[HN Gopher] LG's new 1Hz display is the secret behind a new lapt...
___________________________________________________________________
LG's new 1Hz display is the secret behind a new laptop's battery
life
Author : robotnikman
Score : 65 points
Date : 2026-03-23 21:18 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pcworld.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pcworld.com)
| jerlam wrote:
| Haven't phones, watches and tablets been using low refresh rates
| to enable battery improvements for a while?
|
| The Apple Watch Series 5 (2019) has a refresh rate down to 1Hz.
|
| M4 iPad Pro lacks always-on display despite OLED panel with
| variable refresh rate (2024):
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2024/05/09/m4-ipad-pro-always-on-display...
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Dell needs to sell these XPS. The AI button doesn't do the
| trick, so battery life may do it.
| MBCook wrote:
| Yes but I'm unaware of larger ones.
| trvz wrote:
| iPad Pro only goes down to 10 FPS. This may be the display of
| the upcoming MacBook Pro.
| SXX wrote:
| OLED iPad dont have always on because of burn-in. Considering
| people certainly use it as photo frame, notification and time
| daahboars, kitchen recipe book, etc.
|
| Less of a problem for iphones that unlikely to stay for a week
| in the same place plugged in and unused.
| amaranth wrote:
| Phones and watches do that with LTPO OLED which I don't believe
| exists at higher screen sizes although I'm not sure why. This
| is supposed to be special because it isn't OLED so should be
| able to get brighter and not have to worry about burn in.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Panel Self Refresh should largely just work, and I believe has
| been on laptops for a long long time. Here's Intel demo'ing it
| in 2011.
| https://www.theregister.com/2011/09/14/intel_demos_panel_sel...
|
| I'm not sure that there's really anything new here? 1Hz might
| be lower. Adoption might be not that good. But this might just
| be iteration on something that many folks have just not really
| taken good advantage of till now. There's perhaps signficiant
| display tech advancements to get the Hz low, without having
| significant G-Sync style screen-buffers to support it.
|
| One factor that might be interesting, I don't know if there's a
| _partial_ refresh anywhere. Having something moving on the
| screen but everything else stable would be neat to optimize
| for. I often have a video going in part of a screen. But that
| doesn 't mean the whole screen needs to redraw.
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| Is this materially different from panel self refresh?
| saltcured wrote:
| A low refresh rate probably still requires the same display-
| side framebuffer as PSR.
|
| With conventional PSR, I think the goal is to power off the
| link between the system framebuffer and the display controller
| and potentially power down the system framebuffer and GPU too.
| This may not be beneficial unless it can be left off long
| enough, and there may be substantial latency to fire it all
| back up. You do it around sleep modes where you are expecting a
| good long pause.
|
| Targeting 1 Hz sounds like actually planning to clock down the
| link and the system framebuffer so they can run sustain low
| bandwidth in a more steady state fashion. Presumably you also
| want to clock down any app and GPU work to not waste time
| rendering screens nobody will see. This seems just as
| challenging, i.e. having a "sync to vblank" that can adapt all
| the way down to 1 Hz?
| hyperhello wrote:
| But why 1hz? Can't the panel just leave the pixels on the
| screen for an arbitrary length of time until something
| triggers refresh? Only a small amount of my screen changes as
| I'm typing.
| saltcured wrote:
| When PSR or adaptive refresh rate systems suspend or re-
| clock the link, this requires reengineering of the link and
| its controls. All of this evolved out of earlier display
| links, which evolved out of earlier display DACs for CRTs,
| which continuously scanned the system framebuffer to
| serialize pixel data into output signals. This scanning was
| synchronized to the current display mode and only changed
| timings when the display mode was set, often which a
| disruptive glitch and resynchronization period. Much of
| this design cruft is still there, including the whole idea
| of "sync to vblank".
|
| When you have display persistence, you can imagine a very
| different architecture where you address screen regions and
| send update packets all the way to the screen. The screen
| in effect becomes a compositor. But then you may also want
| transactional boundaries, so do you end up wanting the
| screen's embedded buffers to also support double or triple
| buffering and a buffer-swap command? Or do you just want a
| sufficiently fast and coordinated "blank and refill"
| command that can send a whole screen update as a fast
| burst, and require the full buffer to be composited
| upstream of the display link?
|
| This persistence and selective addressing is actually a
| special feature of the MIP screens embedded in watches etc.
| They have a link mode to address and update a small
| rectangular area of the framebuffer embedded in the screen.
| It sends a smaller packet of pixel data over the link,
| rather than sending the whole screen worth of pixels again.
| This requires different application and graphics driver
| structure to really support properly and with power
| efficiency benefits. I.e. you don't want to just set a
| smaller viewport and have the app continue to render into
| off-screen areas. You want it to focus on only rendering
| the smaller updated pixel area.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > This seems just as challenging, i.e. having a "sync to
| vblank" that can adapt all the way down to 1 Hz?
|
| I was under the impression that modern compositors operated
| on a callback basis where they send explicit requests for new
| frames only when they are needed.
| hasperdi wrote:
| this is just regurgitating the manufacturer's claim. I believe it
| when I see it. Most of display energy use is to turn on the
| OLED/backlight. They're claiming, because our display flickers
| less, it's 48% more efficient now.
| serious_angel wrote:
| > LG's press release leaves several questions unanswered,
| including the source of the "Oxide" name...
|
| > Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3096432 [2026-03-23]
|
| ---
|
| > HKC has announced a new laptop display panel that supports
| adaptive refresh across a 1 to 60Hz range, including a 1Hz mode
| for static content. HKC says the panel uses an Oxide (metal-oxide
| TFT) backplane and its low leakage characteristics to keep the
| image stable even at 1Hz.
|
| > Source: https://videocardz.com/newz/hkc-reveals-1hz-to-60hz-
| adaptive... [2025-12-29]
|
| ---
|
| > History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a
| little every time we retell it. ~ Hilary Mantel
| MBCook wrote:
| As soon as I saw this announced, I wondered if this is why we
| haven't seen OLED MacBook Pro yet.
|
| Apple already uses similar tech on the phones and watches.
| amelius wrote:
| So if a pixel is not refreshed, it doesn't use any power?
| etchalon wrote:
| If the screen is only refreshing once per second, less energy
| is used to refresh the screen. The pixel uses the same amount
| of power.
| tosti wrote:
| E-ink displays can do this. That's why they're used in
| ereaders. Display in TFA OTOH emits light, so definately not.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-03-27 23:00 UTC)