The Best OLED Laptops for 2024 (2024)

In terms of sock-it-to-my-eyeballs innovation, few core technologies can match the history and consistency of new screen tech to wow us. From CRT to LCD, from VGA resolution to 4K (and soon enoughon to 8K), a procession of steadily more stunning TV and computer screens has marched through our homes over the years. This brings us to one of the most recent advances: OLED.

OLED screen technology has been the latest big feature inmodern television sets, offering stunning colors, deep blacks, and amazing overall picture quality. It's also shown up on late-model high-profile smartphones from Apple and Samsung. So, very big screens and very small screens have seen the advance of OLED, but the ones in the middle, in laptops and on desktops? Not so much...until now.

The technology is finally hitting laptop displays in a modest stream, and 2021 was the year that OLED finally gained laptop momentum, based on some OLED-panel manufacturing trends. The considerations are a bit different on the laptop side, however. While you want TVs to look as good as possible for movies and broadcast programming, the usage case varies from that of a computer. PCs are designed not just for content consumption but for contentcreation, and laptops have to worry about the pesky necessity that isbattery life.

All of these change the ways screen technology needs to work with the product, which leads us to the question: Should you buy an OLED laptop? Let's dig in. We'll start with a breakout of our favorite lab-tested OLED laptops of 2024, followed by a guide to understanding OLED and how to buy the right machine for you.

Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks

Buying Guide: The Best OLED Laptops for 2024

You might be asking: What is an OLED display, anyway?

To answer that, we'll start by getting into the details of OLED screens, and what advantages they are meant to bring. For starters, the acronym OLED stands for "organic light-emitting diode"; more on that in a moment. The short explanation is that OLED technology is similar to traditional LED technology—the same concept of light-emitting diodes—but rather than the screen producing light using only semiconductors, organic molecules are employed (putting the "O" in OLED). The result is brighter screens with more vibrant colors, hence the appeal of using it on TVs and computers. OLEDs also tend to use less power, all else being equal.

If you're interested, here's a slightly more technical explanation. The various kinds of LCD screens—the kinds you've gotten used to in most laptops and TVs over the past decade—whether, TFT, VA, or other technologies, all share a similar base concept. They use a white LED backlight source that pushes light through filters. That light is gated at the pixel level by liquid crystals in various states and orientations, which blocks or tints the light to generate pixels of the desired color. In simple terms, OLED screens use a different display paradigm: an organic compound that is self-emissive in terms of light, allowing each pixel in the panel to produce its light when current is applied.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

That's the main difference from LCD screens, and what enables them to produce extra-brilliant colors and deep blacks. Notably, OLEDs offer "truer" blacks than other mainstream screen technologies can when showing a dark or black image. When an LCD panel is displaying black, light is still being pushed behind the pixels in play, but they are shuttered to present to your eyes as dark space. In OLED screens, the individual pixels on the portions of the screen showing black are truly displayingnothing, so there's no light leakage from the back to dilute the darkness. This, in turn, provides better contrast and deeper blacks than simply filtering out an ever-present LED backlight.

All of this also allows a panel to be more efficient, and thus thinner. That doesn't come into play with laptops as dramatically as with OLED TVs; many OLED TVs are nearly razor-thin.

Should You Buy an OLED Laptop?

Of course, this beauty comes at a price. OLED laptop configurations are more expensive than traditional display options, and the OLED screen option will often be included only in the priciest variant in a laptop family. Part of this cost-boosting is that this new wave of laptop OLED panels—all manufactured by Samsungat this point—are mostly, but not all, 4K-resolution screens, upping the price further by requiring appropriate supporting components. That's another reason why OLED is usually in the top-most model of a given laptop family. A 4K native resolution and cutting-edge screen technology represent the most premium version of any given machine. (That started to change in the latter half of 2021, with some lower-resolution 13.3-inch OLED panels hitting the market in machines like the Lenovo Ideapad Duet 5 Chromebook.)

If you're interested in an OLED display but unsure whether you can justify it, you could base your decision on the simple fact that they're incredible to look at, for the reasons described above. OLED is not strictly necessary, but then, neither is 4K resolution, and many tech features start as luxuries before becoming standard. If you're buying a new panel nowadays, adopting a technology that is only poised to become more popular is a solid decision, and most OLED panels we've seen look superb. If you want to buy a screen just because it makes watching videos, playing games, and even staring at your desktop look amazing, we can't argue with that. But whether or not the added cost is worth it is up to you and your budget.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Specific types of users should consider some more granular pros and cons. Gamers will enjoy eye-popping visuals, and the fantasy and sci-fi settings of many titles are ideal for both deep blacks and vibrant colors. However, only the highest-end laptop component hardware is equipped to power games in 4K at 60 frames per second, so most gamers will have to dial down the resolution to 1440p or 1080p. That's not the end of the world, since you can still view other content in 4K, but you are paying extra for 4K resolution to get OLED because the two are intertwined in many laptops so far. Not playing at your laptop's native resolution may feel like a waste to some, but as it stands, that could be a cost of attaining an OLED panel.

There's also the issue of the refresh rate. An increasing share of modern gaming laptops come equipped with 120Hz, 144Hz, and even up to 300Hz displays to show more frames per second in competitive games. The first wave of 4K OLED panels was locked at 60Hz, but a bunch of higher-refresh options released since. Going higher in the future will only cost more money, but professionals who can benefit from a higher refresh rate (or want this feature for other uses, like gaming) should look into some 4K 120Hz options.

If you are gaming, a 60Hz refresh rate is a fine fit for AAA titles where appearance is more important than frames, but many gamers play both big-budget blockbusters and the hottest battle royale or MOBA. It's another tradeoff you'll have to make for picture quality, as good as it is, though even many budget laptops today come with a higher-than-60Hz refresh rate.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Also, consider some of the nuances of that. It takes a tip-top GPU to push frame rates of more than 60 frames per second (fps) at 4K and high detail settings with many modern AAA titles. In practical fact, if you're playing the Cyberpunks and Battlefields of the world, and even if you have a high-end GPU, you can't expect to hit 144fps or even 120fps at 4K and high detail settings, anyway; even the latest GeForce RTX 40 Series can be hard-pressed to achieve it. Given that, the 60Hz refresh rate of the screen won't matter as much.

The 60Hz limit is more of an issue if you're an aficionado of older games, or of less-demanding but highly competitive esports titles (CS: GO, Valorant, Apex Legends) in which maximum frame rates are life-and-death matters. For those kinds of games, an OLED will have you leaving frames on the floor—unless you land one of the very new 90Hz models.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Meanwhile, OLED also has different considerations for creative professionals. If your job requires careful use of color matching or accuracy, choose your laptop carefully; different OLED laptop manufacturers make different claims about which color gamuts get full coverage, even with many of the laptops using the same panel. Note that Pantone validation is an aspect of some machines, notably several models from Gigabyte.

If you know how to tune and calibrate displays for professional work, you should be able to tune the OLED to better results than out-of-the-box settings. Largely, the color coverage and accuracy are and should be good enough for most casual and prosumer use cases.

Beyond the display, for our general laptop buying advice, including what components to look for given your needs and budget, check out our roundup ofbest overall laptops, as well as our guide to thebest gaming laptops.

How Does OLED Affect Laptop Battery Life?

As explained previously, when an OLED screen is displaying black on some or all of the screen, the pixels on those portions of the display are turned completely off. Because of that, the screen should use less power when showing black-dominant images, or videos with more black segments. This also holds even if the scene or image is not completely black, just dark because the pixels are still using less power.

To leverage this OLED trait, we've found that most OLED laptop makers are shipping their systems withWindows Dark Modeturned on, so no more juice than necessary is spent displaying your windows, folders, and taskbar. In our reviews of the first bunch of OLED laptops we received at PC Labs, we tested the impact of both OLED screens and Dark mode on battery life.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

As some of the first OLED laptop reviews we published, the Razer Blade 15and theDell XPS 15 (7590) contain our testing and information on this topic—but the takeaway is that Dark modecouldbe the chocolate to OLED's peanut butter. Using it delivered a noticeable improvement in battery life in our tests. OLED does use up more juice displaying white pixels, and even pumping up the brightness to the max in Dark mode has much less of an impact than it does with white screens.Using Dark mode and watching videos with a lot of black or dark scenes could add up to hours of additional battery life.Generally, OLED is a power saver, and this aspect only adds to the potential savings.

It may feel like overkill to think you have to monitor how much black or dark space is being displayed on your screen at any one time, but we wouldn't obsess over it. Generally, with OLED, keeping dark mode on (or switching to it when you're going to be using your system off the charger) should make a difference enough. But you may want to keep that desktop wallpaper dark, too!

What Kinds of OLED Laptops Can I Buy?

For now, the field of laptops with OLED screens is small versus the whole field of laptops. The relative handful we have tested here is promising, and a little varied, but not as varied as the larger laptop market. OLED options have been entering more product lines over the last couple of years or so (OLED-screened Chromebooks are now a thing too), and manufacturers most often reserve OLED panels for their top-end, premium models. Given the price of OLED, and most of the panels so far being tied to 4K native resolutions, this makes sense, but there is a slow but sure proliferation of OLED screens to less expensive laptops, too.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

This leads us to the exact types of laptops we've seen so far. They have mostly been seen in high-end desktop-replacement laptops and ultraportables with optional OLED screens, as well as powerful gaming machines. The former—laptops like the Dell XPS 15 OLED (9530) and theAcer Swift Go 14convertible—are perhaps a better fit. These jack-of-all-trades laptops may have you watching 4K streaming videos, looking at photos, and maybe doing some content-creation work, depending on the components. Entry-level discrete graphics are an option in some of these laptops, which ought to enable some light gaming at resolutions below 4K. Since that initial wave of systems, we've seen OLED screens deployed in a wider range of form factors, like the convertible Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8. Everything you're doing benefits from OLED, without many downsides other than the price.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

OLED screens in gaming-specific laptops are more the exception than the norm. They usually appear as an add-on option, but more recently manufacturers have opted for super-high-refresh displays over OLED for gaming laptops. Razer and Alienware, for example, have opted for 300Hz displays in their premium flagship gaming laptops, leaving OLED for other models or removing them as an option altogether. If you do still see the option offered in a gaming laptop you're considering, you may have to choose between OLED or high refresh, or at least limit the refresh rate ceiling to acquire an OLED screen (though only more competitive multiplayer gamers are likely to care).

The type of specialty laptops likely to include OLED screens are increasingly not gaming machines, but creator laptops. Aimed at creative professionals, these help users enhance their video editing, color-matching work, and the like. It's not exactly essential for these users, but the gains are clear, and the downside of a limited refresh rate does not apply.

So, What Is the Best OLED Laptop to Buy?

The main, clear upside to OLED screens is how stellar they look. That alone may well be worth the money to you—though, as we've explained, OLED poses clear costs in dollarsandmore abstract ones. These panels are not for everyone, and paying well into four figures for a laptop with one is an investment.

It will be a while until OLEDs make it into a wider range of laptops and the cost comes down, but for now, they're a joy to behold and we're glad they're here. If your budget can swing it, check out our recommendations and spec breakout below for the top OLED-bearing laptops that PC Labs has tested.