Questwise Ventures' 0.49" OLED Display with Resin Lens Is the Tiny CRT Replacement of Your Dreams

Los Gatos-based Questwise Ventures is bringing back the cathode-ray tube (CRT) display, at least aesthetically — and in micro-miniaturized form, by casting a curved resin lens atop of 0.49" OLED display panel.

"What truly sets it apart is its exquisite custom resin lens," Questwise writes of its latest launch. "This specially designed lens not only magnifies the screen's contents but also enhances its beauty, giving it a luminous, crystal-clear appearance. The resin lens acts as a window to sharper contrasts, ensuring that whatever is displayed looks its absolute best. Whether you're using the display for images or text, the resin lens adds a touch of elegance and sophistication, making the viewing experience truly mesmerizing."

The curved lens is aesthetically similar to that of a traditional cathode-ray tube (CRT) display, and seeing the device front-on evokes exactly that — at least until you get a sense of scale from the four 0.1"-spaced pins at the top of the board. Images displayed on the underlying OLED panel are enlarged but also subtly distorted, again similar to how they would appear on a CRT — providing said CRT measured less than half an inch across.

The company suggests that the device is well-suited to a range of use-cases from wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT) to portable instrumentation and even electronic jewellery — though its most ardent fans are likely to be those looking to build miniature replicas of vintage computing systems. Questwise itself has a nod to the latter, having taken an early iteration of the display with a smaller 0.42" OLED panel and housed it in a tiny 3D-printed monitor replica to display an animated MS-DOS prompt.

The new, larger 0.49" resin-lens display — which has a native 64×32 resolution and communicates with a host over an I2C bus — is available to order on the company's Tindie store at $16.85.