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is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
Samsung Display and Intel have teamed up on laptop technology called SmartPower HDR that they claim can minimize power usage while you’re watching HDR content on an OLED screen. Intel showed off this technology last year, but Samsung Display is sharing details about how it works and the power savings you might expect. However, the company didn’t say which laptops may get SmartPower HDR, so it’s still unclear when it will actually be in laptops you can use.
With SmartPower HDR, Samsung Display says the laptop’s chipset monitors the peak brightness of each frame it’s rendering in real-time. Then the OLED panel’s timing controller chip uses that data along with the ratio of active pixels to find the optimal driving voltage for the panel.
Samsung Display:
For example, general laptop use cases such as web browsing or document editing can operate at lower voltage levels. In contrast, high-definition content such as games or video playback requires higher brightness and voltage. Traditional HDR modes remain locked at maximum brightness, resulting in excessive power usage even in standard scenarios. As a result, many laptops default to SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) mode despite the color and brightness advantages of HDR.
In comparison, SmartPower HDR™ reduces the power consumption associated with OLED pixel emission by up to 22% in general usage and by up to 17% during HDR content. Notably, in general usage scenarios, power consumption is comparable to that of SDR mode.
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