QLED vs. OLED: Which type of TV is better?

QLED and OLED are among the most popular tech­nolo­gies when it comes to choosing high-per­for­mance TVs and monitors. These two screen tech­nolo­gies differ in the way they work. OLED screens use self-il­lu­mi­nat­ing diodes, while QLED uses LED back­light­ing to il­lu­mi­nate the pixels. Which tech­nol­o­gy meets your needs the best?

What is QLED?

QLED tech­nol­o­gy is based on pixels. Each pixel has a color value, which forms the basic structure for every image we see on TVs, smart­phones, or monitors. They also provide the res­o­lu­tion, contrasts, and colors on screens. QLED tech­nol­o­gy turns pixels into images using a blue LED backlight that il­lu­mi­nates liquid crystals and a layer of nanopar­ti­cles called quantum dots. QLED is con­sid­ered an optimized version of LED or LCD screen tech­nolo­gies, which also use a backlight and a “liquid crystal display”, but they lack the quantum dots.

QLED’S advantage is the ad­di­tion­al quantum dots layer, which is in the liquid crystal layer. Quantum dots combined with the backlight and the LCD layer guarantee brighter and more intense color values. QLED boasts very high contrast and detail richness, intensive color re­pro­duc­tion and very high bright­ness values.

What is OLED?

OLED screens are in the segments of tele­vi­sions, monitors for PCs and laptops, as well as in smart­phones and game consoles. OLED stands for “organic light emitting diode”. OLED tech­nol­o­gy is special as it does not use back­light­ing for the pixels, unlike QLED and other image tech­nolo­gies such as LED. The pixels light up in­de­pen­dent­ly using organic, carbon-based light-emitting diodes.

Another special feature is that the self-luminous diodes can switch on and off. This enables deep black tone imaging and better contrasts. The adjacent diodes in OLED provide precise color control, which ensures sharp res­o­lu­tion, very high contrasts, sharp color edges and brilliant, intense colors, even at lateral viewing angles. No back­light­ing also allows for a thinner screen design. However, this is as­so­ci­at­ed with lower bright­ness.

Many OLED monitors offer a higher refresh rate compared to QLED. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fi­cial in gaming for main­tain­ing a razor-sharp res­o­lu­tion during fast frame changes.

Sim­i­lar­i­ties between QLED and OLED

QLED and OLED are in the upper class of screen tech­nolo­gies. They both surpass Full HD screens with res­o­lu­tions in 4K and 8K. If you’re setting up your own home theater or looking for a top monitor for your home office, you should consider QLED or OLED.

Dif­fer­ences between QLED and OLED

The dif­fer­ences are clear from a technical point of view. QLED has more advanced LCD tech­nol­o­gy that uses LED back­light­ing, a liquid crystal layer and an in­no­v­a­tive quantum dots layer. OLED elim­i­nates the backlight thanks to self-luminous diodes that also switch on and off in­de­pen­dent­ly.

QLED screens offer very high screen bright­ness, sharp res­o­lu­tion, and high color bril­liance, while OLED screens offer deeper blacks, sharper contrasts, and better colors. Therefore, OLED has better color accuracy than QLED. This is important if you depend on high color accuracy in the color spaces CMYK and RGB for design jobs.

In addition, OLED models usually have a very high refresh rate, a lighter con­struc­tion and a higher viewing angle thanks to the absence of a backlight. OLED’s dis­ad­van­tage is its sen­si­tiv­i­ty to external in­flu­ences such as oxygen and UV radiation. LED organic diodes have a natural ex­pi­ra­tion date. OLED screens last around 20,000 hours, while QLED with non-organic diodes have a service life of up to 100,000 hours.

If you want to connect two monitors or have different re­quire­ments for home theater and home office, you could use QLED as a second screen and OLED as the main screen.

QLED vs. OLED direct com­par­i­son

Our overview table sum­ma­rizes the important dif­fer­ences between QLED and OLED:

Which screen tech­nol­o­gy consumes more power?

The power con­sump­tion on PC or TV also is also worth con­sid­er­ing when choosing between QLED and OLED, as energy con­sump­tion varies for re­spec­tive screen tech­nolo­gies. QLED screens generally consume more power as they use a backlight that must con­tin­u­ous­ly il­lu­mi­nate liquid crystals and quantum dots to display images. OLED tech­nol­o­gy tends to consume less energy as there is no con­tin­u­ous backlight.

OLED’s in­di­vid­ual light points can turn them­selves on and off depending on the picture, which also has a positive effect on power con­sump­tion. In general, QLED TVs consume about 15 percent more power than OLEDs when used regularly.

What other screen tech­nolo­gies are available besides QLED and OLED?

QLED and OLED are among the most sought-after screen tech­nolo­gies when buying TVs, monitors, laptops, and smart­phones. This is due to very high res­o­lu­tion, optimal colors, and bright images. Although there are some specific technical dif­fer­ences between QLED and OLED, both tech­nolo­gies offer ex­cep­tion­al picture quality.

There are other screen tech­nolo­gies currently available on the market and there are others that are expected to emerge in the future. These include:

• LED/LCD: The terms LED and LCD are used in­ter­change­ably to refer to the classic LCD screens that use liquid crystal displays in con­junc­tion with LED back­light­ing. The liquid crystal ori­en­ta­tions and the amount of light they allow to pass through is con­trolled by elec­tri­cal pulses. LCD screens offer a long service life as they do not use organic materials.
• Micro/Mini-LED: Similar to OLED, screens with micro-LED tech­nol­o­gy use pixels and subpixels that can light up and switch off in­de­pen­dent­ly. However, unlike OLEDs, they are made of synthetic material rather than organic material and therefore, offer a longer shelf life. Micro-LED is also con­sid­ered a com­peti­tor tech­nol­o­gy to OLED.
• NanoCell: This is a tech­nol­o­gy that is ex­clu­sive­ly offered by the man­u­fac­tur­er LG. NanoCell screens match QLED screens in terms of their per­for­mance and technical features. They also use a backlight, in com­bi­na­tion with an ad­di­tion­al NanoCell layer.
• QD-OLED: QD-OLED tech­nol­o­gy in­te­grates the QLED quantum dots into OLED tech­nol­o­gy. QD-OLED uses blue light-emitting diodes, rather than white, in com­bi­na­tion with a quantum dots layer of red and green QDs. This means there is no need for ad­di­tion­al color filters. QD-OLED covers an even wider color spectrum than con­ven­tion­al OLED screens and enables even higher viewing angle stability.

What role does OLED and QLED play for smart­phones?

The display quality is one of the deciding factors when choosing a smart­phone. High bright­ness, intense colors, good contrasts, and an ultra-sharp res­o­lu­tion are important. You will notice im­me­di­ate­ly when comparing smart­phones for OLED and QLED that smart­phones do not usually offer QLED tech­nol­o­gy. The choices will be LCD or OLED. The high-end flagships from leading cell phone man­u­fac­tur­ers like Apple, Samsung and Google usually have displays with OLED tech­nol­o­gy. OLED tech­nol­o­gy exceeds LCDs featuring self-luminous pixels with high color intensity and deep black tones.

You may notice when choosing a cell phone that OLEDs are usually called AMOLED in the smart­phone sector. AMOLED stands for “Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode”. While OLED and AMOLED are not identical, they are very similar display tech­nolo­gies, however, AMOLED is more developed. “Active Matrix” makes it possible to control in­di­vid­ual pixels on the screen using a tran­sis­tor. “Super AMOLED” and “Super AMOLED Plus” refer to further de­vel­op­ments of AMOLED with more light trans­mis­sion, better color values and higher res­o­lu­tion.