Remember the weird, wireless wall-hung OLED TV? Now it can stop itself from falling

The Displace TV on a black background
(Image credit: Displace TV)

Displace TV isn't like other TVs: even the best OLED TVs that have clever wireless tech need a power cable, but the Displace TV gets rid of that too. Instead, it has four rechargeable lithium-ion batteries inside it, which promise to give you a whole month of six-hour daily viewing before it's time for a recharge. And now it's added something that to the best of our knowledge no other TVs have: a zipline!

The zipline is there because the Displace TV doesn't hang from a hook or bolt to a mount. The L in its OLED might as well stand for Lamprey, because it sucks itself to the wall. And that's fine when you've got battery power, but what happens when your $3,000 TV runs out of puff, you don't swap the battery in time and it can't suck any more? That's where the zipline comes in. Its job is to prevent a high-tech Humpty Dumpty horror happening to your high-end TV.

What happens to your Displace TV when the batteries run out?

Side view of Displace TV on white wall

Angled view of Displace TV panel. Note the battery slots (at top and bottom) and side handles for mounting and dismounting. Also note screen glare. (Image credit: Future)

When we first saw the world’s first fully wireless OLED TV, we though it was completely off the hook. Displace has now published a press release that goes into detail about its disaster avoidance."If the vacuum pumps are in danger of not maintaining a seal or the wall’s integrity falters," it says, "the Displace TV automatically deploys four quick adhesives for stability". Not only that, but the adhesives do much the same job as Spider-Man's web shooters, as they're anchor points for what displace calls its "self-lowering landing gear system. A zipline feeds itself slowly from a height of up to 10 feet, while the TV also pops out reusable foam to ensure a soft landing.

In all honestly, this sounds more fun to watch than most of the things we stream –and that's before you get to the built-in warning system that'll blast sound and flash lights to alert children, pets and unsuspecting partners. I'd want to set that off deliberately to scare my kids.

It's all very impressive and looks hugely entertaining, but the core questions regarding the TV remain: is it any good, and is it as good as LG's wireless OLED M TV? That's as good as wireless TV tech gets right now, and it's fair to say that LG has far more resources, engineers and money to spend on its R&D than Displace. We won't know for sure until the Displace TV actually ships, and that's still a few months away: it's scheduled for launch in the second quarter of 2024.

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Carrie Marshall
Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.