If you’re planning to buy a new TV, you must have come across two terms – OLED and QLED. While both these appear similar, there is a considerable difference between the two.
What is QLED TV?
QLED is the short form for Quantum Light-Emitting Diode. For starters, a QLED TV is like a normal LED TV but uses nanoparticles to charge the brightness and color. These nanoparticles are called quantum dots.
What is OLED TV?
OLED means Organic Light-Emitting Diode. In comparison to a QLED TV, there’s no concept of an LED backlight here as every single pixel in an OLED TV is a tiny LED itself, and each micro-LED is capable of producing light and color on its own.
QLED vs OLED
While buying a TV you must understand the difference between QLED and OLED, and the advantage each technology provides. In this section, we will compare the brightness level, contrast, viewing angles, and response time of both the technologies.
Black and Contrast Levels
While evaluating the display quality of a panel, the contrast level depicts the difference between the darkest part from the brightest part. In comparison between OLED and QLED screens, OLED reigns as the better display with impressive black levels due to its ability to go completely black when required.
On the other hand, the QLED displays show the black color by dimming the LED backlights of a particular portion and blocking the remaining light. This process is not foolproof as some light may spill on to the black section of the screen causing the ‘light bleeding’ effect.
Brightness Level
QLED panels have a high brightness level due to the use of separate backlights. Quantum dots can increase the light by producing brighter hues in the color spectrum. That is why QLED TVs are sufficiently bright to be seen clearly in brightly lit rooms.
OLED panels have light-emitting pixels that can’t compete in terms of pure brightness with QLED panels. While this is not a problem in a dim/dark room, in well-lit spaces QLED screens have a definite advantage.
Color Space
Both QLED and OLED panels have fantastic color accuracy, color brightness, and color volume. With the use of quantum dots in QLED panels, a wide range of better-saturated colors at high brightness levels is achieved.
Even the OLED panels have brilliant color reproduction and detail due to the individual light-emitting pixels with high color accuracy. Hence, in terms of color space both QLED and OLED panels deliver an equal level of performance.
Response time and Refresh Rate
Response time is the time taken by a pixel to change from one state to another. Lower the response time, the higher will be the sharpness and crispness of an image. A QLED TV has a response time of 2 to 8 milliseconds, while an OLED’s response time is only 0.1 millisecond. As the OLED panels have a much faster response time, it results in a better image output.
The refresh rate is the number of times per second a panel updates the contents of the screen. It is somewhat related to frame-rate, which is the number of times your TV receives an update from the input source. Both refresh rate and frame-rate have to be multiples of each other to ensure a smooth viewing experience.
However, if you’re playing an FPS game, the frame-rate can become irregular and cause screen-tearing. To prevent this, TVs require a feature called VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) that allows your TV to modify its native refresh rate as per the variable frame-rate.
At present, only the OLED TVs by LG support G-Sync (a version of VRR developed by Nvidia). Given OLED’s better performance in response time and refresh rate, it wins this category.
Viewing Angles
In the case of QLED screens, the best viewing angle is at the center while the picture quality decreases in color, contrast, and brightness level as you move from one side to another. While the level of severity could be different among different models – it’s still noticeable.
In OLED screens, you will notice no luminance degradation from any angle. Even if some QLED TVs use anti-reflective layers to preserve the picture quality, OLED TVs are still at a considerable advantage.
Eye Comfort
Eye fatigue can be a real symptom if you spend long hours staring at your TV screen. The major cause of eye fatigue is due to excessive blue light production in the LED-backlit panels.
In QLED TVs, the high level of intense blue light production can cause irritable eyes and other health problems. In comparison, OLED TVs provide better eye comfort as the level of blue light production is significantly lesser than the QLED TVs.
Conclusion
Both OLED and QLED technologies are impressive in their ways. QLED provides better brightness levels, longer lifespan, and larger screen sizes at lower price tags. While OLED provides better viewing angles, deeper black levels, and is healthier for your eyes.
The decision to choose between the two could be subjective but based on overall performance and picture quality, OLED is the winner.