This flashlight claims to output 1.3 million lumens.
And this, this is my new gaming monitor.
Hmm, jealous? Don't be.
This monitor only works for a few minutes at a time,
would likely damage your eyes if it worked any longer than that.
And because of its backlight here, it carries a non-zero risk of burning your house down.
The things we do for science are not just for science.
You see, the latest trend in display manufacturing is towards brighter and brighter monitors and TVs.
But just like the previous fads, like making them thinner and pumping up the resolution,
there's a point where more is not necessarily better.
And what better way to demonstrate this than to reach that point and keep on sailing.
We started out with a regular old gaming monitor and turned it into the brightest one the world has ever seen.
We expected to have a lot of fun. And we did.
But what we didn't expect was the discoveries we made along the way.
So let's begin our journey to Luminosity
by very carefully tearing down an LCD monitor.
Right after this segue, to our sponsor.
Okay, that's a joke. It was already cut in half.
The point is that inside a modern LCD display,
there's a lot going on. But for our purposes,
we only need to understand four main parts today. Starting with what sits closest to us,
the liquid crystals, the LCs of our LCD.
These sit sandwiched between two polarizing filters
that are configured to prevent any light from passing through. You can actually see the same principle at work
with a variable ND filter like this one for a camera.
In this configuration, we can see through it just fine.
And in this one, it blocks pretty much all the light
and turns black. So wait, if these are configured
to keep light from passing through, how does any get through?
Well, you need a third layer. In between the two polarizers,
a layer that can control polarization electronically.
That is your liquid crystals. As voltage gets applied to them,
they rotate the polarization of light, enabling an image to pass through.
Things can quickly get more complicated with different types of LCD panels,
but the same principle applies from an original iPhone
all the way to a brand new 100 inch LED TV.
Light passes through the display stack and is filtered by the LCD layer to create the final image.
But where does that light come from? Well, you've got options.
On older or cheaper LCDs, there can be a material that is placed
behind the liquid crystals that's designed to reflect ambient light
back toward the user. Some of you might remember the struggle
of trying to catch a streetlight while you played with your Game Boy in the backseat.
Or you might not know what a Game Boy is and that's totally okay too.
I'm not old. The point is that more modern displays
typically remove that reflective layer in favor of a light that is behind the screen.
But not all back lights are created equal. They've undergone a massive evolution
from the early days of using bulky, power-hungry fluorescent tubes
to highly efficient LEDs to, well, this.
It's glorious, you guys. You've outdone yourselves.
And it's also really dumb. And frankly, a lot more primitive than modern TVs.
But it is built using similar principles.
As you can see here, most modern back lights use LED lights, which makes sense.
They're small, they're energy efficient, and they're cheap.
And those LEDs are either distributed along the edges of the display, like this one,
or more ideally along the entire surface behind the panel.
Not only does that produce more even luminance, but modern back lights can alter the brightness
of individual LEDs or at least groups of LEDs
to selectively dim or brighten parts of the screen
to achieve the best possible image. Now we're saving our deeper dive into dimming zones
and backlight control for our next attempt. Next attempt at this.
Oh yeah! Apparently.
For now, we're gonna move on to what LEDs we're using today.
We tested about 10 different varieties with the aim of finding something that balanced cost,
quality, and size. And we ended up going with the Cree CX-B3590.
Its compact square shape and high light output made the approximately $28 per unit price pretty attractive.
There are some compromises, but look at it go!
My goodness, how is it so flipping bright?
Well, I'll tell you a secret. This isn't just one LED.
In fact, if you look much, much closer,
you can see it's actually an array of over 150 LEDs.
Cobb LEDs like this one or chip on board LEDs
simply means that multiple LEDs are mounted to one substrate.
And while that makes wiring them up dead simple, each one still requires an array's worth of power.
So that's right, each one of our individual cobs here
is gonna draw, sorry, is this right? More than five times the original power consumption
of the monitor? It could draw more if we wanted it.
Each one of these? Yeah. Huh, how many do we have?
40! That's like 3,500 watts.
Ah, I see why there's so many power supplies rigged up to the chassis now.
And five different breakers.
We could have bought a single expensive 3,500 watt unit to power everything,
but we liked the flexibility, not to mention the cost savings of splitting the load
between 10, 350 watt mean well power supplies.
We'll have a link to these as well as everything else we used in the video description.
Now it's time to talk about cooling. Although LEDs are significantly more power efficient
than incandescent lights, they still waste about half of the power they draw as heat,
meaning that our new gaming monitor here is gonna throw off something like 1,700 watts
of thermal energy. That is more than the limit for a residential electric space heater
here in North America. Thankfully, another advantage of cobs
is that they're designed to be cooled from the backside.
Fun fact, by the way, our original plan was to thermal goop
each of these to a CPU cooler to keep our design time down,
but then we realized we would need 40 CPU coolers.
So instead, our resident maker extraordinaire Justin designed this absolutely gorgeous custom water block
at a aluminum and acrylic that uses our industrial chiller here
to pump coolant at a chilly 16 degrees Celsius.
Now the flow path is not optimized, but it does seem to be sufficient for moving heat away
from the back of our cobs here. What it doesn't do is overcome
one gigantic design oversight. See, our cobs go back here, right?
And then our display goes at the front of our shroud here.
But the thing is that other 1,700 watts of light energy,
well, it's gonna hit something and turn into thermal energy.
And when you've got reflective mylar glued all over the inside
of your 3D printed shroud, it's like a hot pocket
and not the delicious kind.
I like to describe it as the easy bake oven from hell. That's why our next iteration added some server fans
and venting at the cost of some light bleed, but we found out that still wasn't cool enough,
which is where this box fan came in. Yeah, it's kind of jank, but remember guys,
this is just a proof of concept for now. What are those doing here?
The box fan wasn't good enough. And so we have these fans.
Oh my God. Go to LMG.GG slash Floatplane.
If you guys wanna hear David and Justin talk a little bit more about what we learned that could help us execute
on our original idea, which was to build the world's brightest TV.
One idea they had was to modify the layers of diffusion
next time rather than just reusing the original ones
like we did with this one, but enough Dipper Jabber.
Do I finally get to see it? Yep, it's time.
They've been working on this in secret. Like I'm only finding out about all this crap now.
Do we have a fire extinguisher on hand? We, that's what we need.
Okay, good. They made me do the entire shoot today
without even being allowed to turn it on yet. Like they showed me the lights,
but that's why the intro doesn't have the actual monitor on it or anything
because they're like, oh, Linus isn't allowed to see it until the moment when you can see it.
Oh yeah, to put on this. Oh.
Really? Yeah, you need it. Even for one, when we were testing,
we made sure that we all had welding goggles because one second of exposure
and you're seeing those lights for the next 20 minutes. 20 minutes?
It's pretty bad. Is it dangerous? I don't know if it's dangerous.
It's all fun and games until you get crap or I've burned into your eyes. Yeah.
Oh my God, even the seepage around it.
Whoa. This plastic
is see through.
Oh, I can see. Yeah, I can see it. I don't know what's wrong with Linus.
It's so hot. It's getting hot in here.
Do we have the flare? Can we check how hot they're getting? Yeah, we do have the flare.
This is flipping crazy, you guys. Is the chiller even on though?
Oh. Uh, here we go.
Oh my God. Okay, so hold on, they're at about 19 now.
Okay. Oh, okay. They're going up 30, 35, 50.
Oh my God. I can't even see the display once the light is showing.
Something is smoking. We're gonna have to turn it off. Really? Cause they're not, they're not hot.
Something's cooking. They're all under 50.
Every single one of them. Are you sure it's not just flux?
I'm gonna grab some ISO and wipe it down. Sure. But like none of the wires are getting hot.
Yeah, it's gotta be flux, you guys. These are, they're not hot. Okay.
I say we, I say- Let's see how hot we can push it. We go for gold.
You guys dare me to look into it? They said I don't have any more shoots
for the rest of the day. So like whatever. It's like what, I need to drive home or what?
135 degrees Celsius.
Oh. Is like the max- Dude, dude, we're good.
Here we go. Here we go, here we go.
Like my skin is at 38 degrees.
Like the light turns into thermal energy
when it hits something, right? So things that it shines at are hot.
But the LEDs themselves, they're still at about 60 on the hottest ones.
Okay, it's starting to smoke up real good now. Cut it. Okay, okay.
Are we gonna put the shroud on? For you, anything.
Before we do that, how about some speeds and feeds? Like how bright is our backlight
before we put the LCD in front of it? Well, each CX-B3590 puts out around 12,000 lumens,
which means we're sitting at just shy of half a million lumens total.
3.426 lumens is one nit, meaning that our backlight is rated at 140,105 nits.
For context, the brightest TVs on the market
are around 10,000 nits. Of course, that's all theoretical.
We don't have a tool that can measure anything that bright.
So we're not even gonna try to measure the brightness until we've put our LCD on it.
And I think this goes this way, huh? The scaler and power supply for the monitor,
you can see it's just kind of like taped to the bottom of it.
Can you give me something? Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Yeah, it's out, put it. You okay? It's out, put it, we're good.
Thank you for that. I should legitimately not be sitting here.
Whoa, it's the cart gonna move. Oh my God, the cart moves.
Yeah, that's why we have the commuter backpack here today.
It's to hold it. Oh my God, okay, yeah, fine.
I'll talk about it. We put a sandbag in the long-awaited LTT commuter backpack,
which is available now on LTTstore.com.
We took the best features of our original LTT backpack,
and we put them in a smaller, sleeker, more stylish package.
It's got a reinforced dual-layer bottom, a convenient tech compartment that folds out
for quick access to your laptop and tablet, and it's built with a durable, water-resistant,
reprieve canvas that is made of recycled water bottles. It's the backpack that's built
to support your day every day, and you can grab this fantastic 20-liter bag
for $149.99 at LTTstore.com.
I was joking with the guys, like this right here is the difference
between us and Mr. Who's the Boss.
Like his biggest iPhone in the world or whatever,
it was so clean, so sleek, man.
Love the collab with the IY Perks.
This is like this peak LTT.
Okay, here we go. It's my first time getting to, oh my God.
You guys, it's actually kind of awesome. Yeah.
Right? I was expecting it to suck.
It's like direct sunlight is shining off of these rocks.
Dude, it's actually awesome. Did you know it was gonna be awesome?
Holy shit. This isn't even HDR content yet.
Obviously, the LCDs, even in their black state,
cannot properly block all the light, right?
So you don't get the same kind of contrast.
But it's like the sun is the sun. Holy shit.
All right, we got death. Oh God, turn it up. Oh no, it's dying.
Did we kill it? Wait, no, it's healing again. It'll be fine.
We just gotta cut it off before it gets too bad. It'll come back. It's good. That blew my mind.
I mean, I remember having this conversation. This was with you, Andrew, at CES this year.
Oh yeah. Remember when we were on the bus? Oh yeah. We were talking about what is the practical limit
of how many nits we need to have in a display
for it to really match the real world. And I remember us talking about it
because we had actually just seen that high-sense TV there
and we were like, wow, 10,000 nits, that's wild. But then we were watching the light
glinting off of one of the hotels in Vegas and we were like, that is so much brighter
than that TV that we just saw. How many nits do you think that was?
And we were kind of having this conversation. Andrew, I think this is it.
I think this is the answer. I think we actually need this level of brightness
to really replicate what it feels like
to look at the sun reflecting off of something.
TV manufacturers, I was wrong.
We are nowhere near the end of the brightness war,
of the practical benefits of more. Now we, no, no, but we would never want
to see the entire display at that level of brightness.
That would be painful. But what we need is outstanding backlight
and filter layer control so that you can have
just pinpricks of that level of brightness
to give you the sparkle and dazzle of light reflecting off of metal
or off of the peaks of the waves on the water. Like I, okay, did you guys know that this was this awesome?
We knew it was awesome, but we didn't expect this nice of a reaction.
Dude, this needs to be a thing.
I was completely wrong. I thought this was stupid.
Oh, oh dude, we get to try a game? We're gaming? Yeah, let's play some Alice Week 2.
Oh my God, see, that's the thing
is if you're in a dark room and there's a bright light source like that,
it will dazzle you. Now our content would need to be mastered differently
to account for this level of brightness being available to it.
Like otherwise everything's just gonna be blown out and too bright,
which is kind of what we're looking like in the game. But with it done properly,
with the dark parts of the scene, as dark as they're supposed to be,
light sources would be dazzling and it wouldn't be like when the game artificially
has you walk into a bright space and then you just like see your eyes adjust to it.
Your actual eyes would adjust to the capabilities of the display.
And I gotta say, this level of brightness makes the lighting,
even though the lighting engine didn't change,
it makes it feel more natural and true to life
because when you're close to something like that, it is blinding.
And when it's farther away, it's not.
Till your eyes, not to the in-game camera.
That's the difference. They're gonna have to completely change
the way they handle it. Cause you can see when something is like too close
and when you go, oh no, it's dying again.
Wait. Oh my God. Here's what we're gonna do.
If we had a glass layer and then we ran water through it
and then we had a glass layer and then we sealed it,
we could actually have a water tank behind the panel.
As long as the water is not creating ripples or anything, it's just solid flow.
It shouldn't as long as there's no bubbles. So maybe we could cool the TV panel that way.
Oh, chill there. Chill there and the box could work.
Okay, we've got ideas boys. World's brightest TV, it's going to happen.
Oh my God, look at it. It's glorious.
It's like the difference between looking through a window
and looking at a monitor. Like it shocked me when I watched crab rave
for the first time, like in that first little scene when they're coming out of the cave into the bright light.
And like it shocked me. It's like, wow, it's like you're looking out of a cave
into direct sunlight. Crab rave has no right to look that good.
No, not at all. I've never tried Counter-Strike with a controller.
So I have no idea. Oh, you just want me to flashbang myself.
Oh my God, the sun. Okay, here we go.
Oh no. Oh!
Wow, this really is just like looking into direct sunlight.
It's too much. I need sunglasses.
Where's my, there's a sunglass pouch in the commuter bag.
Oh, that's more like it. Oh, no biggie.
It's just sunny today. That's not a problem with my setup.
That's just an equipment problem. Scale issue.
I just need my sunglasses.
See, no biggie.
Oh my God. Oh!
Oh, it's so bright. Oh, there she goes. Oh, she's dying.
She's dying. Dude, I'm adjusting.
This looks great. Oh, really? It looks so good.
We've talked about this in the past, but one of the key elements
of a display's color capabilities is actually its luminance capabilities.
That's why we can have monitors today that have 100% coverage of whatever color gamut,
but they don't look like real life because they don't have enough luminance
to create the full three-dimensional color volume
that we can see.
I unadjusted for a second there and that was pretty rough.
Ah! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Ah, ha, ha, ha. All right, let's do it.
Let's find out how bright she is.
It's about 26,000 hits. We did it!
We made the world's brightest gaming monitor. Ow!
Oh my God. Great job, guys. Let's go!
Let's go! The power of the sun in my arms!
In conclusion, the brightest commercially available monitor
that we could find was about 5,000 nits,
and the brightest we've ever measured on a display was an outlier hotspot of 20,000 nits
on the 110-inch ULED from Hisense.
We beat them all, and I think we can do even better.
Anyway, enough of that for now, though. I'm gonna go lie down in a dark room for a bit.
My eyes are dying, and I'm dying to tell you about our sponsor.
If you guys want us to make the next version of this, maybe a TV next time, give this video a thumbs up,
and if you love janky solutions to ridiculous problems, why don't you watch the one where Alex and I
attach a car turbocharger to a laptop?
It was somehow more dumb than this, yet brilliant in its own way.