Harry Williams
Member
The most useful line in the current crop of TV tech explainers has nothing to do with panel physics. There are two kinds of television: OLED, where each pixel makes its own light, and LCD, where a panel filters light from a backlight. Everything else on the shop floor - QLED, mini LED, QD-OLED, Micro RGB, True RGB - describes a variation of one of those two, and most of those names came out of a marketing department rather than an engineering one.
What actually settles the decision is size and room light. OLED tops out at 97 inches and in practice you are choosing between 77 and 83, because the motherglass OLED panels are cut from cannot be made as large as LCD motherglass and the cost climbs hard at the top. LCD runs to 115 or 116 inches for the same reason in reverse. If the wall calls for a hundred inch screen, the acronym argument is over before it starts.
Then light. OLED gives you black that is genuinely black, because a pixel that is off emits nothing at all. LCD reaches brightness OLED cannot touch, with peak figures quoted as high as 10,000 nits on some sets, but the LCD layer never fully blocks its backlight, so dark room contrast is always a compromise regardless of how many dimming zones are advertised.
So: controlled dark room, under 83 inches, OLED. Bright room with windows, or a screen bigger than OLED is made in, LCD, and spend your attention on how the local dimming is implemented rather than on the badge.
What I would actually like to read is from someone who moved from a good mini LED to an OLED in a bright room and regretted it. Does that person exist here?
What actually settles the decision is size and room light. OLED tops out at 97 inches and in practice you are choosing between 77 and 83, because the motherglass OLED panels are cut from cannot be made as large as LCD motherglass and the cost climbs hard at the top. LCD runs to 115 or 116 inches for the same reason in reverse. If the wall calls for a hundred inch screen, the acronym argument is over before it starts.
Then light. OLED gives you black that is genuinely black, because a pixel that is off emits nothing at all. LCD reaches brightness OLED cannot touch, with peak figures quoted as high as 10,000 nits on some sets, but the LCD layer never fully blocks its backlight, so dark room contrast is always a compromise regardless of how many dimming zones are advertised.
So: controlled dark room, under 83 inches, OLED. Bright room with windows, or a screen bigger than OLED is made in, LCD, and spend your attention on how the local dimming is implemented rather than on the badge.
What I would actually like to read is from someone who moved from a good mini LED to an OLED in a bright room and regretted it. Does that person exist here?
