Display specialist Viewsonic has pulled back the curtain on its enormous foldable (but not foldable) LCD screen LDS-135-151.
Considering its price, $ 85,000 in the US (opens in a new tab) (around £ 78,000, $ 130,000) and deliberately lacking the most modern AV features, its main focus will be corporate events, presentations and exhibitions where large format displays are the norm.
Viewsonic claims that the display is pre-assembled and ready to use literally out of the box (it comes with a movable flight case), with the two wings folding over the center of the display like a restaurant menu.
Super size
As expected, it’s a bit monstrous in size, with a net weight of 225 kg and a gross weight of 330 kg. When fully unfolded, the display area measures 3m x 1.69m, is larger than some central London rooms and almost as large as nine 50 ” televisions assembled in a 3×3 matrix.
The screen is designed for 24/7 use and has a 100,000 hour lifetime (over 11 years of continuous use). In case of any problems, Viewsonic has come up with a clever solution. Although the LDS-135-151 has a frameless display without stitched bezels, users themselves will be able to remove one more of the 20 hot-swappable front LED modules using the included electric vacuum cleaner.
Visual power
The rest of the specs are just as spectacular: six HDMI ports, four USB ports (including one Type-C that can be used for display), and a LAN connection.
The sound is handled by a pair of Samsung’s Harman Kardon 20-watt speaker systems, but users can plug in their own speakers, or there’s an SPDIF connector as well.
It doesn’t have a memory card reader, and while there’s a built-in thin client, it only has 64GB of onboard memory and runs on the outdated Android 9.0 operating system (launched August 2018).
For those who want to use it as a stopover for a show business monitor, as a huge commercial or movie screen, just remember that it has a fairly thick 1.5mm pixel pitch, which means it’s better viewed from a distance. This explains why its native resolution is only 1920 x 1080 pixels. It is a pity that it is not a touchscreen nor can you use it like that 2S surface hubMicrosoft’s own collaboration platformas there is no webcam or microphones.
The display is compatible with Crestron, Extron, AMX and Viewsonic’s proprietary AV control system, myViewBoard Manager. This means that users will be able to stream content wirelessly from up to four different devices simultaneously, as the LDS-135-151 supports Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture.
However, there are no details yet on availability outside of the US or what the warranty will be, so stay tuned for more information.