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LG reveals a bendable, curved OLED aimed at gamers

The curved gaming display can be flattened for TV use

LG's 48-inch Bendable Cinematic Sound OLED (CSO) being showcased at CES 2021 Credit: LG

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We're just days away from the start of CES 2021 and LG is already making waves. Fresh off the announcement of LG's new QNED TV lineup, the company unveiled an all-new, bendable OLED display aimed squarely at gamers. Dubbed the Bendable Cinematic Sound OLED—or CSO for short—the display can be curved or flattened depending on the viewer's preference, though LG says that the display's curved option was designed with gamers in mind.

As its name would suggest, in addition to a futuristically flexible panel, LG's new OLED is also outfitted with an unusual sound system. Rather than rely on standard internal speaker setup, the display itself vibrates to create sound. Here's what LG's press release says about this intriguing audio apparatus:

"The 48-inch Bendable CSO display’s ultra slim film exciter, which is the part that vibrates the display, has been reduced to a thickness of just 0.6mm from 9mm and therefore allows viewers to enjoy a thinner screen as well as highly impressive sound."

The sound system is purported to offer a "vivid sense of reality," but without a hands-on demonstration it's difficult to conjure up a description. And although LG states that the CSO can be "turned into a flat screen while watching TV," there's no word on whether or not it will support over-the-air channels out of the box or arrive with LG's webOS smart platform pre-installed. We do know, however, that the Cinematic Sound OLED reportedly features a response time of 0.1 milliseconds and a native refresh rate of 120 Hz—more good news for gamers.

Even if the CSO ends up being more of a gaming monitor than a standard living room TV, you can color us excited about a new OLED display entering the fray. The benefits of OLED displays are numerous: perfect black levels, superb color reproduction, and panels that tend to be ultra thin, to name a few of them. In fact, the CX, LG's flagship OLED last year, ended up taking the top spot in our round-up of the best TVs of 2020. LG's track record for manufacturing out-of-this-world OLED displays speaks for itself, but we won't know precisely how immersive this curved, gaming-centric OLED TV performs until we get our hands on it.

For now, only the 48-inch Cinematic Sound OLED has been confirmed by LG, though it's certainly possible that LG will revisit this display style in future product lineups, especially if proven successful. With CES right around the corner—and LG's official 2021 TV lineup still under wraps—there's plenty of time left for more surprises. We'll keep you posted.

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