OLED vs QLED TV: Don't make a mistake By Jon Rettinger

A portion of this video is sponsored by Squarespace, the premier resource for creating and managing your own website, all right, let's check which is better OLED or led. What 79 million 900 000 results, nope, nope, nope, nope, so yeah we've all been there, you're shopping for TVs, and you don't know which one to get maybe you're shopping online. You can't even see the sets in person. It could be daunting and try to figure out which tech and which TV is best for you. Buying a TV is not something you do every year. Every few years you want to make sure you're, making the right long term decision and right now there are two main TV technologies out there, led and OLED, as you try to decide which set to buy I'm helping answer all the questions and demystify the technology behind both and help you make the right buying decision.

So before we get into specifics now at least explain what each of technologies mean, and I don't have a ROG in this fight. Whichever technology you get will be right for you. I just want to explain the differences. So, let's start with oled stands for organic light emitting diode, and essentially it treats every pixel kind of like its own miniscule. RGB light bulb, meaning each pixel is lighting up, changing color or turning off led, on the other hand, is sort of a new generation of led technology, and the q stands for quantum, and it's not quantum like avengers' endgame style, quantum, it's quantum in the sense of small.

So essentially it's a LED panel that has a tiny film on top of it. That reflects light when it's shown on it to either show red, green or blue. It's sort of just enhanced the color and vibrancy of what you already get from led panels. So, if you're looking to buy a led TV, you'll likely find them from really only three manufacturers, so the one we're using for this demonstration is TCL with their new 2026 series. We have a 55-inch variant here, but available in 65 or even smaller sizes, uh, there's Samsung at the high end and then there's sense or sitting below TCL, and those three companies together form what they call the led alliance and this technology was built to compete.

Head-To-Head against OLED, just at some lower price points. So led is a perfect technology and there are some instances we'll talk about where it's clearly a superior option to what you get with an OLED set. But there are a few examples where OLED is just the king. So as a general rule, OLED sets are usually thinner than what you get with LEDs. They don't have the whole backlit panel.

In fact, some OLED TVs are so thin that the hardware that makes them work is entirely separate box that attaches usually via a cable. So if you want a really flush wall mounted TV, usually OLED is going to be your best way to go, but probably the biggest advantage of an OLED set is the black levels, that's kind of always what you hear. That's where the big reason people are buying these TVs when the pixels are off, they are straight up black, because they're off and led and led just can't, compete with that, because those pixels are still on they're, just kind of dark gray that your brain usually sees as black. So if black levels are the most important thing to you, then an OLED set is going to be the way to go. So the other reason that a lot of people go for OLED and reason you might want to consider.

It is viewing angle, since they don't have a backlight. You don't have any variation in what you see on viewing angle, if you're off to the side, for example, it's going to look exactly the same as if you're looking at it straight on, because each pixel is kind of doing its own thing. Instead of relying on panels to sort of light up, all those pixels like you get with Colin and then the last big advantage of OLED is response time. If you are watching movies, sports, or you're a gamer, you won't have any sort of blur or ghosting that you might get with other technologies, not saying you'll get them with Qlik, but if you want the fastest refresh you can get. OLED is still at least generally the way to go.

So all OLED's got obviously a ton of advantages. There are areas where it's not perfect and perhaps the biggest one the Achilles heel of OLED technology is brightness, since each pixel is doing its thing, they just can't get as bright as cult sets can generally as a rule. So if your TV is put up in an area where you've got a lot of direct sunlight, you watch a lot of TV during the day, something you might want to be aware of. If you put the TV set side by side, you should be able to see a difference as somebody who owns an OLED set that is in sort of high light area. I don't notice it that much when you're, starting from true black, really any color next to that tends to look bright.

So, to my eye I don't mind it, but there are people that disagree that really want the brightest set possible and for those folks, led is generally going to be a better way to go. So one of the last areas of concern for OLA- and this is probably the most minor of all of them- is burn it- something that used to affect old plasma TVs that we saw. So if you don't know what Vernon is its one sort of you get an image that stays on the screen, something you're watching all the time, whether it's sports- and you know, ESPN logo is always in the same location or news where you've got a logo set in the same spot, or you play a game all the time. Ola tech has gotten pretty good about mitigating burning. Usually there are screen savers that will pop up and there's some screen kind of refreshes.

You can do inside the UI to sort of fix those issues. Current reports are generally saying takes about 4 000 hours to get burn in on a set, so not likely something that you're going to have to worry about. If you're the type of person who does and watches or plays the same thing over and over again for presumably up to four thousand hours, something to at least be aware of and obviously buying a TV like price is a big concern and traditionally OLED is going to be the more expensive technology. But there are some caveats. Obviously there are huge sales that go on, but if you're, comparing let's say a lg OLED or a Sony OLED to Samsung's top-of-the-line Qlik sets, there may not be that big, a huge difference, but as you drop through the led food chain- and you look at some of the TCL's and some high sense you'll see a bigger price variance there, but the lower down you go.

Absolutely the lesser Cuba technology you're getting, so the picture may not look as good. As for the higher end counterparts, that's oftentimes a misconception when you have a TV up on your wall, you don't have something else that you're comparing it to you, don't usually have two sets next to each other, like you'd, have at the best buy. What you have on your wall tends to look pretty good, because most TVs nowadays are some version of perfect, whichever tech you go for once, it's home probably enjoy it anyway. Now, on the flip end of that, led definitely has some advantages, and they're sort of they hit right at OLED's weaknesses and the biggest one is brightness they can just get brighter. They generally will have better color accuracy at peak brightness, which can give you generally better HDR picture, and then next you never have to worry about burning.

You could have that same sports ticker or same news logo up for more than 4 000 hours and never have to worry about getting that burn in on your set. So CLI is an awesome technology, but it's not perfect. There are some negatives to consider in cute lit the first one is generally. The panels are a little thicker because there's more tech inside it than what you have with most OLED sets, and usually they're the thickness of, like, let's say, a canvas and for a lot of people. It might not be a dealbreaker, but if you envision your set being super flush mounted against a wall, you may want to at least look at the thickness of your led set, but perhaps the biggest disadvantage of led speaks the advantage of OLED and that's black levels.

And I've talked about this. You know because there's backlight technology happening black is never really black. Really. The best you can get is a really dark. Dark gray.

The most expensive cue light sets do a perfect job of getting that gray as dark as possible and chances are. Your brain will see that and recognize it as black, and you may not notice a difference, but if you actually focus on the color itself, you will definitely see that it is not a true black. Another disadvantage. Here is viewing angles. You know, whereas OLED you could sit anywhere in a room and still get a beautiful picture because of that backlight tech you're not always going to get that same perfect, sweet spot.

You get if you're sitting in front of it. If you're off to the sides, you may start to see depending on the set you have, that edge like kind of bleeding through especially at night and the last probably major disadvantages- is potential blooming. That's kind of when you get a halo around really bright objects now higher end q. LEDs do a really nice job kind of mitigating that you'll see it on some lower end sets, and it's by no means a dealbreaker, something you at least may notice from time to time. Alright, so those are the pros and cons of the two different technologies.

The big question obviously is like which one are you going to get, and I don't know your budget or your size. So I can't speak to that, but I can't say generally who should get which set. So if all you care about is the best picture, you want the best image, and you're really not. That concerned about budget, then goo led you're, going to love those deep blacks and the amazing sort of picture fidelity that you can get from OLED, but if you're the type of TV buyer who's like. I just want.

The best value that I can get, and I want a really awesome picture, I think for everybody else. Led is a perfect option. You can pick and choose what kind of tech you want. You can pick the sizes that you want. It doesn't bother me that they're, not flush mounts and a perfect q-led picture generally looks almost as good as an OLED picture and again, if you don't have these two sets side by side, you're, never going to know the difference so sort of having sets available at various price points in various sizes and still getting a really awesome set.

I generally would recommend led to most, but again, if you want the absolute best picture, or you want a TV flush mount to a wall, and you want to have multiple viewing angles. OLED is still going to be the way to go. So at this point I think it's probably safe to say you are familiar with Squarespace right. I don't have to tell you what they do. You probably already know, but they do a lot of other things that you might not know.

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Source : Jon Rettinger