First Bendable OLED Gaming Monitor Announced by... Corsair?

Large, high-quality bendy screens have been around since at least 2014, when LG debuted the first flexible OLED, but even though actual products have shipped over the past few years, we've yet to see one in a monitor -- which is somewhat baffling, unless it's prohibitively expensive to produce.

Now we're finally seeing the first -- from Corsair of all companies -- out of a partnership with LG: the Xeneon Flex 45WQHD240 OLED Gaming Monitor. It's a big, 45-inch, 3,440x1,440-pixel OLED display, but also noteworthy because it has a refresh rate of 240Hz, a new top speed for that resolution, and a brightness of 1,000 nits, which is rare in desktop-size OLED.

I say "is" but really mean "will be." The company showed off the display at the Gamescom video game show in Germany, but it won't be providing any details until closer to the end of the year. That means we won't see the monitor until 2023 the earliest, at which point I'm hoping to see similar models from other manufacturers. And that's if we see it at all. It could just be a flashy concept that will never ship.

Although my first reaction was, "Why would you need a flexible monitor on your desktop?" I realized that if you're using it for both a console and a PC, you'd want it curved when you're up close, so you can see the sides, and flat for when you're at a distance playing on your console, so that you can see the whole screen properly.

The display has a horizontal spine across the middle of the rear, with handles on either side that you pull forward in order to go from flat to curved. All the electronics are housed in the stand as you'd expect, with connectors on the back and the front. Flexibility aside, I love the idea of the connectors in the front. 

My guess is we'll see more of this at CES 2023. Can't wait.