OLED vs QLED TVs: What’s the Difference? – Gizmodo Australia

Theres a fierce battle raging between OLED and the suspiciously similar-sounding QLED, and it all might be a bit baffling if youre in the market for a new TV. But whats the real difference between the technologies?
Wander into any retailer that sells TVs and youll be met with walls quite literally in these days of ever-expanding TV sizes of panels all extolling their virtues and price points. At the cheapest end of town LCDs still dominate, but if your budget stretches to mid-high-end TVs, youll see a lot of conflicting text praising OLED or QLED. Its a battle that can leave you more than a little confused!
There are numerous brands offering up OLED TVs, with the majority actually relying on panels produced by the display arm of LG Electronics. Yep, thats right, your fancy new Sony or Panasonic OLED TV is, at one level, actually a fancy new LG TV. Including, of course, the ones sold by LG, although theyre technically LG OLED TVs sold by LG Electronics, not by LG Display.
Yes, sorting out the business structures of Korean TV makers is confusing as hell, but thats probably not the point.
The primary brand that pushes QLED is also Korean: LGs arch-rival, Samsung.
So does Samsung have some kind of exclusive on exceptional next-generation TV technology that nobody else can match?
No, not really. To understand why, you have to delve into the way that TV displays are manufactured.
OLED Explained
OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode, which uses organic pixels that emit their own individual lights. This gives them incredible contrast, because each individual pixel can, if needed to, switch fully on or off on its own.
Theres no need for a heavy or hot backlight, refresh rates are exceptional and because each pixel produces both light and colour, image quality is generally regarded as absolute best-in-class by most TV reviewers.
There are some challenges for OLED, however. While contrast on these sets is amazing, theyre typically not quite as bright as the competing QLED panels, which can create challenges if theyre used in bright environments although conversely that means theyre generally preferable when youre watching movies in a darkened home theatre room.
To date, LG Display has concentrated on building quite large OLED panels, and that means theres a dearth of smaller and more affordable OLED models. If you love the picture quality of OLED, even if you can score a good deal on a set, youre going to have to put up with a larger TV.
In an ironic quirk, while OLED TV panel manufacture is largely an LG Display business, in the smartphone space where OLED displays are seen as preferable, the primary producer is Samsung.
Thats not just for its own phone such as the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra but even competitor handsets like the Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max.
QLED Explained
Theres not much doubt that the naming for QLED exists to invite a little confusion in the minds of TV buyers, because it really is very similar to OLED.
The Q in this case stands for Quantum Dot so strictly speaking it should be QDLED, but thats hard to say and the QLED process involves what is basically a standard LED LCD TV, but with nanoparticles those quantum dots used to boost colour and contrast capabilities.
You could build a QLED TV that worked like an OLED with each quantum dot emitting its own light and colour, but thats not quite what you get on a Samsung QLED TV.
Instead, Samsung uses quantum dots in a film in front of an LED panel, so its still relying on a regular backlight for the first phase of its panel illumination. As such, compared to an OLED, QLED panels tend to be a touch heavier and run warmer over time. However, as noted above, that backlight can make them a slightly better option if youre placing your TV in a spot where it gets hit with a lot of sunlight, because the enhanced illumination can help to deal with glare issues.
Theres a lot more variety in sizing for QLED panels at the time of writing than there are for OLEDs, and that has two effects. Firstly, and pretty obviously you can score a QLED TV for less than an OLED, because they come in smaller sizes. That also means if youre using an area where a larger TV doesnt make sense, you may have to settle for a QLED, because smaller OLED TVs really arent a thing right now.
OLED vs QLED: The burn-in controversy
Where Samsung tries to score points for QLED over OLED is panel longevity. The nature of construction of OLED panels raises the spectre of screen burn-in. Ask LG if this is a real issue and theyll say that most sets under normal use shouldnt see problems. The use of shouldnt is careful there, because there is the potential for issues over the full life of an OLED panel if you watch the same content, and especially content with sustained persistent images on screen.
The easiest way to explain that is to think about those onscreen bugs that TV channels love to slap onto their content to explain ownership of it. If you watched a lot of a channel that had that screen ident in place all day, every day, youre inviting potential burn-in on an OLED panel where that ident sits. QLED does not have this issue, or at least not anywhere near the same extent, due to the underlying manufacturing process.
That being said, if you swap channels around on a regular basis, you might never see any burn-in issues on an OLED at all.
What about this MicroLED thing Ive heard of?
Image: Samsung
Theres another emerging TV standard, and thats microLED.
Samsung made quite a splash at recent CES shows with its microLED Wall TVs, which come in sizes up to 219 inches. No, that wasnt a typo Samsung has a TV that may be bigger than the wall in your apartment right now.
MicroLED isnt really about size, but a technology approach that is in most ways very similar to that of OLED. Where OLED uses organic pixels, microLED uses sets of non-organic LEDs to provide much the same individualised pixel-level brightness and colour control for improved fidelity. Samsungs claim with microLED is that its a best-of-both-worlds situation, because you get the perfect contrast of an OLED but the brightness benefits of an LED, along with a claimed longer lifespan for the panels altogether.
However, MicroLED is very new technology, and tricky to build, which means that MicroLED TVs are likely to command a price premium over their OLED and especially QLED counterparts for some time to come.
OLED vs QLED: which one is better right now?
For most TV purposes OLED is viewed as the current best-of-breed thanks to its incredible contrast and picture fidelity, as long as youre happier with a larger TV size and most of us are and asking prices for OLED panels.
QLED is a smart evolution of existing technology, and it shouldnt be discounted when youre making a TV purchase, especially in those smaller sizes and in the competitive environment of TV sales. If you can score a QLED TV at the right price youre not likely to be terribly disappointed.
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