge, for better video calls (the basic iPad already has this); to get a new, laptop-like keyboard case with a bigger trackpad and a row of function keys, and an upgrade to that troublesome OLED display.

OLED is fundamentally different from other kinds of screen display tech. Most laptop and tablet screens consist of a bright backlight with a grid of LCD pixels in front. It's inefficient, because that backlight is always on, and the image quality suffers because, in order to get black, for example, you have to use the pixels to block as much of that light as possible. This is why the screen never really looks black.

To get around this, displays use "dimming zones," where they shut off the backlight behind the pixels to get deeper blacks. The problem here is that there are often only a handful of zones, so in the end it makes little difference.

The next step is the mini-LED display, which puts tiny individual LEDs behind the pixels, offering way more dimming zones. This is what the 12.9-inch iPad Pro currently uses, as does the MacBook Pro. It looks amazing, but you're still powering both an LED backlight and the LED pixels, and while there are more dimming zones, there are usually still fewer zones than there are pixels, so you still get light bloom in dark scenes. The classic example is stars on a black sky. Because the backlight is bigger than the pinprick star, the backlight bleeds through.

OLED-Astray

Then we get to OLED, in which the screen is made up of individually glowing pixels. This offers amazing colors and contrast because you can completely control brightness on a pixel-by-pixel basis. If something is black, you switch off the pixel entirely.

And OLED has another very attractive feature for mobile—it uses less power because you only have to light up the pixels you're using.

Apple has of course gone one better, and the first OLED iPads will come with a "two-stack tandem OLED panel," which is essentially two stacked layers of OLED pixels, which increases brightness, and also extends the life of the display. Presumably, Apple will use the extra brightness for HDR photos and videos, and the extended life is important, because OLED suffers burn-in, and also wears out faster than regular displays.

But this cutting-edge tech seems to be proving harder to make than predicted, for Samsung at least.

"This is the first time Samsung is making such OLEDs, and their yields are low. So it'll take some time. LGD is already making such panels for the automotive market so they have more experience."

OLED will be nice for future iPad buyers, but it might not be a reason for most current owners to update, especially if you have a recent vintage 12.9-inch iPad Pro with its amazing mini-LED display.

"Despite not being OLED or micro LED-backlit, I’ve found Apple LCD displays to have superior contrast ratios to other LCD panels. Only when in a completely dark room do I really notice the backlight bleed. OLED is perfect for horror movies!" says iPad and MacBook user Fuzzball84 in a forum thread participated in by Lifewire.