Get Ready for Laptops with 8K Displays

More pixels is always a good thing, right? That seems to be the philosophy for so many of our digital devices these days. We’ve got smartphones that have evolved from 720p HD to 1080p Full HD to 4K and UHD. We’ve got TVs in our living room that have done the same. Apple has moved forward with the 5K Retina iMac. And now, we are on the cusp of another major milestone as the technology and standard has been set in motion for 8K displays in laptops and all-in-one PCs.

This comes by way of the Video Electronics Standards Association, which you may know better simply as VESA (as in the VESA mount on the back of your monitor). The Association has officially unveiled the new Embedded DisplayPort 1.4a format. This allows for the implementation of 8K displays, which will have an effective resolution of 7680 x 4320 pixels. Think of it as having an array of 1080p displays that is four wide and four high, resulting in a total resolution that is 16 times 1080p. Go ahead and do the math. I’ll wait.

With Embedded DisplayPort 1.4a, you get technology wherein more data can be shoved through the video feed and the display itself can be sub-divided into two or four different sections. The long and the short of it is that, yes, 8K displays are in the pipeline, but it’ll be a while before we’ll actually see them in consumer-ready notebooks. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that this new format is still beneficial for lower resolutions, like 4K. You’ll get thinner and more efficient displays that could provide improved battery life. Products featuring the new Embedded DisplayPort 1.4a tech should hit the market by next year.

Via Engadget