New Planar DirectLight Essential Series Introduces High-Quality Chip-on-Board Technology Delivering Incredible Performance at Accessible Price Point

Featuring remarkable image quality, durability and energy efficiency, the high-performance LED video wall adds an affordable solution and new category of LED technology to the flagship Planar DirectLight portfolio

Today, Planar, a global leader in visualization technology, announced the launch of the Planar^® DirectLight^® Essential Series, a line of fine pixel pitch LED video walls delivering incredible visual performance for indoor environments with abundant ambient light.

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The new Planar DirectLight Essential Series is a line of fine pixel pitch Chip-on-Board LED video walls that deliver incredible visual performance at an accessible price.

Planar’s newest line of fine pixel pitch LED video walls introduces a solution that is well-suited for budget-conscious customers who require high-quality imagery, strengthening the Planar^® DirectLight^® family’s industry-leading position of delivering the finest visual performance. The addition of the Planar DirectLight Essential Series rounds out the Planar DirectLight family, presenting customers with a wider range of high performance ultra-fine pitch LED video walls for indoor applications than ever before.

The Planar DirectLight Essential Series offers 27-inch cabinets available in 0.7, 0.9, 1.2 and 1.5 millimeter pixel pitches and presents deeper blacks and sharper visuals with a 30,000:1 contrast ratio and high refresh rate of 3,840Hz. It is compatible with both the Planar^® WallDirector^™ Video Controller and LED controllers from ColorLight.

Designed with Chip-on-Board (COB) LED technology, Planar DirectLight Essential Series video wall displays offer high pixel density, energy efficiency and exceptional durability - making it ideal for high-traffic environments such as lobbies, retail spaces, hospitality venues, conference rooms, classrooms and regional broadcast studios. Its high durability also makes the solution well-suited for interactive touch applications.

“We’re very proud to add COB technology to the Planar DirectLight family of leading-edge LED solutions for the first time,” said Robert Detwiler, senior director of product management at Planar. “This significant addition provides our customers with the benefit of COB with lower cost, added durability and vibrant imagery, while also stepping up the performance to be a next-level COB that delivers improved visuals and brightness to power performance to further diversify the flagship Planar DirectLight family.”

Planar DirectLight Essential Series customers also benefit from an LED sorting process that pairs only uniform LEDs together to ensure superior performance as well as a significant reduction in energy requirements. The solution also features a proprietary driver integrated circuit (IC) designed for COB technology. Specially built to mitigate issues related to brightness and color uniformity, the best-in-class driver IC precisely controls power and data to each COB LED. With the driver IC, LEDs are tested at the wafer level to meet brightness, power and color parameters.

Planar DirectLight Essential Series reinforces the company’s commitment to making LED more accessible and easier to deploy. In addition to featuring front access for quick installation and hassle-free service, the innovative solution offers popular Planar^® DirectLight^® Essential Complete^™ display configurations. Available in 109-inch diagonal Full HD, 136-inch diagonal Full HD and 163-inch diagonal 4K sizes, Planar DirectLight Essential Complete pre-configured LED video walls reduce the time, cost and complexity of designing and installing video walls. Planar DirectLight Essential Complete customers are equipped with everything needed for effective deployment, including cables, trim, wall mounts, spare modules as well as a video controller and remote control, in addition to the LED display cabinets.

The new high-performance LED video walls also support remote monitoring with the industry-leading Planar^® WallDirector^™ Cloud web-based monitoring application. This means Planar DirectLight Essential Series customers can remotely manage the overall performance of the display by monitoring system health and incidents and evaluating and troubleshooting alerts.

The Planar DirectLight Essential Series will begin shipping in Q3 through Planar’s global network of authorized resellers. The newest addition to Planar’s portfolio of fine pixel pitch LED video wall solutions will be featured in Planar Booth #1926 at InfoComm 2025 in Orlando June 11-13. For more information, visit www.planar.com/DirectLightEssential.

About Planar

Planar is a global leader in visualization technology, delivering best-in-class image performance for the world’s most demanding environments. From government, corporate and education institutions to broadcast studios, virtual production and extended reality stages, the world’s leading organizations use Planar’s broad selection of display solutions in applications ranging from control rooms to digital signage and simulation to large-scale visualization. Planar is the global market leader in narrow pixel pitch LED displays, fixed LED video display installations and LED displays for control rooms (Futuresource 2024). Founded in 1983, Planar is headquartered in Oregon, USA with offices and manufacturing facilities in Europe and Asia.

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“We’re very proud to add COB technology to the Planar DirectLight family of leading-edge LED solutions for the first time,” said Robert Detwiler, senior director of product management at Planar.