If you have the money to spend and your priority is getting the best possible screen quality from your TV, smartphone or gadget, we'd say that OLED is absolutely worth the money. Your experience with the colours and contrast of movies, streaming shows, documentaries and games will never be better.
OLED: the verdict. Both of these technologies are impressive in their own ways, but we're here to pick a winner, and for the moment, it's OLED. With better performance in the categories that most people will notice while watching TV shows and movies, it's still the best picture quality you can buy.
OLED is a fundamentally different technology from LCD, the major type of TV. QLED is a variation of LED LCD, adding a quantum dot film to the LCD "sandwich." OLED is "emissive," meaning the pixels emit their own light. QLED, like LCD, is "transmissive" in its current form and relies on an LED backlight.
Besides the noted advantages of OLED display, some of the disadvantages include: Shorter lifetime then some other display technologies. This shorter lifetime is mainly due to the blue organic material but lifetime gets better all the time but is also due to moisture migration. Poor sunlight readability.
Durability. LED TVs have been around for many years and have proven to be extremely reliable, typically providing many years of trouble-free service. OLED TVs haven't been around as long, but their expected lifespan is around 100,000 hours (similar to LED TVs).
If you have the money to spend and your priority is getting the best possible screen quality from your TV, smartphone or gadget, we'd say that OLED is absolutely worth the money. Your experience with the colours and contrast of movies, streaming shows, documentaries and games will never be better.
If you use your OLED TV in this manner, or if you use it as a monitor, you are at higher risk of burn-in than the average consumer. We recommend turning your TV off periodically in order to give its pixels a rest.
OLED TVs Are Susceptible to Burn-Ins
This occurs due to uneven degradation of pixels over a long period. The individual pixels that turn on to display static images on your TV degrade faster than the pixels surrounding them. This image retention is permanent, and you'll notice it the most when your screen is white.
The organic material in OLED TVs (OLED stands for “Organic Light Emitting Diode”) potentially wears out over time. It is for this reason in part that Samsung decided to stop using OLED technology in its TVs in 2012 and proceeded to develop the new QLED technology.
OLED TVs have great picture quality; however, there are concerns about their long-term performance due to the possibility of permanent image retention, commonly referred to as burn-in. Our previous 20 hours per day burn-in test ran for a little over two years, and the OLED TV has permanent image retention.
OLED minimizes eye strain by eliminating flicker that can't be detected by the naked eye and glare that disrupts your viewing experience. OLED self-emissive technology controls light and colors by pixel, it reproduces perfect blacks without halo effect.
The lifespan of OLED TVs is a common concern among consumers, but the technology has proven to be reliable and durable. OLED TVs are known to have a lifespan of around 100,000 hours, which is equivalent to over a decade of use (with an average of 8-10 hours of watching hours daily).
An OLED display have the following advantages over an LCD display: Improved image quality - better contrast, higher brightness, fuller viewing angle, a wider color range and much faster refresh rates.
OLED TVs use tiny organic LEDs for each pixel, and the brightness of these LEDs fades over time. As a result, OLED TVs, like LED-backlit LCD TVs, lose brightness over time. However, OLED TVs will take more than 10 years of regular use to cause any noticeable brightness reduction.
Image burn-in can not be fixed, repaired, or reversed; once it happens, the display screen will suffer from continual image quality degradation. The term burn-in dates back to when old monitors using phosphor compounds that emit light to produce images lost their luminance due to severe usage in specific display areas.
An OLED TV is not only beneficial for better sleep by emitting lower levels of bluelight but also a better choice to minimize eye strain as it is free from flickers or glares. To top it off, OLED has stunning picture quality as well.”
“There is no direct relationship between OLED screen and eye harm.” Communication industry professionals also said that human eyes are almost imperceptible to the flickering of OLED screens. “Visual fatigue may be caused by staring at the screen for too long.”
OLEDs also tend to have slightly higher energy consumption than LEDs, but not if you're using a bright LED TV and watching HDR content. You can use our power consumption calculator above to give you an estimate of how much you'll be spending on electricity annually, but it all depends on the type of content you watch.
In terms of picture quality, OLED TVs are generally considered to be the better option due to their perfect blacks and infinite contrast. However, QLED TVs can still produce very high levels of brightness and colour accuracy, and they are often more affordable than OLED TVs.
One of the simplest ways to protect your OLED TV from burn-in and image retention is to adjust the settings according to your viewing habits and preferences. For example, you can lower the brightness, contrast, and OLED light levels to reduce the stress on the pixels and extend their lifespan.
Pros and Cons
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.
QLED displays handle motion better than OLEDs since most QLEDs offer variable refresh rates (VRR) and low input lag. Also, QLED TVs are generally less expensive and readily available in most markets, unlike QNED displays.
Sony stands out a little more for better overall color quality and any image-processing around objects where there is less blur on screen. Where LG stands out is with its alpha9 Gen4 AI processors that are in their most recent OLED TVs.
Thanks to a panel design that's fundamentally different from LCD TVs, OLED TVs naturally produce perfectly inky black levels, highly saturated colors, smooth motion, and superior viewing angles. In short, OLED TVs provide the best picture quality around—but they're priced accordingly.
OLED technology allows for thinner, lighter, and more flexible displays than traditional light-emitting diode (LED) technology, as well as better picture quality in key respects. With an OLED display, light is produced with organic molecules, eliminating the need for a separate backlight.