Tandem OLED is OLED’s latest weapon in holding off MicroLED, QDEL

Enlarge / Like a Tandem bicycle, Tandem OLED doubles certain components for exciting momentum. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Tandem OLED has been around for years, but Apple made the technology feel new and shiny when it announced that the screen in its first ever OLED-based iPad would use a tandem structure.

Other consumer gadgets, like laptops and phones, are also slowly starting to incorporate Tandem OLED displays. So we thought it's a good time to look at how Tandem OLED is used, what benefits it's delivering, and how the technology could impact future devices and compete against other emerging display technologies, like MicroLED and QDEL.

OLED TVs, monitors already use different kinds of tandem stacks

We won’t go too deep into the technical details of Tandem OLED in this article (interested readers can reference this handy breakdown, which also includes information on current technical obstacles, like light-extraction inefficiencies). But if you're new to Tandem OLED, here’s a brief look at what makes it so interesting for tech gadgets.