It’s hard to beat the vibrant colors and leap-off-the-screen brightness that the best QLED TVs deliver. Then again, it’s equally difficult to replicate the insane black levels, ultra-rich colors, and incredible contrast of an OLED set. But what would happen if TV manufacturers decided to combine both of these amazing picture technologies? Such a leap of faith has already been taken, friends, and the result is the QD-OLED.
Introduced a couple of years back, QD-OLEDs are available from brands like Samsung and Sony, as well as Alienware (if you’re shopping for a QLED computer monitor). On paper, this display tech combines the best parts of both QLED and OLED models, which means these sets should be capable of getting nice and bright, while still delivering unbelievable contrast levels and a wide color gamut. But does this brilliant amalgamation actually deliver? Let’s take a closer look at the world of QD-OLEDs to find out.
What is QD-OLED?
Simply put, QD-OLED is a hybrid display technology that takes the already very impressive qualities of OLED TV and improves its brightness and color through the use of quantum dots.
The result is a TV that exhibits the stunning levels of contrast and perfect blacks of OLED while delivering brightness levels that exceed anything we’ve seen from OLED so far.
This “best of both worlds,” benefit was largely theoretical until we got a chance to see it for ourselves at CES 2022. Those impressions survived even once we brought the first two QD-OLED TVs in for testing: first with the Sony A95K, and then again with the Samsung S95B. Both TVs earned a rare 10/10 rating from our TV guru, Caleb Denison. And now each of these QD-OLEDs has jumped ahead to the next generation, with Samsung delivering the S95C model for 2023, and Sony bringing us the chart-topping A95L. Back in 2022, we also had the good fortune of reviewing one of Alienware’s terrific QD-OLED monitors.
Picture improvements aside, it’s also possible that over time, QD-OLED TVs may prove less expensive to buy than similarly sized OLED TVs. We’ll discuss this in more detail later. Since QD-OLED TVs are essentially an evolution of OLED, it’s expected that some of the clever things we’ve seen LG do with its OLED panels, like transparent displays and rollable displays, could be possible with QD-OLED models, too.
How does QD-OLED work?
To understand the inner workings of QD-OLED, we need to quickly explain the differences between QLED and OLED.
QLED TV
QLED TV uses four main elements to produce its pictures: An LED backlight, a layer of quantum dots, an LCD matrix, and a color filter.
The LED backlight produces all of the brightness you see — and modern LED backlights can produce a lot of brightness, far more than OLED light sources. But achieving that brightness while maintaining a full-spectrum white, is difficult.
The solution: Start with a really bright blue LED light source, then use red and green quantum dots to balance the blue into a full spectrum of white. Because quantum dots can be tuned to emit specific colors and, amazingly, can do this at a nearly 100% efficiency level, QLED TVs get a much-needed improvement to their color accuracy without sacrificing any brightness or needing to use more energy.
From there, the purified white light passes through the LCD matrix (which is responsible for the images you see, and how bright or dark areas of the screen are) and, finally, through the color filter, which converts the white light into the right amounts of red, green, and blue so that we see true color images.
It’s a good system that produces bright and very colorful images. It’s also quite affordable to produce because, except for the quantum dots, all of the components have been around for decades, and are now “cheap” to make.
But it has drawbacks, too. No matter how hard the LCD matrix tries, it can’t block 100% of the light from coming through in dark scenes, so you never get that perfect, inky black that you see on an OLED TV. The LCD matrix also creates problems for off-angle viewing because it tends to “tunnel” light straight outward from the screen.
QLED also has to use more energy to create the brightness you see because the combination of the LCD matrix and the color filter diminishes the light the LED backlight generates. This makes QLED TVs less energy efficient than OLED TVs.
Finally, and this may only matter to decor-oriented TV buyers, all of those elements add up to a thicker overall TV panel.
OLED TV
OLED TV uses an OLED light source and a color filter to produce its image.
That sounds remarkably simple compared to QLED TV, and it is. Thanks to the emissive nature of the basic element of OLED TV — the OLED pixel — this one ingredient can take care of brightness and image creation, essentially fulfilling the roles of both the LED backlight and the LCD matrix in QLED TV.
Without an LCD matrix, viewing angles with OLED TVs are as near-perfect as we’ve ever seen. You can sit wherever you like and still see the same levels of brightness, contrast, and color.
And as we’ve already hinted, because OLED pixels can be shut off completely when an image calls for perfect blackness, that’s exactly what you get: No light being emitted at all.
But OLED TV isn’t perfect either. You can only derive so much brightness from an OLED pixel. It’s excellent in low-light conditions, but it simply can’t compete with QLED’s dedicated LED backlight in brighter environments. If you’ve ever looked at a QLED and OLED TV side by side in a brightly lit Costco warehouse and found the QLED TV more appealing, it’s probably due to its superior brightness.
OLED TV brightness is lower than QLED for two main reasons. First, and most importantly, each OLED pixel creates its own light. But the more power you drive through an OLED pixel, the more you shorten its lifespan. So OLED TVs could probably get brighter than they do today, but few buyers would be OK with a TV that only lasted half as long. The LEDs used in a QLED TV’s backlight are far less susceptible to this kind of aging and can continue to produce lots of light for a long time.
Second, no matter how much light an OLED pixel can create, some of that light will be absorbed by the color filter.
OLED panels are also susceptible to something known as burn-in. If you display the same kind of content on an OLED TV for tons of consecutive hours — say a lower info banner on a news channel or a control panel in a video game — it can cause those pixels to age at a faster rate than the pixels that are constantly displaying different images.
The residual “shadow” of that static content is called burn-in, and once it happens, it’s usually permanent.
Finally, because the large-format OLED panel market is effectively a monopoly, with just one company — LG Display — manufacturing and selling them to companies like LG, Sony, Philips, and Vizio, it will remain more expensive than QLED for some time to come.
