What Is a Transflective Display?

A transflective display is a liquid crystal display built to work in two modes at once. The name joins transmissive and reflective. An ordinary transmissive LCD relies entirely on its backlight: light shines through the liquid crystal and color filters from behind, and the brighter the room, the more that backlight has to fight reflected glare. A transflective LCD adds a partly reflective layer, often called a transflector, behind the liquid crystal, so light arriving from the front passes through the image, bounces off that layer and comes back out to the viewer.

Indoors and at night, the backlight does most of the work, as in any LCD. Outdoors, sunlight reflected from the transflector adds its own light to the picture. Because the reflected light scales with the ambient light, the image gets brighter as the surroundings do, and contrast stays roughly constant instead of washing out.

There are two main ways to build one. Older and simpler designs place a semi-transparent mirror film behind the panel. Most color TFT designs instead split each subpixel into a reflective area and a transmissive area, sometimes with different cell gaps so both areas switch the light correctly. Light reflected from the front passes through the color filter twice, which is one reason colors look weaker in reflective mode.

Transflective sits between the two pure designs, taking part of the strength of each.

The weakness of a transflective panel is that it compromises in both modes. Part of each pixel is given to the reflective area, so less backlight gets through indoors, and the reflected image never matches the color of a transmissive screen.

The usual alternative for daylight is a transmissive panel with a high-brightness backlight, often 1,000 nits or more, combined with optical bonding and anti-reflective glass. That approach gives full color and wide viewing angles in any light, but it draws more power and puts more heat into the enclosure, which matters on sealed, fanless and battery-powered equipment.

A transflective panel reaches daylight readability with a modest backlight, typically a few hundred nits, because the sun provides the extra light. It suits small and medium screens, low-power systems and applications where text, symbols and simple graphics matter more than accurate color. A high-brightness panel suits video, camera feeds, maps with fine color detail and large screens. Our guide to choosing a sunlight readable display compares the techniques side by side, and many screens combine more than one.

Transflective screens appear wherever a display must stay readable from darkness to full sun without a large power budget.

Industrial transflective monitors come in the same formats as other industrial screens. Our transflective range runs from 7 to 32 inch, with typical brightness between around 350 and 700 nits and resistive touch on most models. The nit figure on a transflective datasheet describes the backlight, so it understates how readable the screen is in sunlight compared with a transmissive panel of the same rating. Open frame monitors with transflective panels build into kiosks and machine housings, while chassis monitors in a sealed metal housing suit stand-alone installation. Front IP65 and panel mount versions are also available for cabinet doors and control panels.

When choosing between a transflective and a high-brightness model, think about the light at the site through the whole day, the content on screen and the power and heat the enclosure can handle. A transflective screen is often the better fit for mostly text and symbols in strong daylight; a high-brightness bonded screen is the better fit for color video or very large displays.

We supply transflective and high-brightness monitors as part of a complete system, with the size, touch, sealing and mounting matched to the site, then configure and test each display before it ships.