Tandem OLED display panels were new to me when Apple mentioned them during the “Let Loose” event yesterday. I figured it was another marketing term like Ultra Retina XDR, but it’s not.

As Quinn Nelson of Snazzy Labs explains in his excellent video, tandem OLED is a technology that stacks two OLED displays on top of each other, creating more light, greater electrical efficiency, and longer-lasting displays. The catch is that tandem OLED displays are hard to make without losing a lot of the light they generate. There have been multiple proposed solutions as Quinn explains, but it’s not clear how Apple has solved the issue with the new iPad Pros. What is clear, though, is that the technology is a big deal.

Quinn also explains the differences between TSMC’s 3-nanometer chip processes and why the M4 ‘…is a necessary strategic leap. It’s not a computational leap.’ The entire video is worth watching a couple of times to understand the nerdiest bits and why they hold so much promise for Apple’s future hardware releases.