Who Makes Laptop Screens? Decoding Every Panel Part Number

Turn a laptop over, pop the bezel off, and somewhere on the back of the screen there is a sticker with a code like NV140FHM-N49 or B156HAN08.0 on it. That code is the only piece of information that reliably identifies the panel. The laptop's model number does not, because the same laptop ships with panels from two or three different companies depending on which week it was built.

There are roughly eleven companies making laptop panels in volume, and almost none of them sell to you. They sell to Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus and Apple. Their own websites are investor relations pages. So the part number on the sticker is the whole interface between you and an industry you otherwise never see.

Across the 272 laptop panels in our catalogue, that code follows a pattern in every single case. This article is the decoder, plus who each of these companies actually is.

The Prefix Tells You the Maker

Start here. The letters before the first digit identify the manufacturer, with one genuine collision that has a historical explanation.

The N collision between Innolux and Chi Mei is not a coincidence or a counterfeit. It is a merger. More on that below.

Credit where it is due. A prefix-to-manufacturer table and the size-digit rule are already published by Laptop LCD Screen, and qarequ decodes LG Display's resolution codes and its TN and IPS letters. We checked both before publishing. What is new below is the resolution-code tables for BOE, AUO, Innolux and Sharp, the two makers that break the size-digit rule, and the counts from our own catalogue.

The Digits Are the Screen Size

Immediately after the prefix come two or three digits that give the diagonal in inches with the decimal point removed.

• 116 = 11.6 inch
• 125 = 12.5 inch
• 133 = 13.3 inch
• 140 = 14.0 inch
• 156 = 15.6 inch
• 160 = 16.0 inch
• 173 = 17.3 inch

This holds for AUO, BOE, Innolux, LG Display, Sharp, Panda, Tianma and IVO without exception in our data. So B173HAN04.9 is a 17.3 inch AUO panel before you look anything up.

Two makers break the rule, both in ways worth knowing:

Samsung Display's OLED line drops the leading 1. ATNA33AA03-0 is 13.3 inch. ATNA40YK04-0 is 14.0. ATNA45AF03 is 14.5, ATNA56WR06-0 is 15.6, ATNA60HU06-0 is 16.0. Read the two digits, put a 1 in front, insert the decimal.

CSOT uses a letter instead of digits. The letter directly after MN climbs the alphabet with the size: MNC is 12.2 inch, MND is 13.3, MNE is 14.0, MNF is 15.6, MNG is 16.0. The three digits that follow are a project code, not a size. This trips people up constantly, because MNF601EA1-1 looks like it should be a 60-something inch panel and is in fact a 15.6 inch laptop screen.

The Letters After the Size Are the Resolution

This is where each maker goes its own way. The letter block encodes resolution, and usually panel technology along with it.

AUO

One letter does the work, and it is consistent across every AUO panel we hold.

The next two letters separate the panel type. AN and AK are IPS. TN and TK in that position are TN, and W is the oldest TN generation. B156HAN02.1 and B156XTN07.1 are both 15.6 inch AUO panels, but the first is FHD IPS and the second is HD TN, and you can see it without opening a datasheet.

BOE

BOE's prefix tells you the era, which in practice tells you the quality tier.

• NT is the older generation, heavily TN, mostly 1366x768
• NV is the mainstream IPS generation
• NE is the current line, where the high refresh and high resolution panels live
• HB is legacy, effectively obsolete

The three letters after the size are the resolution:

A suffix of -NX, -NY or -NZ instead of a plain -N4x marks the high refresh variants. NE156FHM-NX1 is 144Hz; NT156FHM-N41 at the same size and resolution is 60Hz.

Innolux

Innolux uses a two or three letter block in which B means HD TN, H means FHD, and J, K and G mark the higher resolutions.

LG Display

LG Display is the one maker whose code tells you the panel technology outright, in the suffix.

Then the suffix: -SP is IPS, -TP and -TL are TN. Every one of the 27 LG Display panels in our catalogue obeys this, and it matches the Sx and Tx rule qarequ documents. LP156WFC-SPD1 is IPS. LP156WHB-TPC1 is TN.

Sharp

Sharp's family letter sits after the size, between the LQ and the 1J or 1L.

1J is the current generation, 1L the older one. Sharp is also the only maker in our set with IGZO panels in the catalogue, but the part number does not reliably flag them: LQ133M1JW15 is IGZO and LQ133M1JW48, one digit pair apart, is conventional IPS. For IGZO you have to check the individual panel.

Sharp is also where the extreme refresh rates are. LQ156M1JW25A and LQ173M1JW04 are both 300Hz.

Panda, Tianma, CSOT and IVO

The smaller Chinese makers run tighter, less expressive schemes.

Panda is LM + size + LF + variant. Within our catalogue every F variant is high refresh (LM140LF1F-01 at 120Hz, LM156LF2F02 at 144Hz) and most L variants are 60Hz, but the rule is not symmetrical: LM156LFGL03 is an L running at 120Hz. Treat F as a strong hint, not a guarantee.

Tianma is TL + size + a letter for resolution (A for 2560x1600 or 2560x1440, V for 1920x1080) + DXP or DMP. Tianma's catalogue presence is almost entirely gaming: of eight panels, seven are 120Hz or faster, including a 360Hz 15.6 inch part.

CSOT after the size letter is a project code with no public mapping. You have to look these up.

IVO is M or R + size + NV or NW + a digit, then a space and a revision like R0 or R5. All four in our catalogue are 1920x1080 IPS.

Who These Companies Actually Are

The decoder is the useful half. The other half is knowing that these are eleven very different companies, three of which no longer exist independently.

BOE, the largest

Founded in April 1993 as Beijing Oriental Electronics Group, successor to the state-owned Beijing Electron Tube Factory, and renamed BOE Technology Group in 2001. It bought Hynix's STN-LCD and OLED business in 2001 for US$22.5 million, then Hynix's Hydis flat panel business in 2003 for US$380 million, and used that technology base to build its own fabs. Listed in Shenzhen, with its largest shareholders being state-owned entities from Beijing, Chongqing and Hefei.

In 2020 it agreed to buy the Nanjing Gen 8.5 and Chengdu Gen 8.6 fabs from CEC Panda, which is why BOE and Panda part numbers often appear as alternates for the same laptop: the Panda fabs are now BOE's. That acquisition put BOE at around a quarter of global flat panel capacity.

AUO, the one that was fined

AUO's predecessor, Acer Display Technology, was founded in August 1996. It merged with Unipac Optoelectronics in September 2001 to form AU Optronics, and absorbed Quanta Display in October 2006. In September 2012 it was sentenced to a US$500 million criminal fine in the United States for a five year conspiracy to fix TFT-LCD prices, with two former executives sentenced alongside it; the Ninth Circuit rejected its appeal in July 2014. That case is the reason the panel industry's pricing is now one of the most scrutinised in electronics.

Innolux and Chi Mei, the merger behind the N prefix

This is the explanation for the one real collision in the prefix table.

Chi Mei Optoelectronics was founded on 6 August 1998. TPO Displays dates to 24 December 1999. Innolux Display Corporation was founded on 14 January 2003. In 2009 and 2010 the three merged by share swap, completing on 18 March 2010, and the combined company was named Chimei Innolux on 30 March 2010 before shortening to Innolux Corporation on 26 December 2012.

Innolux inherited Chi Mei's N numbering and kept it. So N156BGE-L21 REV.C1 and N156HCA-EAB share a prefix and a maker lineage without being contemporaries. The practical tell is the suffix: Chi Mei era parts end in -L.. with a REV.C marking and are TN at 1366x768, while Innolux era parts end in -EAx, -EBx, -GAx, -GNx or similar.

LG Display, on its way out of LCD

Formed in 1999 as LG.Philips LCD, a joint venture between LG Electronics and Philips. It listed on the NYSE and Korea Exchange in July 2004, announced the rename to LG Display in December 2008 as Philips wound down its stake, and Philips sold out entirely by late 2008. It discontinued Korean LCD production in late 2022, sold its last LCD plant in Guangzhou to a TCL subsidiary in a deal announced in September 2024, and is now an OLED company. LG Display LCD panels in the aftermarket are therefore a finite stock.

Samsung Display, LCD exit, OLED entry

Samsung Display stopped making LCD panels in 2022 and sold its Suzhou LCD fab to CSOT. Its laptop presence today is entirely the ATNA OLED line, and every ATNA panel in our catalogue is OLED. The legacy LTN and LTM parts are the LCD era and are not being made.

This is the single most useful fact in the whole prefix table: if the sticker says ATNA, the screen is an OLED, and an OLED replacement costs several times an IPS one.

Sharp, now majority Foxconn

Sharp has been making displays since long before laptops and is the oldest name on the list. Hon Hai, better known as Foxconn, took majority control in 2016. Sharp's place in the laptop panel market now is the high end: IGZO, 4K, and the 240Hz and 300Hz gaming panels.

CSOT, Tianma, Panda and IVO

CSOT is TCL's panel arm, founded in 2009 in Shenzhen, and the buyer of both Samsung's Suzhou LCD fab and LG Display's Guangzhou plant. It is the fastest-growing supplier on this list and increasingly the panel behind mid-range 16 inch machines.

Tianma, Nanjing CEC Panda and InfoVision are smaller and have very thin documented English-language histories. Of the three, Panda is the one whose fabs changed hands, to BOE in 2020. We would rather say that than pad out a company profile we cannot source.

What the Part Number Does Not Tell You

Everything above identifies the panel. None of it confirms it will fit your laptop.

The part number does not encode connector pin count, connector position, bracket pattern, backlight driver, or whether the panel is touch-enabled. Two panels with the same size, resolution and refresh rate can differ on all five. A 30-pin panel will not run a 40-pin board and the reverse is worse than useless.

The revision suffix is where fitment lives, and it is not decoration: N156HCA-EAB and N156HCA-EBA differ by more than letter order. For the fitment side of this, start with 30-pin vs 40-pin laptop screen connectors and then how to find the right replacement screen. If you are buying for a workshop rather than one machine, sourcing replacement laptop panels covers grades and ordering traps.

And before you buy anything on refresh rate alone, check PWM flicker. Panel maker is a far better predictor of flicker behaviour than brand or price, and it is one of the few things the part number genuinely helps you shortlist.

Sources

• BOE Technology Group, founding, Hydis acquisition and fab timeline
• BOE acquiring CEC Panda fabs in Nanjing and Chengdu, Display Supply Chain Consultants, September 2020
• AUO Corporation, formation, Quanta Display merger and the price-fixing judgment
• AU Optronics Corp Form 20-F, US Securities and Exchange Commission
• InnoLux Corporation, the Chi Mei Optoelectronics and TPO Displays merger timeline
• European Commission merger decision M.5762, Innolux, Chi Mei and TPO clearance
• LG Display, LG.Philips LCD origins, rename, and the LCD exit
• Samsung Display, LCD wind-down and the Suzhou fab sale

Panel counts and every part number cited are taken from the 272 laptop screens in the Consumercarts catalogue as of October 2026.

Panels used as examples above: AUO B156HAN08.0, 15.6-inch 144Hz IPS, BOE NE156FHM-NX1, 15.6-inch 144Hz, LG Display LP156WHB-TPC1, the TN suffix example, Samsung ATNA56YX03-0, 15.6-inch FHD OLED, CSOT MNF601EA1-1, the 15.6-inch that looks like a TV, Chi Mei N156BGE-L21, the pre-merger numbering.