tft lcd vs oled pricelist

There are plenty of new and confusing terms facing TV shoppers today, but when it comes down to the screen technology itself, there are only two: Nearly every TV sold today is either LCD or OLED.

The biggest between the two is in how they work. With OLED, each pixel provides its own illumination so there"s no separate backlight. With an LCD TV, all of the pixels are illuminated by an LED backlight. That difference leads to all kinds of picture quality effects, some of which favor LCD, but most of which benefit OLED.

LCDs are made by a number of companies across Asia. All current OLED TVs are built by LG Display, though companies like Sony and Vizio buy OLED panels from LG and then use their own electronics and aesthetic design.

So which one is better? Read on for their strengths and weaknesses. In general we"ll be comparing OLED to the best (read: most expensive) LCD has to offer, mainly because there"s no such thing as a cheap OLED TV (yet).

At the other side of light output is black level, or how dark the TV can get. OLED wins here because of its ability to turn off individual pixels completely. It can produce truly perfect black.

The better LCDs have local dimming, where parts of the screen can dim independently of others. This isn"t quite as good as per-pixel control because the black areas still aren"t absolutely black, but it"s better than nothing. The best LCDs have full-array local dimming, which provides even finer control over the contrast of what"s onscreen -- but even they can suffer from "blooming," where a bright area spoils the black of an adjacent dark area.

Here"s where it comes together. Contrast ratio is the difference between the brightest and the darkest a TV can be. OLED is the winner here because it can get extremely bright, plus it can produce absolute black with no blooming. It has the best contrast ratio of any modern display.

One of the main downsides of LCD TVs is a change in picture quality if you sit away from dead center (as in, off to the sides). How much this matters to you certainly depends on your seating arrangement, but also on how much you love your loved ones.

A few LCDs use in-plane switching (IPS) panels, which have better off-axis picture quality than other kinds of LCDs, but don"t look as good as other LCDs straight on (primarily due to a lower contrast ratio).

OLED doesn"t have the off-axis issue LCDs have; its image looks basically the same, even from extreme angles. So if you have a wide seating area, OLED is the better option.

Nearly all current TVs are HDR compatible, but that"s not the entire story. Just because a TV claims HDR compatibility doesn"t mean it can accurately display HDR content. All OLED TVs have the dynamic range to take advantage of HDR, but lower-priced LCDs, especially those without local-dimming backlights, do not. So if you want to see HDR content it all its dynamic, vibrant beauty, go for OLED or an LCD with local dimming.

In our tests comparing the best new OLED and LCD TVs with HDR games and movies, OLED usually looks better. Its superior contrast and lack of blooming win the day despite LCD"s brightness advantage. In other words LCD TVs can get brighter, especially in full-screen bright scenes and HDR highlights, but none of them can control that illumination as precisely as an OLED TV.

OLED"s energy consumption is directly related to screen brightness. The brighter the screen, the more power it draws. It even varies with content. A dark movie will require less power than a hockey game or ski competition.

The energy consumption of LCD varies depending on the backlight setting. The lower the backlight, the lower the power consumption. A basic LED LCD with its backlight set low will draw less power than OLED.

LG has said their OLED TVs have a lifespan of 100,000 hours to half brightness, a figure that"s similar to LED LCDs. Generally speaking, all modern TVs are quite reliable.

Does that mean your new LCD or OLED will last for several decades like your parent"s last CRT (like the one pictured). Probably not, but then, why would you want it to? A 42-inch flat panel cost $14,000 in the late 90"s, and now a 65-inch TV with more than 16x the resolution and a million times better contrast ratio costs $1,400. Which is to say, by the time you"ll want/need to replace it, there will be something even better than what"s available now, for less money.

OLED TVs are available in sizes from 48 to 88 inches, but LCD TVs come in smaller and larger sizes than that -- with many more choices in between -- so LCD wins. At the high end of the size scale, however, the biggest "TVs" don"t use either technology.

You can get 4K resolution, 50-inch LCDs for around $400 -- or half that on sale. It"s going to be a long time before OLEDs are that price, but they have come down considerably.

LCD dominates the market because it"s cheap to manufacture and delivers good enough picture quality for just about everybody. But according to reviews at CNET and elsewhere, OLED wins for overall picture quality, largely due to the incredible contrast ratio. The price difference isn"t as severe as it used to be, and in the mid- to high-end of the market, there are lots of options.

OLED displays have higher contrast ratios (1 million : 1 static compared with 1,000 : 1 for LCD screens), deeper blacks and lower power consumption compared with LCD displays. They also have greater color accuracy. However, they are more expensive, and blue OLEDs have a shorter lifetime.

OLED displays offer a much better viewing angle. In contrast, viewing angle is limited with LCD displays. And even inside the supported viewing angle, the quality of the picture on an LCD screen is not consistent; it varies in brightness, contrast, saturation and hue by variations in posture of the viewer.

There are no geographical constraints with OLED screens. LCD screens, on the other hand, lose contrast in high temperature environments, and lose brightness and speed in low temperature environments.

Blue OLEDs degrade more rapidly than the materials that produce other colors. Because of this, the manufacturers of these displays often compensate by calibrating the colors in a way that oversaturates the them and adds a bluish tint to the screen.

With current technology, OLED displays use more energy than backlit LCDs when displaying light colors. While OLED displays have deeper blacks compared with backlit LCD displays, they have dimmer whites.

LCDs use liquid crystals that twist and untwist in response to an electric charge and are lit by a backlight. When a current runs through them, they untwist to let through a specific amount of light. They are then paired with color filters to create the display.

AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) is a different form of OLED used in some mobile phones, media players and digital cameras. It offers higher refresh rates with OLEDs and consume a lot less power, making them good for portable electronics. However, they are difficult to view in direct sunlight. Products with AMOLED screens include Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy S II, HTC Legend and PlayStation Vita.

Shopping for a new TV sounds like it could be fun and exciting — the prospect of a gleaming new panel adorning your living room wall is enough to give you goosebumps. But with all the brands to choose from, and different smart capabilities (we can explain what a smart TV is) to weigh, as well as the latest picture tech to consider, it can be daunting. Is this article, we compare OLED vs. LED technology to see which is better for today’s modern TVs. Once you determine which panel type is best for you, make sure you check out our list of the best TVs to get our editor’s recommendations.

If you’re in the market for a TV, you’ve likely heard the hype regarding OLED models. They’re thin, light, and offer incredible contrast and color that’s second to none. OLED is only one letter apart from the more common display type, LED, so what gives? Can they really be that different? In a word: Yes. That extra “O” makes a big difference, but it doesn’t automatically mean an OLED TV will beat an LED TV in every use case. Some TV manufacturers like Samsung use their own technology, called QLED to confuse consumers even more. Make sure that you spend some time looking at our comparison piece: QLED vs. OLED technology before you make your purchase decision.

When OLED TVs first arrived in 2013, they were lauded for their perfect black levels and excellent color, but they took a bit of a hit due to brightness levels that couldn’t compete with LED TVs. There was also a huge price gap between OLED TVs (not to be confused with QLED) and their premium LED counterparts. In fact, legend has it that OLED used to mean “only lawyers, executives, and doctors” could afford them. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case.

OLED TVs are much brighter than they used to be, and the prices have come down, especially with brands like Sony introducing competitive options in 2021. The LED market is due for a bit of a shake-up, too. For now, however, it’s time to take a look at how these two technologies differ and explore the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Non-OLED TVs are made of two main parts: An LCD panel and a backlight. The LCD panel contains the pixels, the little colored dots that make up a TV’s image. On their own, pixels cannot be seen; they require a backlight. When light from the backlight shines through an LCD pixel, you can see its color.

The “LED” in LED TV simply refers to how the backlight is made. In the past, a thicker and less-efficient technology called CCFL (cold-cathode fluorescent light) was used. But these days, virtually every flat-screen TV uses LEDs as its source of backlighting. Thus, when you see the term “LED TV,” it simply refers to an LED-backlit LCD TV.

That said, not all LED TVs are created equal. There can be differences in the number and quality of the LEDs used, which leads to differences in things like brightness and black levels. You may also have seen something called “QLED TV.” This is a type of LED TV that uses quantum dots to achieve better brightness and color. We’ll discuss QLED more below, but here’s a great overview of the differences between QLED and OLED TVs.

The “OLED” in OLED TV stands for “organic light-emitting diode.” OLEDs have the unusual property of being able to produce both light and color from a single diode when they’re fed electricity. Because of this, OLED TVs don’t need a separate backlight. Each pixel you see is a self-contained source of color and light.

Some of the inherent benefits of OLED screens are that they can be extremely thin, flexible, and even rollable. But the biggest benefit when we compare them to LED TVs is that each individual pixel receives its own luminance and power (as opposed to LED TVs, which have persistent pixels that require an external source of light to see). When it’s on, you can see it. When it’s off, it emits no light at all — it’s completely black. We’ll discuss how this affects black levels in a moment.

Currently, LG Display is the only manufacturer of OLED panels for TVs, famed for top-line models like the CX. Sony and LG have an agreement that allows Sony to put LG OLED panels into Sony televisions — like the bright X95OH — but otherwise, you won’t find OLED in many other TV displays sold in the U.S.

The differences in performance between LG’s OLED TVs and Sony’s result from different picture processors at work. Sony and LG have impressive processors that are also unique to each brand, which is why two TVs with the same panel can look drastically different. A good processor can greatly reduce issues like banding and artifacting and produce more accurate colors as well.

Samsung does make OLED smartphone panels, and the company recently announced it would start building new TV panels based on a hybrid of QLED and OLED known as QD-OLED, but it will be a few more years before we see the first TVs that use this technology.

Though they don really similar acronyms, an OLED TV is not the same as a QLED TV. The latter is actually based on LED tech, but it uses a technique that overlays self-emissive quantum dots over the pixels that help produce better brightness, vividness, and color accuracy. QLED is more of an iterative step than a generational leap, and though we’d certainly recommend buying one if OLED is out of reach, expect its eventual deprecation as technologies like quantum dot OLED (QD-OLED) and microLED take hold.

Despite the name, microLED has more in common with OLED than LED. Created and championed by Samsung, this technology creates super-tiny, modular LED panels that combine light emission and color like OLED screens do, minus the “organic” part. For now, the technology is primarily being used for extra-large wall TVs, where colors, blacks, and off-angle viewing are excellent but with more potential for greater brightness and durability than OLED TVs.

For the average consumer, microLED isn’t anything to consider yet. It remains difficult to scale down to less-than-gigantic TVs, and it’s unlikely to hit homes for another couple of years when it will still be exceedingly expensive. Of course, that was once true of OLED, which is why this tech is worth keeping an eye on for a future TV replacement.

Editor’s note: Since OLED TVs are still a premium display, we have compared OLED only to equally-premium LED TVs armed with similar performance potential (except, of course, in the price section).

A display’s ability to produce deep, dark blacks is arguably the most important factor in achieving excellent picture quality. Deeper blacks allow for higher contrast and richer colors (among other things) and thus a more realistic and dazzling image. When it comes to black levels, OLED reigns as the undisputed champion.

LED TVs rely on LED backlights shining behind an LCD panel. Even with advanced dimming technology, which selectively dims LEDs that don’t need to be on at full blast, LED TVs have historically struggled to produce dark blacks and can suffer from an effect called “light bleed,” where lighter sections of the screen create a haze or bloom in adjacent darker areas.

OLED TVs suffer from none of the black-level problems of traditional LED TVs. If an OLED pixel isn’t getting electricity, it doesn’t produce any light and is, therefore, totally black. Sounds like an obvious choice to us.

When it comes to brightness, LED TVs have a considerable advantage. Their backlights can be made from large and powerful LEDs. With the addition of quantum dots, that brightness can be preserved even as the size of the individual LEDs get smaller. OLED TVs can get pretty bright, too, and with such dark black levels, the contrast between the brightest and darkest spots on screen is all the more exaggerated. But cranking OLED pixels to their maximum brightness for extended periods reduces their lifespan, and the pixel takes slightly longer to return to total black.

With those considerations in mind, it’s important to note that all modern TVs — whether OLED, LED, or QLED — produce more than adequate brightness. The consideration then becomes where the TV will be used. In a dark room, an OLED TV is going to perform best, while LED TVs will outshine them (quite literally) in more brightly lit environments.

It should also be noted that there have been big gains recently in OLED brightness, making them perfectly suitable for nearly any situation, save direct sunlight beaming onto the screen. Still, when compared directly, LED TVs have the edge.

OLED used to rule this category, but by improving the purity of the backlight, quantum dots have allowed LED TVs to surge forward in color accuracy, color brightness, and color volume, putting them on par with OLED TVs. Those looking for TVs with Wide Color Gamut or HDR will find both OLED and LED TV models that support these features. OLED’s better contrast ratio is going to give it a slight edge in terms of HDR when viewed in dark rooms, but HDR on a premium LED TV screen has an edge because it can produce well-saturated colors at extreme brightness levels that OLED can’t quite match.

Because OLED pixels combine the light source and the color in a single diode, they can change states incredibly fast. By contrast, LED TVs use LEDs to produce brightness and tiny LCD “shutters” to create color. While the LED’s brightness can be changed in an instant, LCD shutters are by their nature slower to respond to state changes.

Refresh rate is how often the entire image on-screen changes. The faster the rate, the smoother things look, and the easier it is to pick out details in fast-moving content like sports. Most new TVs are capable of refresh rates of 120Hz, which means the entire image is updated 120 times every second. Some go as high as 240Hz.

If refresh rate were simply a matter of Hz, we’d call OLED TV the winner, simply because it can achieve rates of up to 1,000 times higher than LED TVs. But absolute speed isn’t the only consideration. Unlike movies and TV shows, which use a single refresh rate, video games often employ something called variable refresh rates, which simply means that the rate changes during different parts of a game. If a TV can’t match these rate changes, you end up with image tearing — a visible jerkiness that comes from the disparity between the rate the game is using and the rate the TV wants to use.

That’s why gamers, in particular, want TVs that can handle VRR or Variable Refresh Rate. It’s a rare feature on both OLED and LED TVs, but you can expect to see it show up on more models in both types of TVs. Right now, you can find VRR in certain Samsung, LG, and TCL TVs. But neither OLED nor LED TVs have a real advantage when it comes to VRR; some models have the feature, and some don’t. Your gaming system also has to support VRR, though that shouldn’t be much of an issue if you own a new Xbox Series X, PS5, or even a PS4/One X.

Finally, input lag is the gap in time between when you press a button on a game controller and the corresponding action shows up on-screen. Input lag can be a problem when TVs introduce a lot of picture processing that causes a slow-down in the signal they receive. But most modern TVs have a game mode, which eliminates the processing and reduces input lag to barely discernible levels. In the future, all TVs will be able to sense the presence of a video game and switch to this mode automatically, returning to the processed mode when gaming stops.

OLED, again, is the winner here. With LED TVs, the best viewing angle is dead center, and the picture quality diminishes in both color and contrast the further you move to either side. While the severity differs between models, it’s always noticeable. For its LED TVs, LG uses a type of LCD panel known as IPS, which has slightly better off-angle performance than VA-type LCD panels (which Sony uses), but it suffers in the black-level department in contrast to rival VA panels, and it’s no competition for OLED. Samsung’s priciest QLED TVs feature updated panel design and anti-reflective coating, which make off-angle viewing much less of an issue. While OLED still beats these models out in the end, the gap is closing quickly.

That said, OLED TVs can be viewed with no luminance degradation at drastic viewing angles — up to 84 degrees. Compared to most LED TVs, which have been tested to allow for a max viewing angle of 54 degrees at best, OLED has a clear advantage.

OLEDs have come a long way in this category. When the tech was still nascent, OLED screens were often dwarfed by LED/LCD displays. As OLED manufacturing has improved, the number of respectably large OLED displays has increased — now pushing 88 inches — but they’re still dwarfed by the largest LED TVs, which can easily hit 100 inches in size, and with new technologies, well beyond.

LG says you’d have to watch its OLED TVs five hours a day for 54 years before they’d fall to 50% brightness. Whether that’s true remains to be seen, as OLED TVs have only been out in the wild since 2013. For that reason and that reason only, we’ll award this category to LED TVs. It pays to have a proven track record.

Can one kind of TV be healthier for you than another? If you believe that we need to be careful about our exposure to blue light, especially toward the evening, then the answer could be yes. Both OLED and LED TVs produce blue light, but OLED TVs produce considerably less of it. LG claims its OLED panels only generate 34% blue light versus LED TV’s 64%. That stat has been independently verified, and LG’s OLED panels have been given an Eye Comfort Display certification by TUV Rheinland, a standards organization based out of Germany.

Will it make a difference to your overall health? We think the jury is still out, but if blue light is a concern, you should take a serious look at OLED TVs.

The same issue is at play with plasma and OLED TVs because the compounds that light up can degrade over time. If you burn a pixel long and hard enough, it will dim prematurely ahead of the rest of the pixels, creating a dark impression. In reality, this is not very likely to cause a problem for most people — you’d have to abuse the TV intentionally to get it to happen. Even the “bug” (logographic) that certain channels use disappears often enough or is made clear to avoid causing burn-in issues. You’d have to watch ESPN all day, every day for a long, long time at the brightest possible setting to cause a problem, and even then, it still isn’t very likely.

That said, the potential is there, and it should be noted. (This is also a contributing factor in the dearth of OLED computer monitors on the market, as computer screens are far more likely to display a static image for hours on end.) Since LED TVs aren’t susceptible to burn-in, they win this fight by a technicality.

OLED panels require no backlight, and each individual pixel is extremely energy-efficient. LED TVs need a backlight to produce brightness. Since LEDs are less energy-efficient than OLEDs, and their light must pass through the LCD shutters before it reaches your eyes, these panels must consume more power for the same level of brightness.

OLED TVs are premium TVs and almost always likely to be more expensive than an LED version of the same size. However, we have seen prices starting to drop down to manageable levels recently, especially if there are any discounts running. MSRPs can go as low as $1,300 to $1,500, but you probably won’t find many lower than that.

Conversely, LED TVs can range in price from a few hundred dollars — even for a quality big-screen model — to several thousand dollars, making them overall more accessible than OLEDs. While prices of the highest-quality LED TVs hover at nearly the same range as the price of OLEDs, when judged by price and price alone, LED TVs can still be acquired for a pittance in comparison.

In terms of picture quality, OLED TVs still beat LED TVs, even though the latter technology has seen many improvements of late. OLED is also lighter and thinner, uses less energy, offers the best viewing angle by far, and, though still a little more expensive, has come down in price considerably. OLED is the superior TV technology today. If this article were about value alone, LED TV would still win, but OLED has come a long way in a short time and deserves the crown for its achievements. Regardless of which technology you ultimately decide on, that’s not the only factor that you need to consider, so be sure to check our TV buying guide to make sure you’re buying the right TV to meet your needs.

TFT LCD is a mature technology. OLED is a relatively new display technology, being used in more and more applications. As for Micro LED, it is a new generation technology with very promising future. Followings are the pros and cons of each display technology.

TFT Liquid Crystal Display is widely used these days. Since LCD itself doesn"t emit light. TFT LCD relies on white LED backlight to show content. This is an explanation of how TFT LCD works.

Relatively lower contrast：Light needs to pass through LCD glasses, liquid crystal layer, polarizers and color filters. Over 90% is lost. Also, LCD can not display pure black.

Organic Light-Emitting Diode is built from an electro-luminescent layer that contains organic compounds, which emit light in response to an electric current. There are two types of OLED, Passive Matrix OLED (PMOLED) and Active Matrix OLED (AMOLED). These driving methods are similar to LCD"s. PMOLED is controlled sequentially using a matrix addressing scheme, m + n control signals are required to address a m x n display. AMOLED uses a TFT backplane that can switch individual pixels on and off.

Low power consumption and flexible: OLED doesn"t rely on backlight and consumes less power. OLED is essentially created on plastic film. It is bendable and easy to process.

High contrast and vivid color: OLED emits light itself, can produce very bright image with beautiful color. And because OLED can be turned off, it can produce true black.

Stroboscopic effect: most OLED screen uses PWM dimming technology. Some people who are easy perceive stroboscopic frequency may have sore eyes and tears.

​Micro LED, sometimes called μLED is made up of tiny LED, measure less than 100μm. Another way of looking at this is that MicroLEDs are simply traditional LEDs shrunk down and placed into an array.

Replacing organic material with inorganic GaN material eliminates the need of polarizing and encapsulation layer, found in OLED. Micro LED is smaller and thinner, consumes less power.

For 10 years, OLED TVs have been regarded by videophiles (and by us) as blue-ribbon investments that are worth their steep prices if you value the highest-quality movie or gaming experience. Yet we’d suspect that many casual TV shoppers might not know about OLED TVs or why they’re so highly regarded. The conditions are ripe for that to finally change in 2022. With more OLED TVs coming from more manufacturers in more screen sizes, this could be the year OLEDs begin to move away from videophile territory and become a viable option for more people.

The history of flat-panel TVs has been written by two fundamentally different technological approaches to creating a TV image: transmissive displays versus emissive displays.

Transmissive displays operate by shining a backlight array through a liquid crystal element. You might know them by their more common names: LCD TVs or LED TVs. Crucially, the light- and color-producing parts of LCD/LED TVs are functionally and physically separate layers. I like to think of the liquid crystal and backlight as the meat and cheese on a sandwich, respectively.

In emissive displays, those functions aren’t separated. Each pixel (or picture element) produces its own light and color, so there’s no need for a backlight array. As you might have guessed, OLED TVs are emissive displays. For those who remember the brief reign of plasma as the must-have TV tech, plasma TVs were also emissive displays.

This independent pixel operation (independent from a backlight array and independent from every other pixel) allows emissive displays to greatly maximize contrast and produce richer colors. For example, when an OLED TV needs to display true black in a scene, it just turns those pixels off, whereas an LCD TV needs to find a way to block or turn off the backlight in that area of the screen. This is, in a nutshell, why OLED TVs are special. The ability to produce a true black on such a fine level increases the TV’s contrast (or the difference between the darkest and brightest parts of the image). The high level of contrast in an OLED TV can help your favorite movies and shows look downright jaw-dropping, which makes it an especially good choice to pair with high dynamic range (HDR) content.

As a bonus, because there’s no backlight array, OLED TVs tend to have excellent viewing angles, especially compared to LCD/LED TVs. This means you can watch them pretty comfortably from way off to either side.

Price has been the biggest barrier keeping most folks from having an OLED TV in their living rooms. OLED TVs have consistently carried higher price tags than high-performance LCD TVs—especially at screen sizes larger than 65 inches, where you could expect to pay at least 20% more. And “budget OLED” has never even been a category.

It wasn’t too long ago that manufacturing difficulties and relative scarcity painted a picture of exclusivity for OLED TVs, which kept the price high. While Sony and Samsung were the first to introduce OLED TVs, they quickly exited the market, leaving LG as the only brand selling OLEDs in the US for a time—and in a rather limited array of sizes and configurations. The earliest models had a range of issues, including an odd behavior colloquially called “vignetting” (where the edges of the screen look much darker than the middle), a tendency for darker gray elements to look yellowish-green, and concerns about uneven lifespan expectations among different colors. Those kinks were hammered out years ago, and manufacturers like Sony and Vizio have since joined LG in the US market, though LG Display has been the only company manufacturing the actual OLED TV panels. Yet the prices are still high compared with that of most LCD TVs.

Price isn’t the only consideration, either. OLED TVs are comparably much dimmer than similarly priced LCD/LED TVs. This boils down to operational mechanics: Individually operating pixels, the root of an OLED TV’s strength, can also be a weakness. In emissive displays, turning all the pixels to maximum brightness at the same time can damage the TV. So like plasma TVs before them, OLED TVs use a process called auto-brightness limiting, or ABL. Essentially, as more of the screen becomes bright, the total brightness is automatically limited to ensure safe operation.

In other words, a 2021 OLED TV could only get roughly half as bright as a similarly priced 2021 LCD/LED TV, especially those that use mini-LED backlights. However, it’s important to understand that those brightness numbers are discussed in terms of what’s called “reference brightness,” which describes the general/average light output that you’d notice when watching an OLED TV and an LCD TV side by side. For instance, very bright content that lights up the whole screen, such as a daytime sporting event, will look brighter on a high-performance LCD TV than an OLED TV.

But when considering overall screen contrast—the measure of a TV’s average or peak brightness against its black level, or minimum luminance level—OLED TVs tend to have the best contrast around. Because ABL usually kicks in only when large portions of the screen are bright, an OLED TV’s perceptual contrast (how bright the TV will seem given its black level) is usually much better than that of LCD TVs, especially with HDR content where small, specular areas of the screen are very bright.

However, all that functionality is why it’s important to have control over your room’s ambient lighting if you plan to buy an OLED TV. For example, as much as I love OLED TVs, I don’t have one in my living room—I have a Samsung Neo QLED LCD, which is bright enough to combat the San Diego sunshine that often bathes my home. There’s no point having a beautiful TV if you can’t see it! If you can sufficiently darken your viewing room when you need to, however, there aren’t many TVs that will look better than an OLED.

One other concern that some people have with OLED TVs is the potential for “burn-in” damage, ghostly after-image of content that has been on the screen for an extended period of time. Usually this image retention is temporary, but sometimes it’s permanent. The party line for OLED burn-in is that it shouldn’t occur during “normal” use, and we agree, especially because most modern OLED TVs have pixel-shifting and cell-repair processes built in to ensure that damage doesn’t occur. You can also mitigate burn-in further by lowering your OLED TV’s brightness when it’s convenient. However, if you do watch content with a stationary image (like a news ticker or the heads-up display in a video game) for many hours every single day, you may want to consider getting an LCD TV instead. Ultimately, we think burn-in is only a notable concern for a minor subset of OLED owners.

This year, we’re seeing a few key developments in the OLED market that could help it become a better option for more people. For one, LG and Sony have continued to refine their panels to improve overall brightness, and both are adding more screen sizes to their lineups, including smaller 42- and 48-inch models—which is great for not only gamers but also anyone who just wants a more affordable OLED TV that fits in a modest-sized room. Also, companies like Vizio and Skyworth are selling more affordably priced OLED TVs in the US. (You can read more specifics about the 2022 OLED lines in our guide to the best OLED TV.)

But the OLED news generating the most buzz is that Samsung is returning to the OLED game after almost a decade on hiatus. (Samsung introduced one of the very first OLED TVs back in 2012 but abandoned them shortly thereafter.) The company has a single OLED TV line this year, the S95B Series, but there’s an important caveat: Samsung manufactures its own OLED panels, and S95B TVs have QD-OLED displays, a new variant of OLED. QD-OLED displays combine OLED panels with quantum dots—microscopic nanocrystals more commonly used to pump up the color saturation in the best LCD/LED TVs. Sony also announced a QD-OLED model this year.

Because QD-OLED is brand new, we don’t yet know what benefits or improvements it may offer over LG’s WRGB OLED panels (video) beyond what can be assumed based on the underlying technologies: It should look really good. (We plan to test these new TVs to find out, of course.) The other good news? Samsung has announced pricing for its QD-OLED TVs, and while they’re not the most affordable ones you can buy this year, they also won’t break the bank compared with some of the premium OLED TVs being sold.

As the old saying goes, it’s never a good time to buy a new TV. There’s always newer technology or a better deal coming. Based on trends over the last decade, OLED isn’t going anywhere. In fact, the tech seems to be further cementing itself at the top of best TV lists everywhere. This year, there are more OLED TVs—in more screen sizes and from more manufacturers—than ever before, which makes it a generally good time to buy one. While the prices are still nothing to sneeze at, you have many more options than you used to.

On the other hand, it’s too soon to predict how Samsung’s return to the market will affect prices going forward. The relatively approachable price of Samsung’s new QD-OLED model could mean that buying an OLED TV in 2022 is a bit risky. If QD-OLED has better production yields than LG’s WRGB OLED, we could see an entire range of even more competitively priced models in 2023.

Unfortunately, the uncertainty of whether it’s the right time to buy a new TV is difficult to avoid, no matter how much you spend. But we are certain of one thing: Even if some radical shift in TV technology means your 2022 OLED isn’t the absolute best screen on the market a couple years from now, it will still look better than any TV you owned before it.

AMOLED displays are popular for the pure blacks and energy efficient "glance" displays they enable. Thus they are seen as a premium option for smartphone and laptop users, and AMOLED panels are only seen in really high-end TVs. However, thanks to competition and demand spurring greater production, prices are starting to become more competitive with TFT LCD panels, reports IT industry journal DigiTimes.

According to the source report "The production cost for a 5.5-inch HD AMOLED panel has drifted to US$12.10 recently, compared to US$12.20 for a 5.5-inch HP LTPS LCD panel". This is a big change to the previous state of affairs where AMOLED panels had "much higher,"prices due to the increased production costs. Thanks to the levelling off of prices and demand it"s expected that AMOLED panels will be equipped on up to 50 per cent of smartphones by 2020.

In other recent AMOLED smartphone news, the Nikkei Asian Review asserts that Apple will "use OLED screens in all new iPhones launching in 2018". Industry sources say Apple is considering launching three smartphones in 2018 and all will come equipped with this type of display.

Later this year Apple will launch its first OLED iPhone - but only the premium version will get this type of display, in a design that eschews its iconic Home button. Two other iPhone models released this year will use TFT LCDs.

Back to the AMOLED panel pricing news, and there is hope that larger displays, not just those aimed at smartphones and tablets, will come down in price. LG Display"s E4-2 fab, its second production line for AMOLED displays for TVs, will enter volume production in H2 2017, says DigiTimes. Thanks to the new production line AMOLED TV display production is set to more than double to 1.5 million units, say sources. Furthermore, several Chinese panel makers have been investing in AMOLED production facilities with output set to increase fivefold (comparing 2016 output to that estimated to come on line in 2018).

Thanks for the display technology development, we have a lot of display choices for our smartphones, media players, TVs, laptops, tablets, digital cameras, and other such gadgets. The most display technologies we hear are LCD, TFT, OLED, LED, QLED, QNED, MicroLED, Mini LED etc. The following, we will focus on two of the most popular display technologies in the market: TFT Displays and Super AMOLED Displays.

TFT means Thin-Film Transistor. TFT is the variant of Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs). There are several types of TFT displays: TN (Twisted Nematic) based TFT display, IPS (In-Plane Switching) displays. As the former can’t compete with Super AMOLED in display quality, we will mainly focus on using IPS TFT displays.

OLED means Organic Light-Emitting Diode. There are also several types of OLED, PMOLED (Passive Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) and AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode). It is the same reason that PMOLED can’t compete with IPS TFT displays. We pick the best in OLED displays: Super AMOLED to compete with the LCD best: IPS TFT Display.

For all the new technologies that have come our way in recent times, it’s worth taking a minute to consider an old battle going on between two display types. Two display types that can be found across monitors, TVs, mobile phones, cameras and pretty much any other device that has a screen.

In one corner is LED (light-emitting diode). It’s the most common type of display on the market, however, it might be unfamiliar because there’s slight labelling confusion with LCD (liquid crystal display).

For display purposes the two are the same, and if you see a TV or smartphone that states it has an ‘LED’ screen, it’s an LCD. The LED part just refers to the lighting source, not the display itself.

In a nutshell, LED LCD screens use a backlight to illuminate their pixels, while OLED’s pixels produce their own light. You might hear OLED’s pixels called ‘self-emissive’, while LCD tech is ‘transmissive’.

The light of an OLED display can be controlled on a pixel-by-pixel basis. This sort of dexterity isn’t possible with an LED LCD – but there are drawbacks to this approach, which we’ll come to later.

In cheaper TVs and LCD-screen phones, LED LCD displays tend to use ‘edge lighting’, where LEDs sit to the side of the display, not behind it. The light from these LEDs is fired through a matrix that feeds it through the red, green and blue pixels and into our eyes.

LED LCD screens can go brighter than OLED. That’s a big deal in the TV world, but even more so for smartphones, which are often used outdoors and in bright sunlight.

Brightness is generally measured as ‘nits’ – roughly the light of a candle per square metre. Brightness is important when viewing content in ambient light or sunlight, but also for high dynamic range video. This applies more to TVs, but phones boast credible video performance, and so it matters in that market too. The higher the level of brightness, the greater the visual impact.

Take an LCD screen into a darkened room and you may notice that parts of a purely black image aren’t black, because you can still see the backlighting (or edge lighting) showing through.

You’ll often see a contrast ratio quoted in a product’s specification, particularly when it comes to TVs and monitors. This tells you how much brighter a display’s whites are compared to its blacks. A decent LCD screen might have a contrast ratio of 1,000:1, which means the whites are a thousand times brighter than the blacks.

Contrast on an OLED display is far higher. When an OLED screen goes black, its pixels produce no light whatsoever. That means an infinite contrast ratio, although how great it looks will depend on how bright the screen can go. In general, OLED screens are best suited for use in darker rooms, and this is certainly the case where TVs are concerned.

OLED panels enjoy excellent viewing angles, primarily because the technology is so thin, and the pixels are so close to the surface. You can walk around an OLED TV or spread out in different spots in your living room, and you won’t lose out on contrast. For phones, viewing angles are extra important because you don’t tend to hold your hand perfectly parallel to your face.

Viewing angles are generally worse in LCDs, but this varies hugely depending on the display technology used. And there are lots of different kinds of LCD panel.

Thankfully, a lot of LCD devices use IPS panels these days. This stands for ‘in-plane switching’ and it generally provides better colour performance and dramatically improved viewing angles.

IPS is used in most smartphones and tablets, plenty of computer monitors and lots of TVs. It’s important to note that IPS and LED LCD aren’t mutually exclusive; it’s just another bit of jargon to tack on. Beware of the marketing blurb and head straight to the spec sheet.

The latest LCD screens can produce fantastic natural-looking colours. However, as is the case with viewing angles, it depends on the specific technology used.

OLED’s colours have fewer issues with pop and vibrancy, but early OLED TVs and phones had problems reining in colours and keeping them realistic. These days, the situation is better, Panasonic’s flagship OLEDs are used in the grading of Hollywood films.

Where OLED struggles is in colour volume. That is, bright scenes may challenge an OLED panel’s ability to maintain levels of colour saturation. It’s a weakness that LCD-favouring manufacturers enjoy pointing out.

Both have been the subject of further advancements in recent years. For LCD there’s Quantum Dot and Mini LED. The former uses a quantum-dot screen with blue LEDs rather than white LEDs and ‘nanocrystals’ of various sizes to convert light into different colours by altering its wavelength. Several TV manufacturers have jumped onboard Quantum Dot technology, but the most popular has been Samsung’s QLED branded TVs.

Mini LED is another derivation of LED LCD panels, employing smaller-sized LEDs that can emit more light than standard versions, increasing brightness output of the TV. And as they are smaller, more can be fitted into a screen, leading to greater control over brightness and contrast. This type of TV is becoming more popular, though in the UK and Europe it’s still relatively expensive. You can read more about Mini LED and its advantages in our explainer.

OLED, meanwhile, hasn’t stood still either. LG is the biggest manufacturer of large-sized OLED panels and has produced panels branded as evo OLED that are brighter than older versions. It uses a different material for its blue OLED material layer within the panel (deuterium), which can last for longer and can have more electrical current passed through it, increasing the brightness of the screen, and elevating the colour volume (range of colours it can display).

Another development is the eagerly anticipated QD-OLED. This display technology merges Quantum Dot backlights with an OLED panel, increasing the brightness, colour accuracy and volume, while retaining OLED’s perfect blacks, infinite contrast and potentially even wider viewing angles, so viewers can spread out anywhere in a room and see pretty much the same image. Samsung and Sonyare the two companies launching QD-OLED TVs in 2022.

And for smartphones there’s been a move towards AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode) screens for Android screens, while Apple has moved towards OLED for its smartphones and tried Mini LED with its iPad Pro. Technologies are consistently evolving with Superand Dynamic AMOLED versions available, more performance is being eked out.

While LED LCD has been around for much longer and is cheaper to make, manufacturers are beginning to move away from it, at least in the sense of the ‘standard’ LCD LED displays, opting to explore the likes of Mini LED and Quantum Dot variations.

OLED has gained momentum and become cheaper, with prices dipping well below the £1000 price point. OLED is much better than LED LCD at handling darkness and lighting precision, and offers much wider viewing angles, which is great for when large groups of people are watching TV. Refresh rates and motion processing are also better with OLED though there is the spectre of image retention.

If you’re dealing with a limited budget, whether you’re buying a phone, a monitor, a laptop or a TV, you’ll almost certainly end up with an LCD-based screen. OLED, meanwhile, incurs more of a premium but is getting cheaper, appearing in handheld gaming devices, laptops, some of the best smartphones as well as TVs

Which is better? Even if you eliminate money from the equation, it really comes down to personal taste. Neither OLED nor LCD LED is perfect. Some extol OLED’s skill in handling darkness, and its lighting precision. Others prefer LCD’s ability to go brighter and maintain colours at bright levels.

How do you decide? Stop reading this and go to a shop to check it out for yourself. While a shop floor isn’t the best environment in which to evaluate ultimate picture quality, it will at least provide an opportunity for you to realise your priorities. Whether you choose to side with LCD or OLED, you can take comfort in the fact that both technologies have matured considerably, making this is a safe time to invest.

Are colour OLED displays ready to offer a better alternative to TFT-LCDs, and where do today’s state-of-the-art TFT-LCDs remain strong?We all know that colour graphical display can seriously enhance the user experience your application will deliver. So let"s re-cap on the advantages both TFT and OLED technology offer.

TFT-LCDmaturity means competitive prices, good quality and reliability and available in a wide range of sizes - typically 1-21" for industrial embedded applications.

Operating principle: in similar ways to a monochrome STN, twisted liquid-crystal columns create waveguides to direct light from the display backlight through polarising filters. An electric field applied across ITO electrodes changes the crystal alignment to prevent the light passing and make specific locations appear dark. Unlike STN, however, the TFT-LCD contains red, green and blue filters; a thin-film transistor embedded in every sub-pixel modulates the light intensity to mix the desired colour. TFT-LCDs can display millions of colours, and response times can be fast enough to support full-frame-rate video or smooth animations.

Performance: Standard TFT-LCDs do have some limitations, however. Contrast can be limited, and colour-inversion can be perceived at extreme viewing angles. Typical contrast ratio is about 400:1 with viewing angles of L70/R70/T70/B60.

Improvements: IPS (In-Plane Switching), aka Super-TFT, displays arrived to overcome these drawbacks. In IPS, changes in crystal orientation happen in the same plane as the glass sheets that constitute the display. Pixels are dark in the off state instead of in the on state, which enables the display to appear true back when powered down. Contrast and colour fidelity are improved, and also more consistent, even at wider viewing angles than a standard TFT-LCD can manage. What’s more, there are no distracting bright-pixel defects, which can occur when a transistor fails in a conventional TFT-LCD.

Sleek, Efficient Design: A Organic LED (OLED) displays can be made lighter and thinner than conventional or Super TFT, partly because no backlight is required. No backlight means they also consume less power, which has been the key to their success in the premium smartphone sector and is also driving adoption in mobile industrial and medical applications - such as wearable medical monitors, tele-health equipment, cordless industrial panels, and mobile robotics.

Bright and Beautiful: Their light weight and low profile allow OLED displays to be fixed to the surface of an enclosure, even if the surface is curved. This is easier and more economical than designing an aperture and making provision for mounting a TFT-LCD. The wider temperature range of OLEDs also makes them a robust choice for industrial applications or use outdoors.

Passive-Matrix OLED (PMOLED) displays can be monochrome or – with the inclusion of RGB sub-pixels -colour. On the other hand, PMOLEDs can suffer from limited frame rates at larger displays sizes, so Active-Matrix (AMOLED) technologyintroduces a thin-film transistor per pixel that allows each to remain turned on for as long as needed. An AMOLED display can be the best choice if a large, bright colour display is required.

Going the TFT-LCD route, especially given the flexibility to choose standard or IPS/Super-TFT, provides a wide choice of displays that are cost-effective, readily available in numerous sizes, and easily capable of displaying full-frame-rate video and smooth animations.

On the other hand, AMOLED displays can deliver superior optical performance and wider viewing angles, with lower power consumption, reduced weight, and the engineering and aesthetic advantages of the extremely thin and flexible substrate.

This year, TV sales in Europe posted the worst performance among major economies. Due primarily to a combination of three factors including the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the shutdown of nuclear power plants in France, and the inability to generate hydropower due to drought, the price of natural gas in Europe has soared nearly four times compared with the same period last year. Severely hampered by household consumption budgets, the annual decline in European TV shipments this year may reach 12.5%. Since Europe is a major sales zone for OLED TVs, even though sales of OLED TVs in North America have grown by more than 20% bolstered by promotions this year, TV demand in Europe has been sluggish, and growth in OLED TV shipments halted for the first time since TrendForce began tracking statistics in 2016. This year"s OLED TV shipments are estimated to only reach 6.67 million units, a decrease of 0.6% YoY.

This year, LG Electronics and SONY accounted for more than 80% of the OLED TV market, with a 61% share and a 21% share, respectively. However, LG Electronics lost sales in Europe and shipments in North America failed to meet expectations. This year, LG Electronics" OLED TV shipments fell by 2.7% YoY for the first time to only 4.04 million units. In the past, OLED TVs from Philips and Panasonic accounted for more than 60% of annual shipments in Europe but, this year, the European market has been hit by severe inflation, consumer budgets have tightened, and LG Electronics has continued its 2Q22 price slashing strategy, threatening the survival of other OLED brands and hindering 2H22 OLED TV shipments from Philips and Panasonic. Philips and Panasonic OLED TV shipments in 2022 are estimated to decline by 9.1% and 23.3%, respectively.

In addition to OLED TV sales not meeting expectations in Europe this year, as LCD TV panel quotations drop precipitously, the price differential between 55-inch UHD OLED and LCD TV panels has widened from a multiple of 1.8 to 5 within a year, helping to reduce the promotion pricing of LCD TVs by 20-25%. However, this has also caused OLED TV sales to decline. In addition, the brightness performance of OLED TVs is slightly inferior to that of LCD TVs, which are also high-end products with mini LEDs as backlights. Therefore, LG Display will further improve the brightness of OLED TVs by replacing materials and algorithms next year with annual shipment growth estimated to increase by 7.3% to 7.16 million units.

Reports suggest that Apple is getting closer to implementing MicroLED in its future product releases, including the Apple Watch, with the display technology potentially offering a number of benefits compared to other methods. AppleInsider explains how the current TFT and OLED display technologies work, and how MicroLED differs.

MicroLED shows promise as a display technology, potentially offering power savings and a reduced screen thickness when put beside current-generation display panels. Apple has recognized the potential, and has invested heavily into developing the technology over the last few years, with a view to using it in the company"s future products.

To understand fully how MicroLED can benefit Apple, it is worth understanding how the commonly-used display technologies work in the first place, before examining how different MicroLED really is in a comparison.

The most common display technology used by consumer products today, and the oldest of the technologies examined in this article, TFT"s full name of TFT LCD stands for Thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display. This technology is extensively used by Apple in its products, found in iPads, iPhones, MacBooks, and iMac lines.

The LCD part relates to the concept of defining small translucent or transparent areas in a thin and flexible liquid crystal-filled panel, like the displays used in calculators. Passing current through the segment changes the molecular properties of the defined segment area, allowing it to switch between being see-through or opaque.

TFT takes this a stage further, by effectively covering an entire panel with a grid of isolated liquid crystal segments, which again can vary between opaque and transparent based on the level of electrical current. In this case, there are far more segments needed to make up the display than with a normal calculator.

Polarizing filters on either side of the TFT display sandwich are used to prevent light from passing through directly, with the liquid crystal reaction of each segment affecting polarized light passing through the first filter to go through the second.

Sometimes these types of display are known as "LED," but this somewhat of a misnomer, as this actually refers to the use of Light Emitting Diodes as a light source. The LED backlight shines light through the various layers making up the TFT LCD.

TFT LCD screens continue to be widely used in production for a number of reasons. Manufacturers have spent a long time perfecting the production of the display panels to make it as cheap as possible, while its high usage allows it to benefit from economies of scale.

Used in consumer devices in a similar way to TFT LCD, OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) is a display technology that is similar in the basic concept, but differs considerably in its execution. Again, the idea is for a thin panel to be divided up into segments, with charge applied to each section to alter its molecular properties, but that"s where the techniques diverge.

As the name implies, OLED uses an organic compound film that is put between two electrodes, which are used to provide charge. Instead of the charge changing how light passes through, the current instead causes the emissive electroluminescent layer to emit light, without the need for a rear light source.

These self-emitting pixels gives OLED a considerable advantage over LCD-based systems in a number of areas. Most obviously, by not needing a backlight, OLED panels can be made far thinner than an equivalent LCD-based display, allowing for the production of thinner devices or more internal area for other components, like a larger battery.

The power efficiency of OLED panels can be far greater, as while a TFT screen requires an always-on backlight, the brightness of OLED pixels themselves determine power usage, with a black pixel consuming no power at all. OLED screens are also faster to respond than LCD displays, making them more useful for VR displays, where response time needs to be as rapid as possible.

This also allows OLED to provide superior contrast ratios compared to TFT, as the lack of backlight bleed-through that occurs in TFT simply doesn"t happen in OLED.

OLED also can be produced on plastic substrates instead of glass, allowing it to be used to create flexible displays. While this is currently embodied in curved and other non-flat screens in some devices, it has the potential to be employed in foldable smartphones or rolled up for storage, an area Apple is also allegedly examining.

Despite the advantages, OLED is still lagging behind TFT in terms of adoption. The cost of production is far higher, in part due to the need for extremely clean environments, as a single speck of dust can potentially ruining a display during fabrication.

OLED panels are also affected by the presence of water, both in production and in use. Small amounts of water contacting the organic substrate can cause immediate damage to the display, rendering parts of the screen useless.

So far, Apple"s usage of OLED consists of the premium iPhone X and the Apple Watch. As the cost of production drops down, it is plausible for Apple to use OLED in more future products, providing a better screen for customers to use.

Thought to be the next big thing in display technology, MicroLED basically takes the idea of using LEDs for pixels in a large stadium-style screen and miniaturizes it all.

Using extremely small LEDs, three MicroLEDs are put together to create each pixel, with each subpixel emitting a different color from the usual red, blue, and green selection. As each LED emits light, there is no need for a backlight as used in TFT screens.

MicroLED doesn"t use an organic compound to produce light, making it less susceptible to failure compared to OLED. Just like OLED, it can be applied onto a flexible material, allowing it to be used for curved displays or non-stationary components, like a watch strap, and can result in an extremely thin display panel.

MicroLED offers the same lower power consumption and high contrast ratio benefits as OLED when compared to TFT. However, MicroLED is also capable of producing a far brighter image than OLED, up to 30 times brighter, and is in theory more efficient in converting electricity into light.

As a relatively new and in-development technology, the cost of MicroLED production is extremely high in comparison to the more established OLED and TFT mass production lines, in part due to lower than required yields. Manufacturing equipment vendors have produced hardware for MicroLED production that cuts defects in half and reduces deposition deviance from 3 nanometers down to 1 nanometer, but it is unclear if this is enough to help mass production move forward.

While MicroLED is an attractive proposition for Apple, it is not the only technology under development by the company"s engineers. Apple has previously filed patent applications for a technology described as "Quantum Dot LED and OLED Integration for High Efficiency Displays."

Quantum Dots are photoluminescent particles included in an LED-backed TFT display that can produce brighter and more vibrant colors, with the colors produced depending on their size. While available in current QLED televisions, the technology is only really being used to enhance the backlight, rather than being used to illuminate individual pixels.

The technology in theory can create an even thinner display than OLED, along with a more streamlined manufacturing process. True QD displays are also capable of high pixel densities of up to 1,000ppi, multiple times the density required to be called a Retina-quality display, and based on Apple"s hybrid invention, will also boast the response times of OLED technology.

Apple has been interested in using the technology for some time now, with the first notable sign being its acquisition of LuxVue in May 2014, alongside assorted related patents. A MicroLED specialist, LuxVue was rumored to have been the display producer for the ill-fated Google Glass headset, but was also the holder of assorted patents in the LED display field, including MicroLED.

At the time, the acquisition was thought to be an attempt by Apple to bring part of its display technology development in-house, with suggestions the MicroLED technology would be used in another rumored-at-the-time device, the Apple Watch. A more recent report suggests Apple is working with TSMC to make small panels for a future premium Apple Watch, potentially starting mass production by the end of the year.

Apple has also reportedly set up a secret facility just 15 minutes away from Apple Park, believed to be used for developing MicroLED. The 62,000 square-foot facility is thought to house around 300 engineers on a project named "T159," relating directly to the technology"s development.

The facility is also claimed to be sufficient in size to perform small scale manufacturing of display panels, allowing the company to keep development and testing in-house without involving third-parties. Considering Apple"s previous history in developing technologies before issuing information to manufacturing partners, it is possible that Apple is trying to work out the kinks in production before suppliers even attempt to make MicroLED panels.

Reports from last year also suggest Apple"s investment in MicroLED was a cause for concern for Samsung, LG, and other South Korean suppliers who provide disp