QLED and OLED TV are very similar at a glance, —especially as they share three standard alphabets. Anyone going for the purchase of a new television set should know that products are like day and night.
With new models coming up every year, there’s no better time to clear up the confusion than the LOCKDOWN when you can research things on a broader scale.
We have gone ahead to collect some information for you regarding QLED and OLED and will compare them to help you figure out which brand is right for you.
What is QLED?
QLED means Quantum Light-Emitting Diode for non-geek-speak means a QLED TV is like a LED TV. The exception being, it uses tiny nanoparticles known as quantum dots to super-charge its brightness and color.
Sony initially introduced the technology in 2013. Samsung started selling QLED TVs and, after that, established a licensing partnership with many manufacturers, which is why we see many TV brands offering QLED TVs.
How do quantum dots work?
As cold as dots of quantum, a QLED TV produces light more or less the same way as a regular LED TV. It uses a backlight made up of hundreds of LEDs, sitting behind an LCD panel. These LEDs give LED (and QLED) TV its name.
The LCD panel is virtually millions of tiny eyelids that open and close too fast to see — concerning color filters and creating the picture by letting in and out just the required amount of light and color escape and reach the viewer’s eyes. It is an intelligent system. It depends on a combination of dimming the LED backlights. It uses shutters to block the remaining light to produce on-screen blacks, and it doesn’t always succeed.
QLED TV manufacturing Companies
Sony, Samsung, Hisense, Vizio, and TCL
What is OLED?
OLED stands for Organic Light-Emitting Diode. “Light Emitting-Diode” section of the name has nothing to do with an LED backlight as it has with LED and QLED TVs.
It is referring to every pixel in an OLED TV, which is a tiny LED light — but one which is extremely thin and produces both brightness and color in a single element.
OLED TVs don’t require a backlight because every pixel provides its light. You may use technical terminology for these kinds of displays: “Emissive,” in case you want to impress your friends.
QLED vs. OLED
Black levels and contrast
QLED TVs are forced to dim LED backlights and block the remaining light, something which is very hard to achieve perfection, by contrast. It triggers what is called “light bleed.” The light spills onto the somewhat black section of the screen.
The mini-LED backlights are one way QLED TV makers who try to improve the situation. It has great potential, but we’re not quite sure to declare it as an OLED-killer. For the time being, OLED comes out on top; if a pixel isn’t getting electricity, it doesn’t produce any light and therefore stays black.
Brightness
QLED TVs have a significant advantage when it comes to brightness. As they use separate backlights, LED backlights can be made incredibly and achingly bright. Companies add a quantum dot’s ability to maximize the light by producing more brilliant hues in the color spectrum that too without losing saturation. You get a display that is more than bright to be seen clearly in most brightly lit rooms.
OLED panels can not compete on a brightness basis. The light-emitting individual pixels can not produce an equal amount of light. This isn’t a problem in a darkened room. It is preferred as OLED achieves the same contrast level with less brightness, which makes dark-room viewing a minimum retina-searing experience. But when a viewer is sitting in a well-lit environment or daylight, QLED TVs are more useful and visible. It becomes especially a must-have when the viewer plays HDR content under illuminated conditions.
Color space
While there is no two suggestions for the fact that QLEDs showcases fantastic bright colors, people are yet to witness better-saturated colors at high brightness levels that deliver a real advantage in typical viewing situations. That is why it has no excuse to declare it a draw for now, since the color is subjective criteria.
Response time, input lag, and refresh rate
General QLED response time varies between 2 and 8 milliseconds. It sounds good until you realize that OLED’s response time is about 0.1 millisecond. So, it’s no contest.
Input lag refers to the delay between taking action like pressing a button on a game controller and getting an action on-screen. Input lag, as such, is only a big concern for gamers. This criterion doesn’t affect viewing of passive content at all. The amount of input lag you experience while viewing a program has little to do with one display technology over another. Still, more to do with how much image processing is happening on your TV behind the scenes. Both QLED and OLED TVs can achieve shallow levels of input lag if you turn off all extra video processing or use the TV’s Game Mode, which effectively does the same thing.
The refresh rate is one category that should inherently matter to gamers than to casual TV viewers. The number of times per second TV update that it telecasts on-screen is known as refresh rate. TV has a refresh rate of 60Hz to 120Hz, under normal circumstances. As long as the video source uses one such rate consistently, which virtually TV shows and movies do, you will never notice a problem in picture quality.
Viewing angle of QLED and OLED TV
OLED screens can be seen with no luminance degradation at drastic viewing angles, which is up to 84 degrees. QLED TVs have improved viewing angle, possessing anti-reflective layers helping it. OLED has a clear advantage. So if you wish to arrange family screenings for your favorite movies and want to make sure everyone has a good seat in the house, an OLED TV is best for you.
Size of QLED and OLED TV
OLED has come a long way. OLED screens figured out at 55 inches when this technology was still in its early stages. An 88-inch 8K OLED is available nowadays. There are lesser limitations on QLED display sizes, and Samsung’s largest consumer model currently measures 98 inches.
Lifespan
LG asserts a viewer will have to watch OLED TVs made by Samsung for five hours per day for the next 54 years before their brightness fell to 50%. Whether the claim remains true is to be seen in the future. OLED TVs have only in existence since 2013. QLED is even newer on the stands, but the source of backlighting — the LED — has a long proven track record. For this reason — and this reason only — the award goes to QLED.
Power consumption
As per your newly found awareness, OLED panels don’t need a super-bright backlight. These backlights consume a large amount of power, which means OLED TVs are strategically more energy-efficient. They emit less heat than QLED TVs do.
Eye comfort for QLED and OLED TV
In theories related to OLED TVs, they offer better overall eye comfort than QLED or any other LCD-based screen. It is because OLED produces relatively less blue light than LED-backlit QLED TVs. That is nothing for a particular pair of lenses, which can handle it correctly. But, in case you want to ensure that you have the safest viewing experience possible, which doesn’t force you to purchase new glasses, OLED is your buddy.
Price of QLED and OLED TV
Still, for the moment, QLED TVs do enjoy a very slight edge in the price department, which shall be a part of the reason why Samsung sold twice as many QLED TVs than LG sold OLED TVs in 2019.
The final verdict on QLED and OLED TV
Both these technologies are impressive in their unique ways, but when it comes to picking a winner, for the moment, a clear winner is OLED. With all the better features and performance records in the categories affecting a general viewer who will notice them while buying or watching TV shows and movies, it is considered the best picture quality you can rely on.
QLED comes out on top of the shelf, able to deliver a longer lifespan, higher brightness, lower price tags, and larger screen sizes. OLED has a better viewing angle, uses less power, deeper black levels, and maybe better for the health of the viewer. Both TV types are brilliant. Therefore, choosing between them is by, and significant subjective — QLED is the better all-rounder, whereas OLED excels when it comes to your room’s lighting.