Experts Are Strictly OLED Fans
Planning to invest in a big new telly in time for the darker evenings and the Strictly and Bake Off seasons? If so, you may need to know the difference between QLED and OLED!
One small stroke on the first letter separates them on paper, but technologically the gulf is huge, and so is the market view of their relative performance. On an OLED (Organic LED) screen, every single pixel lights up independently emitting its own colour with a high level of accuracy, so the clarity of the picture displayed is exceptional.
QLED (Quantum LED) screens, however, are a misnomer.
They are not really LED screens at all.
Like LCD Screens, they rely on backlighting.
They use chemical reactions to incoming signals to block out components of the backlight, pixel by pixel, allowing each to appear with the right mix of red, green and blue. The net result gives OLED a significant edge on performance, because it fails to completely eliminate leakage between its pixels.
This means that it also struggles to produce a pure black because it cannot block out the backlighting from a pixel.
Furthermore, OLED screens can be produced significantly thinner because they do not need the backlighting layer and they also respond faster to the incoming signals.
OLED does not have it all its own way, though, because the largest built so far is a 55-inch screen compared to a 77-inch QLED screen.
While unproven as yet, the lifespan of an OLED screen is notably shorter in theory, with the ‘organic’ pixels dimming after years of use.
The experts, though, are of one mind. They say OLED wins.
