tft display vs oled free sample

In market, LCD means passive matrix LCDs which increase TN (Twisted Nematic), STN (Super Twisted Nematic), or FSTN (Film Compensated STN) LCD Displays. It is a kind of earliest and lowest cost display technology.

LCD screens are still found in the market of low cost watches, calculators, clocks, utility meters etc. because of its advantages of low cost, fast response time (speed), wide temperature range,  low power consumption, sunlight readable with transflective or reflective polarizers etc.  Most of them are monochrome LCD display and belong to passive-matrix LCDs.

TFT LCDs have capacitors and transistors. These are the two elements that play a key part in ensuring that the TFT display monitor functions by using a very small amount of energy without running out of operation.

Normally, we say TFT LCD panels or TFT screens, we mean they are TN (Twisted Nematic) Type TFT displays or TN panels, or TN screen technology. TFT is active-matrix LCDs, it is a kind of LCD technologies.

TFT has wider viewing angles, better contrast ratio than TN displays. TFT display technologies have been widely used for computer monitors, laptops, medical monitors, industrial monitors, ATM, point of sales etc.

Actually, IPS technology is a kind of TFT display with thin film transistors for individual pixels. But IPS displays have superior high contrast, wide viewing angle, color reproduction, image quality etc. IPS screens have been found in high-end applications, like Apple iPhones, iPads, Samsung mobile phones, more expensive LCD monitors etc.

Both TFT LCD displays and IPS LCD displays are active matrix displays, neither of them can produce color, there is a layer of RGB (red, green, blue) color filter in each LCD pixels to make LCD showing colors. If you use a magnifier to see your monitor, you will see RGB color. With switch on/off and different level of brightness RGB, we can get many colors.

Neither of them can’t release color themselves, they have relied on extra light source in order to display. LED backlights are usually be together with them in the display modules as the light sources. Besides, both TFT screens and IPS screens are transmissive, it will need more power or more expensive than passive matrix LCD screens to be seen under sunlight.  IPS screens transmittance is lower than TFT screens, more power is needed for IPS LCD display.

TFT displays are also known as an “Active Matrix TFT LCD module” and have an array of thin film transistors fabricated on the glass that makes the LCD. There is one of these transistors for each pixel on the LCD. See our blog post RGB and Color Depth for more on how TFTs show color.

LCDs use voltage applied to a field of microscopic liquid crystals to change the crystal’s orientation. The orientation of the crystals changes the polarization of the liquid crystal creating light or dark pixels on the display.

These pixels are arranged to create characters or graphic images. This type of display may be sunlight-readable and may have a backlight, which allows it to be viewed in dark areas.

Beautiful, complex images: All of our TFT modules are full-color graphic displays. Unlike standard monochrome character displays, you can create complex images for an imaginative user experience.

Thin and light: These are ideal display modules for handheld devices, communications equipment, information displays, and test and measurement equipment.

Single Supply: Most of the TFTs use an integrated controller with built-in voltage generation so only a single 3.3v supply is needed for both the panel power and logic voltage.

Many of the LCD controllers on board our graphic LCD display modules also include a CGROM (character generator ROM) which allows for easy character information as well as full bit-mapped graphic information to be shown.

Some of the graphic LCD displays have the ability to render graphics in grayscale, enabling you to show images and elements of your UI (user interface) with more depth and definition.

Because OLEDs are emissive, these displays can always be used in dark environments. There is usually a software command or hardware setting that will allow OLEDs to be dimmed.

Some OLED displays are bright enough to be sunlight readable–these models will typically take more current and may have a shorter rated lifetime. Additionally, OLEDs have extremely wide viewing angles.

What makes OLEDs useful for display construction is that they can be fabricated in bulk. Using OLED fabrication techniques, all the diodes can be made at the same time, at a much lower cost. OLEDs also come in a wide variety of colors.

The viewfinder in the E-m10 mark II/III/IIIs/IV, Pen-F, and E-m5 mark III is an OLED viewfinder. The viewfinder in the E-m5 mark I/II, E-m1 mark I/II/II, E-m1x, Stylus-1, and the VF-2/VF-3/VF-4 viewfinders is a TFT LCD viewfinder. They have different characteristics:

In general an OLED viewfinder does not have issues if you look at the viewfinder while wearing polarized sunglasses and shooting in horizontal orientation. Most of the TFT LCD viewfinders have horizontal waves alternating between no distortion and heavy distortion (you can select the focus point if you concentrate on the areas where there is no distortion, but you would not be able to manually focus). However, the E-m5 mark II is different that when I"ve tried it, the viewfinder is completely opaque. Note, if you shoot in vertical orientation, there is not degradation.

In general, TFT viewfinders can refresh their images much faster that OLED displays can. I suspect this is the reason Olympus uses TFT viewfinders in the modern pro cameras.

Generally I find that the OLED viewfinder supersaturates the image compared to the TFT LCD viewfinder. This is great, many people like the supersaturation, but the picture that is recorded is not supersatured, and if you wanted the picture you saw in the viewfinder, you will need to bump up the levels somewhat in post processing.

In terms of computer monitors and TVs that use OLED displays compared to TFT LCD display, the OLED displays tend to fail sooner than the TFT displays. A particular failure mode is that often the OLED displays start losing color fidelity (particularly in the blue colors). However, I"m not sure it matters as much for a camera display. Most users probably don"t use their cameras enough for the monitor to fail. Those that do use their cameras day in and day typically replace their cameras every few years.

Also in terms of computer monitors and TVs that use OLED displays compared to TFT LCD displays, you can typically view an OLED screen at a wider angle than a TFT LCD screen. For a camera viewfinder, I suspect this is not an issue.

World wide, the cell phone market tends to consume most of the OLED displays. This leaves very few different displays that camera makers could use. TFT LCD display are older technology and there are likely different sources of the display.

I"m a migraine sufferer and I need to weark polarized sunglasses whenever I"m outdoors in daylight. So I now prefer cameras with OLED viewfinders over TFT LCD viewfinders.

I"ve run into other migraine sufferes that are sensitive to the refresh rate, but don"t need polarized glasses like I do. For them, the cameras with the TFT LCD finders are better because of the faster refresh rate.

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.

The VR Display we provide includes 2.1 inch, 2.54 inch, 2.9 inch, 2.95 inch, 3 inch, 3.5 inch, 3.81 inch, 5.55 inch, 6 inch. For micro OLED can be used on VR, we provide 0.71 inch 1920x1080 display.

When you are choosing a VR, its parameters are important. First is resolution, then screen type, refresh rate, FOV, PPI, PPD, pupil distance adjustment, weight, etc. I believe most of you know the Arpara 5K VR reaches 5120*2560 resolution, so we won"t go deep into resolution today. But focus on display type. Is a VR hamlet good or bad, in fact, the impact of the screen is very big.

A lot of people might be thinking, what"s the impact of the screen? It"s actually quite important. You"ll understand after you read this article. Today, let"s dig deeper into some of the "secrets" of VR displays.

Now LCD is the most common VR device screen on the market, and a few VR products use OLED screens and Mirco-OLED screens. Micro OLED is unfamiliar for VR players. Arpara 5K PC VR, the world"s first VR device, is using the micro-OLED display.

At present, the VR hamlet mostly uses "TFT-LCD" (thin film transistor liquid crystal display) technology, which consists of two glass substrates sandwiched with a layer of liquid crystal, the upper glass substrate is a color filter, and the lower glass layer is embedded with the transistor, When the electric field generated by the current passing through the transistor changes, the original rotating arrangement of the liquid crystal molecules will be reversed, which will change the rotation amplitude of the light through, and shine on the color filter in different proportions, and then generate different colors.

OLED(Organic Light-emitting Diode), is based on an Organic light-emitting layer made of indium tin oxide (ITO) glass and covered with a low-work function metal electrode on the light-emitting layer. According to the driving mode, OLED includes AMOLED and PMOLED.

We know that the color of the screen is displayed by pixels, and it takes time for pixels to change from color 1 to color 2. This time is called grayscale response time.

If the gray-scale response time is too long, the pixel in images fast sliding too late that resulting from the color 1 to 2 in the picture, will appear on the vision ghosting, ghosting extremely influence visual perception, the OLED screen is almost without any delay, and the LCD screen, even if it is apple"s top LCD, have a longer response time.

OLED is not the same as LCD screens with black color. Because OLED displays black, the pixels in the black area can be turned off directly to achieve an almost pure black effect. In contrast, OLEDs have excellent contrast and lower power consumption.

To sum up OLED color characters in one sentence: OLED is an oil painting, with pure and delicate colors, while LCD is a watercolor painting, with hazy and light colors. I think people can tell the difference between a high-end OLED and an LCD at a glance.

Although OLED presents a bright picture, has low power consumption, and can be bent, the organic materials will be oxidized, so the life is relatively short, and the color-burning problem does occur. Coupled with the high cost and high technology content, it is mostly suitable for small screens, such as mobile phone screens. In recent years, a handful of VR helmets have used OLED screens.

Mrico-Oled is a new high-level microdisplay technology. Micro OLEDs (silicon-based) consist of organic light-emitting materials sandwiched between two electrodes, diodes that emit light when an electric current flows through them. The desired color is then generated through the filter. The micro OLED light source module is generated by depositing the OLED onto the substrate using vapor deposition.

For example, to produce silicon-based OLED modules, OLED is deposited onto a silicon substrate or semiconductor wafer. In addition to being self-luminous like OLED, micro-OLED help makes thinner, smaller, and more energy-efficient panels. Their shorter response times and higher luminous efficiency also enable the production of high PPI(pixels per inch) displays.

Micro OLED microdisplay devices have the advantages of OLED self-lighting, thin, light, large viewing Angle, short response time, and high luminescence efficiency. Moreover, it is easier to achieve the application effect of high PPI (pixel density), small size, easy to carry, and low power consumption, which is especially suitable for near-eye display devices.

Although VR products on the market have been developed for many years, due to immature technology, they are prone to dizziness, have low resolution, are large in size, expensive. To avoid vertigo, the screen resolution had to be raised from 500 PPI to 2,000 PPI. Micro-OLEDs meet the needs of VR headsets and lenses. Therefore, after years of polishing, Arpara chose to launch the world"s first VR device based on micro-OLED display technology - Arpara 5K PC VR.

As we said earlier, micro-OLED uses pixel self-lighting technology to easily achieve a wide range of colors. For example, our Arpara 5K VR with Mirco-OLED screen covers 90% of the DCI-P3 range, which is the standard for evaluating display capabilities in the film industry. It can reflect the color expression of the product when watching film and television content.

Pixels are small, individually lit elements that are emitted in an array to create a display. For various reasons, pixels sometimes have difficulty packing tightly together, and this causes the gaps between them to not light up. The "fill factor" of the display describes the ratio of the actual lit area to the unlit area. On a display with a low fill coefficient, the user is easy to perceive the dark space between pixels, which leads to the screen effect.

Let"s go back and mention the comparison of the previous three screens. For LCD screen, there is a high density of LCD display, but because the LCD display device is a transparent type, its pixel driving circuit can only be placed in a pixel gap, this leads to a certain gap between pixels to place the drive circuit, so even if the high-resolution LCD screen, also cannot avoid the Screen Door Effect. The picture below is an example of a square RGB arrangement of LCD pixels, in which the black part is the driving circuit part (the picture is a schematic, in fact, we need to make a better look, please forgive me)

Relatively speaking, because the OLED material is a self-emitting device, the driver circuit can be placed on the underlying substrate, so there is no dark spot of the driver circuit between pixels.

For large-size OLED screens such as AMOLED, the current fill coefficient is still low, so there are blank areas between the screen pixels, as shown below:

The Micro OLED technology selected by Arpara can well control the pixel gap and greatly increase the pixel filling ratio. The schematic diagram is as follows:

Then again, micro-OLED has a big advantage in the small display market. As the applications of VR and AR displays gradually shift from gaming and military fields to healthcare, education, retail, and other fields, the market continues to expand, and more and more consumers demands resolution and avoidance of display lag. In this case, researchers will start to develop a new generation of display technology with high resolution, high brightness, high contrast, and fast response. At present, micro-OLED is most widely used in military, industrial and medical fields. VR is likely to be the next big thing.

Panox Display provides free connectors for clients who purchase more than five products from us. Our product range includes connectors from Molex, Kyocera, AXE, AXG, JAE, Hiros, and more.

Panox Display provides a customized cover glass/touch panel service. We supply cover glass from Gorilla, AGC, and Panda, which all have excellent optical performance. We also supply driver ICs from Goodix and Focaltech.

If your applications are directly connected to a PC, a cellphone, or Raspberry Pi, and you have enough space to insert a board to input video, Panox Display can provide customized Controller/Driver boards with input connections for VGA, HDMI, DVI, DP, Type-C video input, MIPI, RGB, LVDS, and eDP.

Focus Displays offers a wide range of standard full color TFT displays. 64 million unique colors, high brightness, sharp contrast, -30C operating temperature, and fast response time are all good descriptions of a TFT display. This is why TFT technology is one of the most popular choices for a new product.

Thin Film Transistor (TFT) display technology can be seen in products such as laptop computers, cell phones, tablets, digital cameras, and many other products that require color. TFT’s are active matrix displays which offers exceptional viewing experiences especially when compared to other passive matrix technologies. The clarity on TFT displays is outstanding; and they possess a longer half-life than some types of OLEDs and range in sizes from less than an inch to over 15 inches.

CCFL’s are still available, but are becoming a legacy (obsolete) component. TFT displays equipped with a CCFL require higher MOQs (Minimum Order Quantities) than displays with LED backlights.

The majority of TFT displays contain a touch panel, or touch screen. The touch panel is a touch-sensitive transparent overlay mounted on the front of the display glass. Allowing for interaction between the user and the LCD display.

Some touch panels require an independent driver IC; which can be included in the TFT display module or placed on the customer’s Printed Circuit Board (PCB). Touch screens make use of coordinate systems to locate where the user touched the screen.

Resistive touch panels are the lowest cost option and are standard equipment on many TFT modules. They are more common on smaller TFT displays, but can still be incorporated on larger modules.

Contrast ratio, or static contrast ratio, is one way to measure the sharpness of the TFT LCD display. This ratio is the difference between the darkest black and the brightest white the display is able to produce. The higher the number on the left, the sharper the image. A typical contrast ratio for TFT may be 300:1. This number ratio means that the white is 300 times brighter than the black.

TFT LCD displays are measured in inches; this is the measurement of the diagonal distance across the glass. Common TFT sizes include: 1.77”, 2.4”, 2.8”, 3”, 4.3”, 5”, 5.7”, 5.8”, 7”, 10.2”, 12.1 and 15”.

As a general rule, the larger the size of the glass the higher the cost of the display, but there are exceptions to this rule. A larger display may be less expensive than a smaller display if the manufacture produces higher quantities of the larger displays. When selecting your color display, be sure to ask what the cost is for one size smaller and one size larger. It may be worth modifying your design requirements.

TFT resolution is the number of dots or pixels the display contains. It is measured by the number of dots along the horizontal (X axis) and the dots along the vertical (Y axis).

The higher the resolution, the more dots per square inch (DPI), the sharper the display will look. A higher resolution results in a higher cost. One reason for the increase in cost is that more driver chips are necessary to drive each segment.

Certain combinations of width and height are standardized and typically given a name and a letter representation that is descriptive of its dimensions. Popular names given to the TFT LCD displays resolution include:

Transmissive displays must have the backlight on at all times to read the display, but are not the best option in direct sunlight unless the backlight is 750 Nits or higher. A majority of TFT displays are Transmissive, but they will require more power to operate with a brighter backlight.

Transflective displays are readable with the backlight off provided there is enough ambient light. Transflective displays are more expensive than Transmissive also there may be a larger MOQ for Transflective. However, Transflective displays are the best option for direct sunlight.

Drivers update and refresh the pixels (Picture Elements) of a display. Each driver is assigned a set number of pixels. If there are more pixels than a single driver can handle, then an additional drivers are added.

A primary job of the driver is to refresh each pixel. In passive TFT displays, the pixel is refreshed and then allowed to slowly fade (aka decay) until refreshed again. The higher the refresh frequency, the sharper the displays contrast.

The controller does just what its name suggest. It controls the drivers. There is only one controller per display no matter how many drivers. A complex graphic display with several thousand pixels will contain one controller and several drivers.

The TFT display (minus touch screen/backlight) alone will contain one controller/driver combination. These are built into the display so the design engineer does not need to locate the correct hardware.

If you do not see a Thin Film Transistor (TFT) Display module that meets your specifications, or you need a replacement TFT, we can build a custom TFT displays to meet your requirements. Custom TFTs require a one-time tooling fee and may require higher MOQs.

Ready to order samples for your TFT design? Contact one of our US-based technical support people today concerning your design requirements. Note: We can provide smaller quantities for samples and prototyping.

This 10.1 inch TFT LCD display has a 1024x600 resolution screen with IPS technology, which delivers sunlight readable brightness, better color reproduction, better image consistency, and better optical characteristics at any angle. For extra protection, this 24-bit true color TFT also includes an EMI filter on the input power supply line. This 10.1" display is RoHS compliant with LVDS interface, and does not include a touchscreen. This 10.1" IPS display has been designed with the same mechanical footprint and pinout and includes the same HX8282 driver IC as the TN display, making this a compatible replacement option for the TN models.

Choose from a wide selection of interface options or talk to our experts to select the best one for your project. We can incorporate HDMI, USB, SPI, VGA and more into your display to achieve your design goals.

Equip your display with a custom cut cover glass to improve durability. Choose from a variety of cover glass thicknesses and get optical bonding to protect against moisture and debris.

OLED displays are commonplace on all high-end phones, tablets, smartwatches, televisions, and even many of the many budget phones. However, there isn"t one type of OLED technology. Depending on your device, you may have an OLED, AMOLED, or POLED display.

OLED promises inky blacks, high contrast, low response times, and incredible brightness. There are a few downsides (primarily the burn-in phenomenon), but overall it"s the best screen technology you"ll find. We explain the background behind the acronyms, the difference between POLED and AMOLED, and which is better, helping you choose the right phone.

Before we get into the differences between the types of OLED screens, let"s look at the similarities. Regardless of your OLED device, whether a laptop or a smartphone, there are some standard fundamentals.

Every OLED screen comprises millions of diodes, hence the name organic light-emitting diode. Viewed under a microscope, each screen consists of a series of red, green, and blue diodes that can be individually turned on and off. Behind this, the light-emitting pixels of an OLED display emit blue and yellow light. The yellow and blue light combine to form white light, passing through the red, green, and blue subpixels to produce a single pixel. Because each pixel handles its light and color, OLED displays do not need a separate backlight.

As an OLED screen doesn"t need a backlight, black is produced by turning off the pixels, resulting in deep, consistent blacks. This allows manufacturers to implement things like an always-on display without quickly burning through battery life.

Another critical advantage of OLED tech is high contrast ratios. Technically, OLED displays offer "infinite contrast," or 1,000,000:1 contrast ratios. This is because OLED displays reproduce black by turning off pixels entirely, and contrast is measured by comparing the brightest part of the screen to the darkest part. Improved contrast makes on-screen content more vivid and makes bright highlights look more impressive. This also means that OLED screens can reach higher brightness than the best IPS LCD screens.

OLED displays can display more colors with greater color accuracy than their LCD peers. This is great for photographers and videographers using their phones to preview, edit, and create content.

OLED displays have near-instantaneous pixel response times. Older LCD screens often have lower response times because to change from one color to another, they must physically change the orientation of a liquid crystal, which takes time. An OLED display turns a subpixel on or off with an electrical charge, giving them a faster pixel response time.

The omission of a separate backlight and the use of fewer components means OLED displays can be thinner than LCDs, making them more versatile in their applications. This means they are more fragile and prone to damage in high-impact or high-stress situations. Engineers combat this by using technologies like Gorilla Glass and robust metal frames. Mitigation strategies like these raise the cost of OLED screens.

OLED displays can also be transparent, depending on the materials used. Transparent displays are helpful for in-display fingerprint readers and under-display cameras, which allow manufacturers to design smartphones with fewer and smaller bezels, notches, and display cutouts. When notches and cutouts are necessary, OLED displays have more even brightness around those cutouts and notches compared with LCDs, where the backlight has to make it around the cutout, and things get a little messy.

Of particular import to smartphones, OLED displays often consume less power, especially when displaying dark images or UI elements, thanks to the pixel-level regulation of brightness. However, at max brightness, an OLED screen usually uses more power than an equivalent LCD.

As with any new technology, OLED tech is not without its flaws.OLED displays are prone to degradation from age and UV exposure, resulting from the organic nature of the molecules that make up the diodes. The organic nature of OLED displays also leads to a phenomenon called screen burn-in, where static UI elements like menus, navigation bars, and status bars (elements that are on-screen for long periods) leave a permanent ghost image, even when they are not displayed. However, burn-in has been somewhat mitigated by pixel shifting and technological advancements in recent years.

Early OLED screens placed all the organic materials on a glass substrate. However, glass is rigid, so a flexible plastic substrate is needed to create foldable display screens, leading to the creation of POLED screens.

POLED (polymer organic light-emitting diode) offers advantages in terms of durability and versatility. The replacement ofglass substrates with plastic ones makes them more shock-resistant. Another unique advantage is in the implementation. Designers can reduce bezel size by folding the electronics underneath an edge of the display instead of having it be on the same plane. POLED displays are also significantly thinner than OLED displays with glass substrates.

Note the difference between P OLED and pOLED. pOLED is the trademark that LG Display uses to brand its plastic OLED displays. It produces these displays for a variety of applications and companies. Google used pOLED displays on the Pixel 2 XL, LG used them on theLG Velvet and several wearables,and Apple reportedly used LG pOLED displays on some Apple Watch models. LG"s pOLED displays seem to suffer from an increased risk of burn-in, as users of the Google Pixel 2 XL complained of burn-in after a few months of use.

To get to the resolution and size of a phone, an AMOLED screen (active matrix organic light emitting diode) is needed. Older, passive matrix OLED displays (PMOLED) require higher voltages for higher pixels/resolutions. The higher the voltage, the lower the screen"s lifetime.

Thin-film transistor (TFT) arrays used in modern active-matrix OLED displays control the charging of the display"s storage capacitors. These TFTs control current flow, resulting in more energy-efficient OLED panels than PMOLED displays. This allows a larger display size without compromising resolution, lifetime, or power consumption.

QLED isn"t related to OLED displays—despite what the name may suggest—but it"s often slated as a competitor to OLED, and it aims to replace the technology by targeting both OLED"s successes and failures. QLED stands for quantum dot light-emitting diode. The core principle of QLED technology is the same as a regular OLED. A backlight is passed through red, green, and blue subpixel layers to generate an image. However, the backlight isn"t one large, uniformly-lit layer. Instead, QLED displays use an array of tiny individually-controlled LEDs to supply the backlight. Using individually-controlled LEDs means the display can produce a more accurate image with a higher contrast.

Generally speaking, QLED displays have similar benefits to OLED displays—high peak brightness, high contrast, perfect blacks, and good saturation. Still, they lack some OLED advantages, like image retention and reduced overall and sustained brightness.

QLED is found in TVs and large computer monitors because that"s where it sees the most benefit. OLED displays in phones are small enough, bright enough, and cheap enough that QLED wouldn"t be able to compete or offer any practical benefit to the end user.

Display type is only one part of the puzzle.What use is exotic technology if it doesn"t make any difference to the end user? Smartphone manufacturers use many approaches to improve their displays. Let"s look at a few things you should look for apart from the display type.

Resolution is the number of pixels a screen has. It is usually written as a ratio: pixels on the long side by pixels on the short side, for example, 1920 x 1080. Most smartphone displays have a resolution between 720p (1280 x 720) on the low-end and 4k (3480 x 2160) on some Sony models. While 4k is excessive and rare for anything under 15 inches, 720p, 1080p, and 1440p are all common smartphone resolutions.

The ideal smartphone screen resolution depends on the screen size. A metric called pixels per inch (PPI) describes the display"s number of pixels in a vertical or horizontal inch. For a 6-inch display, you should aim for at least 1080p or above 350 PPI. This will ensure that the text is crisp.

A subpixel is one of the light-emitting parts of a pixel—in the case of most displays, these are red, blue, and green—that combine in different quantities to display various colors in an image. Although RGB subpixel layouts have been the prevalent option for a long time, some display manufacturers elect to use subpixel arrangements like BGR, PenTile, RGBG, and WRGB. The reason these subpixel layouts exist is to combat the various shortcomings of the display technology.

As with resolution, the subpixel layout can affect perceived image quality. Over the brief course of display history, manufacturers and designers have settled on RGB as a standard, meaning content is generally optimized for that layout. When manufacturers decided to invent new subpixel layouts, the perceived quality took a bit of a hit.

So why do manufacturers use odd-pixel layouts? It depends on the manufacturer and its goals. Samsung uses PenTile displays, which use RGBG instead of RGB subpixels, to combat image retention on its AMOLED displays. WRGB displays add a separate white subpixel to boost brightness on OLED displays—a technology that is otherwise notoriously dim.

Refresh rate is the number of times per second a display refreshes, and higher refresh rates mean motion and animations look smoother. Generally, 60Hz is the lowest commonly-found refresh rate and is perfectly serviceable. Many modern flagship phones and a few mid-range phonesoffer 90Hz, 120Hz, 144Hz, and even 240Hz displays.

Response times on OLED displays are generally lower, meaning displays can reach these high refresh rates and look better at these higher refresh rates thanks to the reduced ghosting.

Smartphones are often used outside in bright sunlight, so display brightness is a huge factor. Display brightness is measured in nits or cd/m². Peak brightness is the momentary maximum brightness of a small portion of a screen, while sustained brightness is a more realistic representation of the brightness of the whole display. Aim for above 600 nits of sustained brightness since anything below may cause legibility issues in bright conditions. On the other hand, brightness is measured logarithmically, not linearly, meaning 1,200 nits is only twice as bright as 300 nits. This is important since many manufacturers lean heavily on high brightness metrics as a marketing point.

Display specifications are no different. While it is true that OLED displays may be the best option for some people, they command a premium, and a lot of people wouldn"t notice the difference.

Brightness, refresh rate, and resolution are all key factors, and performance as a whole should be the determining factor in selecting a display, not the shiny new technology involved. If you"re looking for a phone with an OLED display and a high refresh rate, check out the best Android phones you can buy.

TFT stands for thin-film transistor and is used with LCD to improve image quality over older digital display technologies. Each pixel on a TFT LCD has its own transistor on the glass itself, which offers greater control over the images and colors that it renders.

TFT is also an abbreviation for other technical terms including time from transmission, text fix test, Trinitron flat tube, and trivial file transfer protocol.

Since the transistors in a TFT LCD screen are so small, the technology offers the added benefit of requiring less power. However, while TFT LCDs can deliver sharp images, they also tend to offer relatively poor viewing angles. The result is that TFT LCDs look best when viewed head-on, but viewing images from the side is often difficult.

TFT LCDs are found on low-end smartphones as well as basic cell phones. The technology is also used on TVs, handheld video game systems, computer monitors, and GPS navigation systems.

All the pixels on a TFT screen are configured in a row-and-column format, and each pixel is attached to an amorphous silicon transistor that rests directly on the glass panel. This allows each pixel to be given a charge and for the charge to be kept even when the screen is refreshed to produce a new image.

With this type of setup, the state of a particular pixel is being actively maintained even while other pixels are being used. This is why TFT LCDs are considered active matrix displays (as opposed to a passive matrix displays).

Lots of smartphone manufacturers use IPS-LCD (Super LCD), which provides wider viewing angles and richer colors, but newer phones feature displays that utilize OLED or Super-AMOLED technology. For example, Samsung"s flagship smartphones boast OLED panels, while most of Apple"s iPhones and iPads come equipped with an IPS-LCD. Super LCD and Super-AMOLED have their own pros and cons, but they both far exceed the capabilities of TFT LCD technology.

Over the last couple of years we have been exploring the hardware calibration feature of the LG OLED displays (CX and the latest C2 models particularly) and how to optimise the picture for various uses. To do this we’ve been making use of Portrait Display’s Calman calibration software and the “AutoCal” feature that it provides to directly calibrate the screen at a hardware level. This isn’t the only package available to hardware calibrate these screens, but it’s the mostly widely used and popular. We weren’t intending to write a guide or article about this really, other than maybe providing some results as an update and brief overview in our LG CX OLED review and LG 42C2 OLED review. But the more we tested and experimented, the more we realised how potentially complicated and confusing this topic can be. There is a mass of great information out there on various forums and webpages, but it is scattered around and hard to make sense of sometimes. There’s also a lot of great information on Portrait’s website, but nothing that lays the process out from start to finish.

So we thought we would write this guide which covers everything you might need to know for a typical calibration of the LG OLED TV’s. It’s not meant to be definitive or include every possible option, and we aren’t going to cover things like complicated manual calibration steps or professional-usage setup. This is meant as a guide that will hopefully be useful to your average owner who wants to invest a bit of time and money in hardware calibrating the screen for their normal uses like TV, movies and gaming. Our thanks to Portrait Displays for all their time talking to us about this topic and answering our many questions as we went.

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An LG OLED TV (preferably 2019 models or later)– we have written this guide while using the 2020 CX model but equally this also applies to other 2020 models like the GX for example. It should also apply to the 2019 C9 models, and the more recent 2021 C1 range. Support for the 2022 C2 range is not yet officially available in the Calman software although the pipeline is the same as the C1 models, and having tested this out on our C2 sample we have confirmed it works fine. So you should be good to calibrate even the latest C2 (and other 2022) models. For a full list of LG OLED TV’s that support LG AutoCal and this process see Portrait Display’s list here.

Some parts might change a bit but the gist of it should be the same. The 48″ CX48 and C1 models have become particularly popular for use as a monitor given their relatively small size (for a TV) and was introduced in 2020 as the smallest OLED offering in this space. We reviewed the LG CX OLED back in October 2020 specifically looking at its use as a desktop monitor by the way if you want to know more. More recently in the 2022 C2 range there is also now a 42″ model if you want something smaller still although Calman calibration support is not officially listed yet, but it still works fine. We reviewed the LG 42C2 OLED model in April 2022.

Calman calibration software – in order to access the TV’s hardware calibration feature you will need Portrait Display’s Calman software package. They have worked hand in hand with LG to optimise this performance and process and their software provides full control over the screen, it’s settings and access to the hardware Look Up Tables (LUT). The software carries out the so-called “AutoCal” process for you on the screen once you’ve set a few things up.

The most popular choice specifically for calibrating LG TV’s is ‘Calman Home for LG‘ which is available from Portrait Display’s website at a modest price of $145.00 USD for a one year license. If you have one of their more advanced professional software packages such as Calman Ultimate ($2,995) then the same process is available within those packages too, you don’t need both. For most general consumers looking to hardware calibrate their LG OLED TV the Home package is what they need. For the 2020 CX models it needs to be Calman 2020 v5.11.0 or newer but if you’re buying it new you will get the latest version anyway. If you already have a live license then you should be able to download the latest version of the software from their website for free. The software version is independent of the licence, you can always download and use whatever the latest version is as long as your license is still live.

A calibration device (known as a meter) – to carry out the measurements and calibration of the screen you will need a calibration device. There’s a really wide range of devices available but one of the most popular devices for this is theX-rite i1 Display Pro (or more recent Pro Plus model) which is available in all key regions from Amazon (affiliate link). This can of course be used for calibrating your PC monitor as well but it’s a great device to use with the LG AutoCal process. If you have access to a higher end and more expensive spectroradiometer device then that can also help add some additional accuracy which we will discuss later when it comes to the optional Meter Profiling step. Pretty much all of the mainstream meters are supported as well as many more niche offerings. If in doubt check with Calman.

A pattern generator (included in the TV for 2019 models and later) – this is the part that displays all the colours and test patterns on the TV for the calibration process. Thankfully for 2019 LG OLED models and later these are built in to the TV so you don’t need to worry, so that includes the 2020 CX models. This supports SDR, HDR and Dolby Vision (DV) calibrations. If you are wanting to calibrate an earlier TV like a 2018 model you will need to purchase an external pattern generator for HDR and DV calibration as unfortunately there are no test patterns built in to the TV. Portrait Displays have some available to buy on their website, we won’t go in to more detail here about those as they aren’t needed for the 2019 models or later (C9, CX, C1, C2 etc)

A USB stick with some (free) test files on it – You will need to download this free HDR sample video and this free Dolby Vision sample video that are provided by Portrait displays (main page here). You might as well also download the 10 hour SDR video and put it on the same memory stick although if you’re connecting your laptop directly to the screen and running the software from that you won’t need it as it will already be in SDR mode there. The HDR and Dolby Vision videos will be needed to put the TV in to the relevant HDR and DV modes so you can calibrate them. Download them and save them on a USB stick.

A PC or laptop that is connected to the LG OLED TV you are going to calibrate– this should be preferably with its own screen as you won’t be able to use the LG TV while it’s being calibrated. This also needs to be connected to the same home network as the TV, and the TV needs to be connected either using Wi-Fi or Ethernet to that network.

We won’t run through the installation of the software or your calibration device, that should be pretty self-explanatory or you can refer to the Portrait Displays website for more support.

In the Picture menu turn OFF the Energy Saving settings. This avoids the screen altering the luminance during calibration. If you like this ambient light sensor you can turn it back on after the calibration if you want although this has a big impact on HDR and DV brightness. We would recommend leaving this off. From our testing the so-called ‘Auto’ mode (which is supposed to dynamically control the OLED light level) seemed to dim SDR to about 130 nits regardless of the ambient light, both for day time viewing, or night viewing with some lamps on. This in itself is ok for SDR, but for HDR/DV it reduces the max peak brightness the content will reach which is really not good! We measured a peak luminance of around 370 – 400 nits with this Energy saving turned to ‘Auto’. The other settings like low, medium and high are just other preset caps to the OLED light setting. For HDR and DV you want OLED light to always be at 100 if you want the screen to reach the maximum peak luminance it is capable of. So having Energy saving enabled in any more will not allow that. We would leave Energy Saving off for everything and instead focus on calibrating the screen to a comfortable brightness, which we will talk about later. This energy saving setting spans across SDR, HDR and Dolby Vision modes so you only need to disable it once.

Some people like to turn off OLED protection features like the logo dimmer and pixel shift feature while they carry out the calibration, although given the actual test patterns you will display this seems a bit unnecessary to us

Set the OLED light setting in the selected Picture mode to your taste for your room and lighting conditions. For SDR calibration there is a step within the software to adjust this later too, so a good starting point is around 70 for the OLED light setting (which should be around 200 nits). For the HDR and DV calibrations you won’t need to do this, as you’d want to leave OLED light set at 100 which is the default.

You’re ready to calibrate the screen now!We have provided step by step guidance using the Calman Home for LG software below which is the most common (and affordable) package applicable here. The steps are very similar with their other packages like Calman Ultimate but you’d need to first load up the ‘display specific – AutoCal LG’ workflow from the main menu on those. Plug in your meter to the laptop/PC then load up the Calman software.

You can do these first few steps to connect the meter, source and display controls later as part of the calibration process, but we personally prefer to do them before we follow the calibration process. Either way is fine, and it’s the same steps to do them during the actual calibration process just at different points.

Back in the ‘meter settings’ tab you should now be able to select your meter and the tab should turn green. Below we have used an X-rite i1 Display Pro Plus

With the meter selected at the top there are a few other things you need to configure for it. Some of the following settings depend on the actual meter you are using but are likely to be the same, or at least our explanations should hopefully help you choose the right option. These settings are for the X-rite i1 Display Pro which is a commonly used and recommended colorimeter for this process:

Select ‘OLED TV (WRGB)’ for the meter mode – this menu adds a correction profile for the meter based on the screen you are calibrating. It’s not needed for spectro devices like the X-rite i1 Pro or other high-end devices like that, but is there for colorimeters like the commonly used i1 Display Pro. LG OLED TV’s have a WRGB (White, Red, Green, Blue) pixel structure and the correction profile was added in to the Calman software as of v5.12.0 in April 2021. Note that there is also an ‘OLED – (RGB)’ option, but that is designed for OLED screens with a normal RGB pixel structure, not used in the TV space. Previously this was labelled simply as ‘OLED’ in this menu which led to some confusion in the past. Now that Calman have added a specific ‘OLED TV (WRGB)’ mode, you should select that for your colorimeter device for optimal performance.

For connection and configuration of other meters and devices you may need to check out Portrait Display’s device resource centre for further information.

This step connects the test patterns that will be shown on the screen and used for the measurements and calibration. You can use external pattern generators for this if you want, but we won’t go in to that here and they will cost extra money. Thankfully the LG 2019 OLED TV’s onwards, including the 2020 CX, 2021 C1 and 2022 C2 models, have featured built-in pattern generators, so you can tell the Calman software to access and use those which makes life simpler (and cheaper).

Update 2 Feb 2023 – it seems users are having difficulty using the built-in pattern generator on 2022 LG OLED screens including the popular C2 series. After a firmware update middle of 2022 from LG, the pattern generator is producing incorrect colours and making calibration impossible. There was a firmware update in Jan 2023 which seemed to fix part of it, but there are still ongoing problems. Portrait Displays tell us it is still in active development and a further fix will be needed from LG via another firmware. We are keeping an eye on the situation and will follow up with Portrait Displays for updates. In the mean time, by all means try to use this process, but it may not work on a C2 at the moment in which case you would need to wait for an update from LG/Portrait. Alternatively you could still use an external pattern generator, but that seems an excessive and expensive step.

Select the relevant model for your TV – here we have selected LG – 2020/2021 OLED as we are calibrating an LG CX OLED TV. We should note here that you might see some references online to selecting your TV source as LG 2019 when calibrating the HDR mode, even if your TV is a 2020 model. This relates to an issue with an older 2020 model firmware where it was not generating the right HDR test patterns, but this has been resolved and as long as your TV is running a recent/current firmware you can select the 2020 TV model here without issue for all calibrations (SDR, HDR and DV). For 2022 models like the C2, select “2020/2021 Alpha 9” as well, that will work with those models even though Portrait Displays haven’t yet updated the software “officially”.

The TV itself should switch in to a grey scale pattern page which means the pattern generator is now active, at which point you will need to use your laptop or other display to continue using and controlling the Calman software. This has activated the internal pattern generator from the TV and you should see the Source tab turn green and have ‘LG’ listed

The last step is to connect the software to the TV so that it can automatically control its settings, options and Look Up Tables (LUT) for you during the calibration. This is done using the ‘Direct Display Control’ (DDC) menu in the top right.

In this menu you can select the picture mode you want to calibratein the ‘Display Mode Selection’ drop down. Only some of the TV preset modes are accessible for hardware calibration but you have a good range you can use. You can also select the mode you’re going to calibrate later on in the software but it doesn’t hurt to do it here first. If the TV isn’t already in that mode it will switch in to it as well so you may see a visual change to the image on the screen.

Don’t bother increasing this to more points like 42 for SDR for instance as that is really intended only for use with a professional meter and if you use it with a normal colorimeter like the i1 Display Pro for instance it can lead to less accurate results than 26 pts, and take much longer to complete.

In the ‘luminance’ section you can use the slider to change the OLED light setting of the TV and control how bright you want it to be for SDR mode. If you press ‘measure luminance’ the meter will take measurements as you go continuously. This OLED light setting will depend on your ambient light conditions, viewing distance and preferences.

As the guidance says here, you want to get the TV set to about 15% brighter than your target in this step to account for the changes the following calibration sections will make. So if you want to reach 200 nits after calibration, use the “OLED light” slider and measurement step here to get the screen to about 230 nits. If you want to reach 100 then aim for 115 here. If you want to reach 150 aim for around 172.5.

It’s not recommended to change the OLED light setting in the TV OSD menu later on after calibration as it could impact other aspects of the setup (gamma, colour temp, colours) a little. Although minor changes to the OLED light aren’t going to make a huge difference so you don’t need to worry about that too much. If you need to tweak the OLED light later on in real use that’s not a huge issue. If you plan to enable the ‘auto’ energy saving feature (ok for SDR but really not good for HDR/DV) then you also don’t need to worry about this step much, as that feature would help control the OLED light setting using the ambient light sensor and could be useful for varying room lighting conditions. For optimal accuracy it’s not recommended to use that energy saving feature as it alters the OLED light, but it is never going to make major changes so won’t impact things that much. Through our testing the validated results were still very good even with auto energy saving enabled later.

This process calibrates the 1D LUT and corrects the colour temperature, white point and gamma of the display automatically for you, making adjustments to the screen’s hardware LUT. It takes around 28 minutes with an X-rite i1 Display Pro

After the calibration you can also click the “100” patch at the bottom of the screen and press the play button on the right. That will measure a single white patch and on the screen it will confirm your peak luminance. You have the option here to tweak the OLED light control using the slider to get back to your target of 200 nits or whatever you’d targeted earlier.

The AutoCal calibration has ended, but do not un-tick the ‘enable calibration’ box yet. We want to make some shadow detail corrections before we finish. This will make corrections to the very darkest shades to ensure you can see all the relevant detail in dark scenes. This step is necessary because each OLED panel sample varies somewhat and in the very darkest tones it’s hard for AutoCal and most meters to do this for you.

Some people choose to complete this step after the 1D LUT (greyscale) but before the 3D LUT (colour gamut) stage. We have spoken at length in the past with Tyler Pruitt, formerly of Portrait Displays and the man behind their own video guides and the software’s functionality for Shadow Detail Correction. He confirmed on several occasions that it does not actually matter at which stage you complete the Shadow Detail Correction (SDC), and in fact on balance he found it better to complete this step after BOTH 1D and 3D LUT. That’s how we have it written in this guide as we believe most people will find it simpler, but by all means complete it after 1D and before 3D LUT if you prefer.

Guidance from Portrait displays nowadays is to do it beforethe 3D LUT, but we believe this is probably based on the old guides which Tyler produced, which were all recorded based on doing it at that stage, probably more for convenience and time saving when creating the guide than any real reason from a calibration point of view. i.e. you definitely need to have completed the 1D LUT stage for greyscale before you do shadow detail, but for creating the video there was no real need to complete the 3D LUT stage with extra time. We are not aware of any technical reason why it needs to be completed before the 3D LUT instead of afterwards and there are some arguments for doing it at the end we think.

This should pop up the DDC control menu, it should be on the ‘RGB adjust’ page as shown above, you need to use the scroll arrows to move to the ‘display controls’ menu page.

You should see some of your settings in this page from earlier on (ignore the screenshot here). Scroll down to the bottom to the ‘OLED shadow detail’ sliders

The setting to adjust is the ‘OLED shadow detail value’. While observing the test patterns on the screen move the slider up a fair amount (200 or so to start with) and press the ‘commit = on/off’ button to activate the change. This should update the appearance of the grey shades on your screen. Having made a fairly big change on the slider here, you will hopefully see a fairly noticeable change on the shades. You need to then move it up or down, pressing ‘commit’ each time, until you’ve honed in on the right level for your panel. You can change this as many times as you want, so just experiment. There is no default or recommended value here, as it will depend on your individual TV sample, and the calibration you’ve just performed.

In SDR shadow detail correction there is a veryminor difference between the visual grey shade values you can see when you disconnect the calibration session by unticking the “enable calibration” box on this tab. For the highest level of accuracy some people recommend that you should untick “enable calibration”, observe the shadow detail test pattern, re-tick “enable calibration”, move the slider, press commit to make the change, un-tick, observe the patterns again and repeat. This is the “recommended” approach from Portrait Displays as well from recent conversations we’ve had with them (since Tyler has now left), although it is worth noting that this was not included in any of Tyler’s original guidance or videos (still used and live on Portrait’s website), and at no point did it come up in our discussions and his proof-reading of this guide.

For those interested we also re-validated the screen using our UPRtek MK550T spectroradiometer as the meter to confirm that the white point (D65) had been met properly, and that the greyscale and colour performance was accurate. i.e. we made sure that our spectro device agreed with the results the X-rite i1 Display Pro was reporting above. They did, since we had profiled our meter against this spectro first, so they agreed nicely with one another. We talk about Meter Profiling in our supplementary article here. Without it you may find some varied results in visual performance when using a non-profiled colorimeter on a screen like this. Some people report some slight colour tints on white content. For optimal accuracy you will ideally want to profile your meter against a spectro reference device if you can.

You can turn back on any video features you might want like the motion features, increase the sharpness control or whatever you like which are independent for each input selection. So again make sure you’ve set those up for each input as you like them. Do not change the settings for brightness, contrast or anything to do with colour as this would disrupt your calibration you’ve just spent all that time doing. While it’s best to leave OLED light at the setting you selected during calibration you can change it a bit without impacting anything much as that just controls the brightness of the pixels/screen. If you find you need to tweak this afterwards that’s ok. Again check this is set to the desired level for each input. We would NOT recommend using ECO mode though as that will impact all modes and particularly impact HDR and Dolby Vision content.

We will now talk through the process for calibrating the HDR mode which will be used for a lot of content including HDR movies, games and content from your PC (if connected) and some other HDR TV sources. There is a separate mode for Dolby Vision (DV) content that we will go through after. We like to calibrate two of the HDR modes on the LG OLED TV’s. We use ‘HDR Cinema’ for movies, videos and general HDR content. That’s the mode we have active when watching HDR PC content, or other general HDR 10 or HLG input sources. Then we calibrate a second mode‘HDR Game’which we set as active for PC gaming, or as the default for consoles connected when they enter HDR mode (PS5, Xbox Series X etc). The HDR Game mode carries the low input lag mode so is optimal for gaming.

Let’s start with getting the TV in to HDR mode first. You have two choices here as you need to trigger first of all the screen to enter HDR mode by displaying some kind of HDR input signalThe normal option is to use Portrait Display’s free 1 hour HDR sample video. Download it and put this on a USB stick and connect that stick directly in to the TV via one of the USB ports on the back or side. Using the TV remote, navigate to the USB folder input where you can then play that file directly. It will put your TV in to HDR mode. One limitation of this method is because the TV detects the file as a media movie, you cannot use or enter or calibrate the ‘HDR Game’ mode when using this method. If you’re using this method then you need to leave the HDR video playing, and then control the Calman software on the laptop screen, as the TV will now be playing that video in HDR mode instead of showing the Calman software.

Load up the Calman software (leaving the video playing on the TV if you’ve used that method above) and follow the workflow steps. On the welcome page select OLED and HDR from the drop down menus.

Update 2 Feb 2023– it seems users are having difficulty using the built-in pattern generator on 2022 LG OLED screens including the popular C2 series. After a firmware update middle of 2022 from LG, the pattern generator is producing incorrect colours an