Earlier this year, at CES 2020, LG announced that it was finally putting its roll-up OLED TV into production, after first debuting the display as a concept two years earlier. It promised the TV would ship sometime in 2020, and true to its word you can now buy the LG Signature OLED R, if you live in South Korea, and have more money than you know what to do with.
Back in January, we speculated that the 65-inch rollable OLED would have a price tag in the high five figures given, at the time, the company’s top tier 65-inch OLED TV was already selling for $US7,000 ($9,874), and all it could really do was sit in a corner and look pretty. But 100 million South Korean won? Or close to $US87,000 ($122,714)? That positions the LG Signature OLED R as an accessory exclusively for the 1% who probably couldn’t care less about the innovative technology behind it.
To refresh your memory, aside from excellent contrast levels and deep blacks, OLED technology has the unique benefit of producing screens and displays that can be bent and rolled without damaging them. Like a projector screen that retracts into the ceiling but inverted, the LG Signature OLED R can disappear into a stylish brushed aluminium box that includes the power supply, AV connections including HDMI 2.1, and a 4.2 speaker setup with Dolby Atmos.
With the screen retracted the LG Signature OLED R can work as a stereo if you just want to listen to music and not be distracted, but the pop-up screen can also be partially raised and used as an infotainment centre with news and weather or filled with a slideshow of family photos. So in addition to being a bleeding-edge TV, the LG Signature OLED R is also, without a doubt, the world’s most expensive digital photo frame.