Google May Have Found The Tech To Take AR Smart Glasses Mainstream

MicroLED displays have been touted as the next breakthrough in display technology. They are not, however, to be confused with miniLED displays, which marry a conventional LED backlight approach with an LCD panel (albeit with more finite lighting control). Instead, microLED displays are more akin to OLED display,s as the pixels are self-illuminated. This helps provide truer blacks, and thus delivers much better contrast, in addition to far better brightness than traditional OLED panels.

They also really put the ‘micro’ in microLED. Raxium’s microLED pixels are up to 300x smaller than those in an OLED panel and up to 1000x brighter. This makes them especially well suited to AR and VR headsets, as the OLED and LCD-based panels used in them to date have suffered from a lack of brightness, clarity and color. While the technology is now proven, the main obstacle is the cost of producing microLED displays. Even small microLED panels used in an AR of VR headset will be substantially more expensive than a similar OLED panel, but in the context of a wearable (versus the $80,000 plus price of a large 110-inch Samsung microLED TV), the impact on the overall cost of headset should be manageable.