lcd panel generations for sale

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, the world’s biggest maker of televisions, is shifting its focus towards new generation OLED display technology, and said it will spin off its loss-making LCD flat-screen business into an affiliate.An employee of Samsung Electronics explains as a monitor shows the company"s main factory at its showroom in Asan, south of Seoul, May 13, 2011. REUTERS/Truth Leem

Annual global sales of LCD TVs will contract by 8 percent to $92 billion by 2015, flat panel industry research company DisplaySearch has forecast, while the OLED display market could top $20 billion by 2018, accounting for 16 percent of the total display industry, up from a current 4 percent.

Japans’ Sony Corp agreed to exit its LCD joint venture with Samsung in December, while Sharp Corp said it would halve LCD output for January-March at a plant in western Japan.

Provisionally named Samsung Display Co Ltd, the spun-off LCD unit will officially be launched as a new business on April 1, with 750 billion won in capital, Samsung said.

Samsung and others such as rival LG Display Co are shifting to newer organic light-emitting diode (OLED) flat-screen display currently used mainly in high-end smartphones, reckoning this technology will replace LCD in larger-sized panels such as TV screens.

SMD is a near monopolistic supplier of OLED displays, which are thinner, more power-efficient and boast better clarity and color contrast than LCD screens.

There has been speculation Samsung could drop a full acquisition of SMD, which may cost 1.6-2.0 trillion won, and instead transfer its LCD business to the OLED maker and receive a significant number of new SMD shares.

A potential glut of large-size display panel production, particularly in China,  should produce a significant reduction in television glass panel prices, and bargains on televisions larger than 55 inches in the next three to five years.

Using the DSCC market data, Chinnock said a “big wave” of 10.5 Gen LCD panel plants and even a couple of 11 Gen versions are planned or under construction now, particularly in China, to amp up supply of larger screen TVs, including some next-generation 8K models.

Manufacturers of OLED panel plants are also “invested” in expanding production capacity at generally smaller plants, but Chinnock pointed out there is “a vast difference between the amount of LCD investments and OLED investments.”

OLED 10.5 Gen plants will come as will 8K OLED displays, the DSCC research indicates, but “it will be a couple of years behind LCD and dwarfed in capacity by the amount of LCD panel production,” he said.

Chinnock said he would not be surprised if a glut of large-panel production forces “a retrenching” to bring some of the supplies back down, but that hasn’t happened yet.

As an example, Chinnock pointed to the recent ground breaking for what was once a planned 10.5 Gen display panel production park in Wisconsin by Japan’s Sharp Corp., now under the control of Taiwan electronics giant Foxconn Group. Before construction began, those plans were downsized to a Gen 6 plant, which produces smaller mother glass sizes, which are expected to be used for smaller mobile device screens, laptops and some smaller screen televisions.

Regardless, Chinnock said the key take away from the data is that large-screen televisions, particular in the 65 and 75 inch ranges, are in major growth mode, 8K television is rapidly moving forward for consumer market introduction and will be part of that growth, and China’s investments in new large LCD panel plants will be a major driver behind this new activity.

For many years, TVs with LED backlights have dominated the market. Manufacturers release many LED models every year that have different features. You won"t get the same excellent dark room picture quality as an OLED but LED TVs have a few more advantages than OLEDs (check out our article about OLED vs. LED). LED TVs" biggest advantages are their brightness, which allows them to get brighter than OLEDs, and they"re immune to permanent burn-in. LED TVs are also sometimes called LCD instead; LED refers to the technology used to create the backlight, whereas LCD refers to the technology used to produce different colors and shades. As all LCD models currently on the market use LED backlights, the two terms are often used interchangeably.

We"ve bought and tested more than 300 TVs with LED backlights, and below are our recommendations for the best TVs with LED panels that you can buy. See also our picks for the best TVs, the best PS5 TVs, and the best TVs for Xbox Series X.

The Samsung QN90B QLED is the best TV with an LED panel we"ve tested. It"s an impressive TV with amazing picture quality and a great selection of gaming features. It uses a Mini LED backlight, with way more dimming zones than most LED TVs, which allows for greater control over the local dimming feature for better dark room performance, with less distracting blooming around bright objects. It also gets exceptionally bright, meaning it can handle lots of glare in a bright room.

The best LCD TV for a home theater is the Hisense U9DG. It"s a unique LED TV because it uses dual-panel technology. It means it has two LCD panels stacked on top of each other, delivering the equivalent of a local dimming feature with two million dimming zones; most other TVs only have a few hundred at most. This technology helps provide the TV with the best contrast ratio we"ve tested on any LED TV. The black level is nearly perfect, even in bright scenes, and there"s almost no blooming around bright objects.

The best mid-range TV we"ve tested with an LED panel is the Hisense U8H. It"s an excellent TV overall, with fantastic contrast and an impressive Mini LED local dimming feature, delivering deep blacks in a dark room with very little distracting blooming around bright objects. It has exceptional peak brightness and reflection handling, ensuring it can easily overcome glare in a bright room. It has worse processing overall than the Samsung QN90B QLED, though, so it"s a bit of a step down. There"s more noticeable banding in areas of similar color, and it has slightly worse motion processing as well.

Our recommendations above are what we think are currently the best LCD TVs to buy for most people in each price range. We factor in the price (a cheaper TV wins over a pricier one if the difference isn"t worth it), feedback from our visitors, and availability (no TVs that are difficult to find or almost out of stock everywhere).