QLED vs OLED, not the same tech.

Update: OLED is not without it’s issues. One issue is reverse vignette, this is where the screen appears darker on the inside than the outside. Vignette is an effect that you see in some photos and even in movies, inside is brighter than the outside. Sometimes done purposefully, other times it’s due to the use of a wide angle lens, it bends the light in such a manner that it creates the effect. You can remove reverse vignette on an OLED panel by adjusting the OLED light, contrast, and brightness of the screen. This is not noticeable in content however, and you really have to look for it in order to see it.

Update 2: Turns out OLED does have Burn-In after all. Like Plasma OLED has Burn-In issues with the colour Yellow and derivatives of it. Static content like hud elements in Video Games and logos from TV channels that contain Yellow, Red, and certain Greens will burn this in into the screen over a long period of time. There is a solution however, turn your OLED LIGHT down to about ~40.

Vignette effect.

I just saw what Samsung is charging for their new QLED TV sets, and are they insane? They are marketing their new television line as some form of LED technology, then pricing it similar to what LG is charging for their OLED sets. Well let me tell you, one is better than the other. I’m writing this article in the hopes that you won’t get fooled in to buying one of those over priced LCD screens from Samsung.

There are two types of OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) technologies. W-OLED and RGB-OLED. Samsung bet all it’s money and research on RGB OLED, and lost. They have since dropped out of the OLED panel race. Due to RGB-OLED high price and degradation of the blue OLED pixel this technology proved to be too expensive to manufacture for large format displays. LG opted for the W-OLED or White Oled technology, which is a white LED with RGB filters. LG won, this is the perfect OLED technology for large format displays and soon other manufacturers will follow LG in their footsteps.

After dropping OLED panels as a display technology Samsung released new branding for their LCD panels, they called this QLED or Quantum Dot Light Emitting Diode. The description of this technology is somewhat based on a lie or false promise. I believe this branding is meant to fool the consumer into believing they are buying something that the technology is not. There are no Light emitting diodes or LEDs inside the QLED panels. QLED is a passive LCD screen with a quantum dot colour filter and LED edge lighting. The only difference between QLED and an LCD/LED TVs (LED is an LCD panel with LED edge lighting) are the quantum dot filters, everything else is business as usual.

QLED sounds like OLED, but OLED it is not. While the W-OLED and QLED technologies on paper may look and sound the same, the name is where this similarity ends. I believe that Samsung QLED technology is inferior to LGs OLED and Samsung will lose a lot of market share due to it’s price and the underlying technology of using LCD panels.

OLED is an emitting technology, each pixel is capable of producing it’s own light. Benefits to this are that OLED panels have infinite contrast ratios as each pixel can be individually turned off and on. Blacks are true black, similar to what plasma and crt televisions were capable of offering in the past. OLED is a natural replacement for Plasma Television owners and Home Theater enthusiasts. OLED screens can be viewed in a bright room, even when you have sunlight hitting the screen.

QLED on the other hand is a LCD panel with a passive colour filter(quantum dot layer) and an edge LED array which is used as a back light for the screen. If sunlight hits your screen it renders the image unwatchable. QLED sets might be held to a higher production standard than normal LCD panels however they still come with issues such as banding, light bleed, uniformity concerns, and motion blur. Even with local dimming that QLED panels possess, they have a lot of light bleed. In bright rooms, unlike OLED, QLED screens wash out and become unwatchable. In dark rooms the light bleed from the back light detracts from the viewing experience.

OLED sets have virtually no motion blur, no light bleed, no banding, near perfect uniformity, and are perfect for viewing at an angle with virtually no colour shift. I say virtually because sometimes the light refraction coating on top of the screen can make whites appear with a slight pink/purple tint. This happens primarily when viewing the screen at an angle. The tint shift effect of the refraction coating is not very significant, and even with this shortcoming of the LG OLED screens they still look much better than any high end LCD panel I have laid eyes on. Have a look at the picture it demonstrates the coating tint shit effect. Note the left side of the screen is slightly warmer than the right side.

Yes quantum dots much like OLED do produce more saturated colours. But at the price Samsung wants to charge for a set you are better off picking up an OLED set from 2016. The 2016 LG B6 series can be picked up for around $ 2500 USD, and I guarantee you the picture quality is better than anything Samsung can offer for twice the price in their QLED lineup. Sony and others are also getting into the OLED Television game and some more sets are on the way to market. OLED prices are being driven down and they are becoming more affordable. QLED might soon be a technology of the past. If Samsung is not able to decrease the price and improve the quality of QLED displays OLED will be the clear winner. Even with some of the OLED shortcomings, such as brightness fading, this technology has a lot more benefits than QLED. I use mine as a monitor too, while there is some image retention I have not noticed it and retention on W-OLED is not permanent. OLED sets are closer to the picture quality of CRT and Plasma televisions than any LCD on the market right now. Also SDR (vs HDR on Samsung) content looks much better on an OLED panel.

The bottom line is Samsung could not afford to stay in the OLED game with their RGB-OLED tech. Now Samsung is trying to sell you an inferior technology marketed as something that it can not compete with. W-OLED screens are cheaper to produce and produce a better visual experience.

Update: There have been some cases of Burin-in with LG OLED TVs. The culprit is the colour Yellow and some derivatives of it. So Red and Green can also cause the issue, the closer to yellow these colours get the worse the problem. LG is denying any warranty claims on Burn-In on the OLED screens. Same issue is plaguing the Google Pixel 2 that carries LGs OLED screens.

So if you own a LG, Sony, or Panasonic OLED TV, one way to prevent burn in with yellow colour is turning your TVs OLED light down below 40, also change your compensation cycle to run every 2 hours instead of 4. TV channels with static colour logos are not a good fit for these TVs.

Having said this, OLED picture quality is still superior and for movie and series watching is amazing. Be aware of these short comings and like most consumers that bought Plasma TVs you can avoid the burn-in.

For more information on this issue head over to this AVSForum thread.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot_display

https://www.oled-info.com/oled-tv

http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/industry/2891-w-oled-vs-rgb-oled-samsung-lg-show-different-techs-large-displays-ces-2014

Advertisement

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑

%d bloggers like this: