How 4-Stack Tandem/RGB Tandem OLED is raising the bar for OLED displays?
How bright do you want your OLED to be?
Tandem OLED TVs are shaking up the OLED market, and taking the fight directly to some of the most advanced OLED display types today.
But what exactly makes Tandem OLED different, and how does it compare with WOLED, QD-OLED, and other OLED types?
In this article, we’ll explore the strengths and weaknesses of Tandem OLED and dive into where this exciting display technology could go next.
Let’s dive in!
Inside the next-gen OLED revolution: What Is Tandem OLED?
Tandem OLED is an advanced evolution of WOLED (White OLED) technology, which consists of multiple stacks or layers of organic emitters.
Conventional WOLED TVs typically use one layer of yellow-green organic emitter along with two layers of blue organic material.
These layers combine to produce white light, which then passes through colour filters that separate it into the three primary RGB colours: red, green, and blue.
These colour filters are associated with subpixels, including an additional white subpixel.
The white subpixel enhances the overall brightness of the display while compensating for the reduction in light intensity caused by the colour filters.
It also enables WOLED displays to produce purer, more accurate whites.
As a result, scenes such as snowy mountain peaks, fluffy white clouds, and white sandy beaches appear more real.
How Tandem WOLED Takes Traditional WOLED to the Next Level
In a Tandem WOLED panel, there are four organic-emitting layers, with separate layers dedicated to red and green organic emitters.
These layers are arranged consecutively in a blue-green-blue-red (B-G-B-R) stack, with each layer positioned on top of the others.
Thus, Tandem OLED is also referred to as “RGB Tandem OLED”.
This pixel configuration of Tandem OLEDs offers several advantages over conventional WOLEDs.
The presence of multiple organic emitter layers improves light efficiency, as the light passes through several layers.
This significantly reduces the stress placed on each individual pixel.
Therefore, to achieve the same level of brightness, the organic layers in a Tandem OLED have to work much less than those in a conventional WOLED TV.
As a result, while WOLED TVs are often limited in peak brightness due to the risk of pixel degradation, Tandem OLED TVs can achieve much higher brightness levels, simply because the brightness-related stress is distributed across several layers.
How Does Tandem OLED Stack Up Against QD-OLED?
A QD-OLED TV eliminates the need for conventional color filters used in WOLED panels.
Instead, it relies on a single blue organic-emitting layer combined with quantum dots.
When the blue light hits the quantum dots, they convert it into highly pure, monochromatic red and green light.
This allows QD-OLED to produce pure RGB colors directly rather than deriving them from white light through color filters.
As a result, much less light is lost, allowing QD-OLED displays to achieve a significantly larger color volume, with colors that are generally purer, brighter, and more saturated than those of conventional WOLEDs.
Thus, vivid visuals such as red flowers, emerald-green forests, deep-blue oceans, and vibrant sunsets appear more striking and lifelike.
However, Tandem OLED technology has several advantages of its own.
Tandem OLEDs can typically achieve higher overall peak brightness because multiple layers of organic emitters contribute to the light output.
In addition, tandem WOLED panels distribute the workload across multiple emitter stacks, placing less stress on individual pixels than the single-emitting-layer design used in QD-OLED.
This can potentially reduce the risk of burn-in and contribute to a longer lifespan.
Finally, tandem OLEDs tend to maintain their contrast and black levels better in brightly lit environments, whereas QD-OLED panels can suffer from raised blacks under strong ambient light, which reduces their perceived contrast.
That said, the color purity of QD-OLEDs is superior and looks far more vibrant in dark rooms compared with WOLEDs, although tandem OLEDs have significantly narrowed that gap.
MLA or Tandem OLED? Breaking Down the Battle for Brighter OLEDs
MLA (Micro Lens Array) was a technology introduced by LG in 2023 to improve the brightness and efficiency of OLED panels.
The first TV to feature MLA technology was the LG G3 OLED, which used more than 5,000 microscopic lenses over each individual pixel.
These lenses redirect more of the light toward the viewer while preserving its intensity, allowing MLA-equipped OLED TVs to achieve significantly higher brightness than conventional WOLED panels.
However, in 2025, LG moved away from MLA and introduced its new Tandem WOLED technology in OLED TVs.
Unlike MLA, which does not fundamentally change the panel structure and instead uses a layer of microscopic lenses over the pixels, Tandem OLED uses a completely redesigned panel architecture.
It employs separate red, green, and blue emissive layers, resulting in greater color purity.
These organic-emitting layers are arranged in four stacks, which further allows the panel to maintain light intensity more effectively.
As a result, a Tandem WOLED TV (e.g., the LG G5 OLED) can deliver both higher brightness and purer colors compared with an MLA-equipped OLED (e.g., the LG G3 OLED TV).
Beyond Tandem OLED: What’s next for display technology?
QD-OLED Penta Tandem
Samsung Display has announced the trademark registration of its five-layer organic light-emitting structure, designed for QD-OLED panels used in premium TVs and monitors.
The term “Penta” is derived from the Greek word for five.
QD-OLED Penta Tandem technology adds five organic emissive layers to the existing QD-OLED structure.
By distributing the workload across multiple organic light-emitting layers, the technology reduces stress on individual layers and improves durability.
This multilayer design significantly increases light output, while the quantum dots enable highly accurate and vibrant colors.
According to Samsung Display, Penta Tandem can double the panel’s lifespan, increase luminous intensity by 1.3 times, and deliver peak brightness of up to 4,500 nits.
In simple terms, Penta QD-OLED Tandem combines the color advantages of QD-OLED with the brightness and longevity benefits of tandem OLED technology, resulting in brighter displays with a longer lifespan.
MLA + Tandem OLED
Another potential advancement for tandem OLED technology would be to integrate the MLA technology over the Tandem OLED stack.
In this configuration, light passing through the RGB layers would be directed through an array of microscopic lenses, which may significantly improve luminous efficiency.
This can enable the TV to maintain excellent visibility even in exceptionally bright rooms while delivering substantially higher brightness.
By achieving greater brightness without placing as much stress on the individual pixels, MLA can also help provide even greater longevity than the Tandem OLED displays.