TrendForce’s Viewpoint – LCoS Racing by Battlefield Veterans

In September 2025, Meta launched the Meta Ray-Ban Display with LCoS light engine, which instantly heated up the discussion of LCoS light engine. However, this technology still has many hardware difficulties that need to be overcome, so major suppliers are gearing up to launch LCoS light engines that meet their own ideals.

For prompt-type AR applications, the advantages of LCoS light engines are mainly reflected in technology maturity, energy efficiency and optical matching. Based on years of deep accumulation in reflective liquid crystal and external light source systems, the development of full-color LCoS light engines has been a matter of course. When faced with high average pixel brightness (Average Pixel Lit) situations, LCoS has the advantage of lower power consumption than LEDoS; coupled with its inherent polarization system characteristics, it can significantly reduce optical losses and improve overall luminous efficiency when combined with optical waveguides.

However, if LCoS is to become the ultimate solution for prompt-type AR glasses, there are still some obstacles waiting to be solved, the most important of which is the light engine drainage volume. The current mass-produced LCoS light engine has a drainage volume of about 0.7cc, while the minimum full-color LEDoS light engine can reach 0.4cc. The size of the light engine will directly affect the thickness, overall weight, wearing comfort and aesthetic appearance of the glasses' temples. Therefore, various light engine technologies are currently committed to reducing the drainage volume in an effort to promote the mass commercialization of end products.

It is worth noting that the long-term goal of LEDoS is to further reduce the optical-mechanical drainage volume by realizing single-chip full-color technology. Its technical paths include vertical stacking (Vertical Stacking), QD (Quantum Dot) quantum dots, or the use of InGaN red light and other solutions; however, in the short term, the industry will still focus on X-Cube type light engines, giving priority to the launch of products that can be actually adopted by the market. In comparison, the development of LCoS technology is more scattered. Most of the major manufacturers directly invest in their own exclusive technical paths and seek breakthroughs in the mode of contention of a hundred schools of thought.

Because of this, the industry continues to propose new optical path designs, as well as improvements and alternatives to the PBS (Polarizing Beam Splitter) structure. These innovations have injected strong growth momentum into LCoS technology. Himax Display has launched a Front-Lit LCoS solution in recent years, striving to further compress the size of the light engine to less than 0.4 cc; the new startup Avegant has taken a different approach and chosen to remove the PBS architecture. Recently, it has not only successfully reduced the size of its own products from 1.4 cc to 0.7 cc, but also improved the criticized temple protrusion problem through its exclusive side projection technology.

Faced with LEDoS’s quest for stability, LCoS is accelerating to break through the volume bottleneck with its unique technology. In the future, whoever can achieve the best balance between size, power consumption, light efficiency, resolution and cost sooner will be able to dominate the AR glasses market and realize the ultimate vision of all-weather wear.

Text: Estelle / TrendForce

Please indicate the source when reprinting! For more LED information, please pay attention to the official website (www.ledinside.cn) or search the WeChat public account (LEDinside).