QLED and OLED are two display technologies that offer different advantages and disadvantages. Read here why an OLED TV should deliver the more intensive colors and why a QLED device scores in terms of brightness.
The terms QLED and OLED refer to two screen technologies that could hardly be more different. Both technologies are closely linked to one manufacturer each. For a long time, only LG produced OLED screens for televisions, but other manufacturers now also offer OLED televisions, such as Sony, Loewe or Philips. You can find QLED screens from Samsung, Hisense or Tcl. You can read about the technical differences between QLED and OLED and the advantages and disadvantages of the technologies here.
What is the difference between QLED and OLED?
The difference between QLED and OLED is purely technological. Simple explanation: With OLED, the iodes light up by themselves. With QLED televisions, an LED backlight lets the pixels shine. So QLED is the improvement of the already known LCD technology, whereas OLED is a separate technology. In comparison, OLED TVs are thinner and have higher contrast.
With QLED televisions, there are several layers on top of each other. These layers include a polarizing filter, an RGB filter, a background filter and of course the backlight. That makes the TVs thicker than OLED sets, which don’t need those layers. A disadvantage of many QLED TVs compared to OLED is that they are a bit lower in contrast. The reason for this is the backlighting of the QLED televisions, which also illuminates dark screen areas and thus “greys out” the black. Top models like the Samsung Q95T therefore offer dimming zones, i.e. areas in the display that the television illuminates brighter or darker and thus gets the problem under control.
By the way: With Samsung, you can recognize the inch size by the code after the “GQ”. So the 65 stands for 65 inches on the Samsung GQ-65Q950T. It is one of the manufacturer’s current top models and has a resolution of 8K. It’s still oversized and you’ll be safe with a 4K TV for years to come.
An OLED screen does not need dimming zones. With him, each light-emitting diode can decide for itself whether and how intensely it lights up. And so OLED TVs get better contrast and deeper black than QLED TVs. If an iode does not light up, it is simply black – but the one next to it has no problem shining in bright white. In addition, OLED displays have better viewing angles than QLED TVs. If you look at the screen from the side, you can see the colors better with OLED. But the televisions have one weakness: bright images such as snow-white mountain peaks are usually too dark.
What is QLED?
Let’s take a closer look at QLED technology. It is said to be the best that LED screens have to offer, because they are considered to be LCD televisions with particularly high color and contrast. It is a further development of LCD screens with so-called “quantum dots”, which give the name the Q. LCD stands for “Liquid Crystal Display”: Electrical impulses change the alignment of the crystals and the amount of light they let through can be varied.
This is how different colors are created. However, since the crystals do not light up themselves, the so-called backlight (background light) is required. The light is generated by LEDs, which give the LCD television the name LED TV. The further development to QLED televisions mainly affects the backlight, because with QLED televisions another layer, the Quantum Dots, is placed over the existing LED filters. They ensure that the television can display brighter and more colorful images.
QLED TV: Samsung Q60R
Although there are now several manufacturers of QLED TVs, Samsung is particularly well-known and popular. The manufacturer advertises that the QLED devices from Samsung can upscale the image to an impressive 8K with impressive computing power and artificial intelligence. However, the 8K-capable televisions are expensive to buy. If you are looking for a good QLED entry-level TV, you should take a look at the Samsung Q60R. The TV has QLED technology and should also impress gamers with a very short latency time. Ambient mode is designed to adapt the TV to the environment in a pleasant way. The Quantum Processor 4K is said to continuously optimize picture and sound with the help of artificial intelligence. The smart TV can also be controlled via voice command and is compatible with Alexa and the Google Assistant.
What is OLED?
The most important difference between a QLED and an OLED television is that OLED does without a backlight, because it is the pixels themselves that light up. They consist of millions of tiny light-emitting diodes made of organic material – this explains the “O” in the name, which stands for the English word “organic”. An organic light-emitting diode is a luminous thin-film device made from organic semiconducting materials. The technology is used in TV screens because organic light-emitting diodes can be manufactured cheaply using thin-film technology. Unlike QLED screens, the black should be particularly intense because it is not brightened by the backlight. Colors in front of the deep black background should also appear more intense.
OLED TV: LG OLED55CX9LA
LG has various OLED TVs that differ in terms of features and price. The OLED55CX9LA model is equipped with the powerful α9 Gen3 processor, which automatically optimizes picture, sound and brightness. In addition, the device has Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos as well as HDR technology, so that contrast and colors are to be adjusted dynamically. A 4K resolution should enable a sharp picture and the TV is equipped with Google Assistant and Alexa. Interesting for gamers: LG’s OLED television has a response time of one millisecond. Both AMD Freesync and Nvidia’s G-Sync are on board the TV. Both technologies reduce distorted images when gaming.
Note: The article was first published in June 2020.
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