Unveiled a few months ago, LG’s notoriously underrated “Rollable TV” is is going to come out this year. As the name suggests, it is a TV that simply rolls away when you’re not using it. LG made a cool cinematic advert which displays its primary trait in action. Have a look.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br9yftCP9Mg
Back when it was unveiled at CES 2019, it was immediately overshadowed by Samsung’s humongous Wall TV. That, however, doesn’t make it any less of a revolutionary piece of tech, at least in my eyes. It’s smart, it’s unique and it’s perfect for people who have a minimalist approach and just want a decluttered living room.
Like a normal TV, it’s there when you need it. The magic happens when you are done using it. By just a flick of a button, the whole display simply rolls down into its box and disappears completely as if it was never there. Now, you may be wondering how does that happen?
How Does it Work?
Well, judging by the looks of the box, it’s unlikely that the TV just slides in and out. It has to fold at some point. And that is exactly what happens. The “Rollable” TV has a display made from a Flexible Organic Light-Emitting Diode (FOLED) panel that has the ability to fold without losing any functionality.
The panel is attached to a segmented frame that allows it to retain its shape before and after folding. For added structural rigidity, there are two struts on the back, that fold/unfold with the display.
Features
Right off, let’s start with what’s everyone interested in. The “Rollable TV” has a 65″ display with 4K resolution. As mentioned earlier, the display itself is OLED. This will result in a crisp image quality with vibrant colors and deep blacks. Pair that with front-firing Dolby Atmos speakers with Virtual 5.1 Surround-Sound. It uses LG’s WebOS software that comes will all the essential apps pre-installed.
The rolling display has 3 modes. The first 2 being the ones where the screen is either all the way out or all the way in. However, there’s a third mode that lets the screen a quarter of the way out and can be used to display tracks you’re playing, show weather etc. It’s a really cool way to take the usability of the foldable display to a whole new level.
Verdict
Well, it’s really still soon to come up with a verdict. The TV still hasn’t come out yet and there have been no testing units as well. The rest of the features including the pricing are yet to be unveiled as well. So I’ll only be talking about the design potential here. Do we really need it?
The answer to that question may vary from person to person here. Most of us are okay with normal TVs in our living rooms. They don’t take up any more space than this especially if they’re wall mounted. Though some of us, however, may even get bothered by that. They think an unused TV disturbs the elegance of their minimalistic living room. Those are the people that need it and can possibly afford it. For there’s one thing we know about the price. It’s not going to come cheap.
Then there’s the reliability factor. All that mechanism adds to the complexity of the design. A complex design with more moving parts has a higher probability of breaking down compared to something that’s simple. Add the fact that this will be the first of its kind and you have a recipe for a potential disaster. Usually, newer designs, which haven’t been perfected yet, tend to have more problems than the later units. So if I were you, I’d stay clear of the earlier units.