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Samsung's QD-OLED panels are some of the best around on the market, competing with LG's WOLED across TVs and monitors. Where LG uses a more conventional white base layer with color filters on top, Samsung employs quantum dots with a blue base layer to enable an additive process that enhances color volume. Since its inception, the company has used a 4-stack layer to achieve this, but it moved to a 5-layer structure last year, now officially dubbed "Penta Tandem."
The display-savvy among you might recognize the term tandem — it's been associated with LG for a while — as it refers to the general method of stacking multiple OLED layers atop each other. LG has both Tandem WOLED and Tandem OLED now; the former is what powers the company's latest true RGB stripe subpixel layout. Either way, tandem techniques improve the display's overall performance, usually in both brightness and longevity.
Penta Tandem, therefore, is just Samsung's way of referring to it as the firm moves to a 5-layer stack. The presser claims this will lead to "1.3x higher luminous efficiency" while doubling lifespan. That means the display can get brighter without using extra power or wearing down the pixels more. Penta Tandem TVs can reach up to 4,500 nits of peak brightness, but monitors are limited to 1,300 nits — which is still an improvement over the 1,000 nits barrier. These monitors will also support HDR True Black 500.
We've seen Penta Tandem in a few monitors already, since the tech isn't hot off the press, just the branding for it. In 2025, Samsung Display debuted the 4K 27-inch class 4th Gen QD-OLED panels, which powered the likes of Asus' PG27UCDM. Companies like MSI with the same panel even explicitly advertised the 5-layer OLED structure as part of the "EL 3.0" materials upgrade. 31.5″ 4K and 34″ ultrawide 3440 x 1440 (both unveiled at CES 2026) are also part of the Penta Tandem family.
Samsung is saying that it will refresh existing panel classes with this new Penta Tandem tech throughout 2026. It lists the 49-inch dual QHD (5,120 x 1,440) as the next model to receive the update, but there's no word on refresh rate improvements or whether these displays will feature the new V-stripe subpixel layout. We should be moving on from 240 Hz at this point, as Samsung has 27-inch 1440p 500 Hz panels now — they might be lined up to receive Penta Tandem as well.
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