Samsung & Intel Reduce OLED Panel Power Consumption Up to 22% With SmartPower HDR Technology

Samsung & Intel have announced new SmartPower HDR technology, which cuts OLED panel power by up to 22% while providing similar HDR quality.

Next Generation Laptops With OLED Will Offer More Battery Life Thanks to Intel & Samsung’s SmartPower HDR Technology

At CES 2026, Samsung & Intel demonstrated their new SmartPower HDR technology, which has been jointly developed to help laptops with OLED panels deliver longer battery life without sacrificing brightness & vibrant HDR colors.

With SmartPower HDR, laptops with OLED panels will be able to dynamically adjust voltage based on the characteristics of real-time content displayed on the screen, improving on conventional fixed-voltage HDR algorithms. This results in a reduction in emissive power consumption on OLED panels of up to 22% in standard SDR mode and a reduction of up to 17% when viewing HDR content.

At the same time, SmartPower HDR technology will maintain HDR performance similar to standard OLED HDR configurations, so you won’t lose the vivid HDR experience.

SmartPower HDR allows users to enjoy HDR content on laptops while minimizing power usage. Display power consumption is largely affected by the driving voltage. Unlike conventional HDR modes that apply a fixed high voltage regardless of content type causing unnecessary power loss, SmartPower HDR™ dynamically adjusts the voltage based on the characteristics of the content being displayed.

For example, general laptop use cases such as web browsing or document editing may operate at lower voltage levels. On the other hand, high-definition content such as gaming or video playback requires higher brightness and voltage. Traditional HDR mode remains locked at maximum brightness, resulting in excessive power usage even in standard scenarios. As a result, many laptops use SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) mode by default even though HDR has color and brightness advantages.

In comparison, SmartPower HDR™ reduces power consumption associated with OLED pixel emissions by up to 22% in typical use and up to 17% in HDR content. Notably, in general usage scenarios, power consumption is comparable to SDR mode.

via Samsung

In a previous demo, Intel showed off the ability of its Panther Lake “Core Ultra Series 3” laptops to significantly reduce power with SmartPower HDR, providing HDR capabilities without using standard HDR power levels. This mode enables panel lighting power savings of approximately 20% (battery life savings of approximately 30-40 minutes) in HDR mode for SDR content. The panel is the main reason why battery life drains faster when viewing SDR content in HDR, so what Intel does is run an algorithm in the SoC and communicate it to the panel so it can dynamically adjust the voltage based on the content.

Expect to see the first use of SmartPower HDR technology in many Core Ultra Series 3 laptops shipping this quarter.

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