Apple Prepares OLED Display Upgrade: A Critical Boost For Mac
Apple is preparing a massive leap in display technology for its future iPad Pro and Mac line-ups. According to a new TrendForce report, Apple will adopt next-generation OLED panels capable of hitting the BT.2020 color standard, which covers 75.8% of all humanly visible colors. This is a substantial upgrade over the DCI-P3 (54%) screens used today. By aiming for 95% BT.2020 coverage, Apple will push past its competitors, giving creators precise control over true-to-life images without requiring external monitors. Expected between 2026 and 2027, the shift relies on advanced OLED materials and navigating ongoing industry patent disputes, but it provides a concrete defense for Apple's premium "Pro" pricing.
Apple devices will soon offer significantly more colorful displays rivaling the true-to-life image reproduction of professional industry hardware.
According to TrendForce, future Apple devices could display a range of colors much closer to the limits of the human eye. This would provide a deeper, more immersive experience when viewing content and give creators precise control over colors without having to purchase expensive external monitors.
Most current displays, even high-end ones, simply aren’t capable of reproducing many real-world colors, like the electric cyan of a peacock’s plumage. They also fall short of the full range of colors encoded into many modern recordings, like Planet Earth II or Inside Out. Apple already dominates consumer display quality, with the iPad Pro and Mac Pro offering unrivalled brightness and HDR performance. However, even the company's most expensive consumer devices remain limited in the actual range of colors they can display.
Currently limited by the DCI-P3 color standard that already covers a significantly wider color range than typical sRGB screens, Apple’s displays still miss out on many of the most vibrant colors visible to the human eye. According to the TrendForce report, this will soon change as the company moves to adopt the newer and much wider BT.2020 recommendation.
The baseline sRGB standard, established in 1996, covers approximately 36% of the visible spectrum. The consumer tech industry stayed with this standard for about twenty years before adoption of DCI-P3 expanded the color range of premium devices to 54% of the colors the human eye can see. BT.2020 is a huge step further, offering around 75% of humanly visible colors, over double the range of the sRGB devices we’ve become accustomed to.
According to TrendForce, Apple plans to cover 95% of BT.2020, a feat presently only achieved by some high-end laser projectors and specialized lab prototype displays. While most users may not demand BT.2020 today, this upgrade will push Apple even further ahead of competitors whose displays max out near 80% coverage.
The leap to 95% coverage will make it easier for Apple to differentiate—and justify the increased cost of—its “Pro” devices, with concrete, measurable benefits for professional users and content consumers.
BT.2020 is the benchmark for advanced broadcasting networks. Displays offering full coverage of this standard can deliver imagery far closer to the creator’s original intent, but pulling this off requires serious technological investment. Today’s high-end TVs and laser projectors top out at roughly 75% to 90% of the BT.2020 color range.
According to the report, BT.2020 “imposes substantially higher requirements on color purity, spectral control, luminous efficiency and power consumption” compared to DCI-P3-capable displays. The technology will be limited to OLED devices and is expected to appear between 2026 and early 2027 as OLED continues to expand beyond smartphones and mobile devices into larger desktop displays. It will also require fundamental improvements to existing OLED technologies, including new molecular structures that improve color purity behind the scenes.
New technologies including MR-TADF, PSF, pTSF and blue PHOLED offer exciting possibilities for OLED display quality. However, they are increasingly the subject of patent disputes, such as the recent ITC settlement between Samsung and BOE. Apple will have to navigate significant supply chain and intellectual property hurdles to commercialize them.
It remains to be seen exactly how much color coverage this Apple BT.2020 display upgrade will ultimately deliver when it reaches consumers. However, China’s BOE revealed a prototype tandem OLED display with over 95% BT.2020 in 2024, but has yet to bring it to market. Meanwhile competing four-color LCD panels like this one from TCL CSOT claim over 131% coverage of BT.2020, although its radically different Red/Green/Blue/Cyan pixel layout rules it out for consumer tech devices for now.