Lenovo introduces OLED Yoga laptop for less than $1,700

OLED is starting to play a bigger role in all kinds of electronics. The added cost has usually kept low-priced competitors such as those in China from adopting the technology, but Lenovo's reputation for making high-quality products probably gives it a little more leeway in this area. The company has introduced an OLED version of the Thinkpad X1 Yoga, which starts at about $1,682 while the base LCD model costs $1,400.

There are a few reasons makers want to adopt OLED. With LCD prices having plummeted, OLED offers companies a way to boost margins while making devices with better screens. While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, OLED is known for having better contrast, offering deep blacks because the screen lights up pixels as needed. This means black pixels are not actually in use. The better image quality is what led Samsung to become one of the leading manufacturers of OLED panels and it has been using them in its smartphones for years. Samsung's Surface competitor, the TabPro S, also employs an OLED screen.

Unfortunately, lighting up each pixel comes at a cost in power usage. Digital Trends compared the OLED and LCD versions of the ThinkPad X1 Yoga and measured anywhere from 10 to 25 percent reduced battery life in the OLED model depending on usage.

This, however, does not seem to have stopped the march of OLED laptops. HP and Alienware both offer OLED versions of the Spectre x360 and Alienware 13, respectively. Both cost well more than $1,000, though. OLED laptops do not come cheap.

LCD is still likely to remain the norm in laptops simply because it is so much cheaper, battery life aside. With more companies offering OLED as an option, however, the advantages of the display technology is becoming clearer to a larger number of consumers. It is already rumored that Apple will unveil an OLED iPhone either this year or the next. OLED iPads and MacBooks, on the other hand, may not yet be on the horizon.