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To be blunt: An exciting future in mass-market and mid-to-high tier. Which is perfectly fine. For Premium tier the cost of elevating the picture quality to a c

To be blunt: An exciting future in mass-market and mid-to-high tier. Which is perfectly fine. For Premium tier the cost of elevating the picture quality to a competitive level (with elaborate backlight tech, multiple layers of LCD, etc.) is simply too high. Samsung was only riding LCD in premium TVs for so long because they didnt have the technology for large-size OLED. So they spent a ton of money to establish the "QLED" brand as a new name for "LCD with yet another backlight" and started explaining people that brightness (not black-level or contrast) is the most important thing for a TV (because uniform LCD backlight can be brighter than per-pixel OLED)

KingOfCoders 3y ago
I have a recent QLED, my parents in law have a recent OLED (LG), seems to be the same. I'd say the QLED is easier to watch during the daylight with sun in the room.
- arghwhat 3y ago
  Having a Neo-QLED myself, the brightness is definitely a plus - still a bit dimmer than I'd like with daylight, but certainly better than having, you know, half the brightness with an regular OLED... The main downside I can note is that the dimming zones are way too large - especially noticeable with local dimming set to High, and credits scrolling. Not noticeable for normal content though. Mini-LED backlight would have made it indistinguishable from most OLEDs in anything but the darkest of cinema rooms...
  - zelos 3y ago
    I think all Neo-QLED TVs are mini-LED - something like 1000 dimming zones?
    - arghwhat 3y ago
      IIRC, 500-750-ish. Good mini-LED are in the several thousands.
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    What generation do you have? 2022 or 2023? Dimming zones get smaller each generation. Neo-QLED branding startet 2022?
    - arghwhat 3y ago
      2021, QN95A75QE, an impulse-buy while they were massively discounted some time before the 2022 release. Mine has some ~700-ish dimming zones IIRC. Moving bright content on dark background reveals the dimming zone resolution as the zones chase the content - credits is the main thing that comes to mind, where the text brightness fluctuates as it transitions zones. A circular loading indicator can also trip this, but the TV recognizes it after a rotation and then evenly illuminates the path. Turning down the dimming from max would likely help, but some may be surprised to hear that credits are not my main content priority. The brightness is great for my bright living room though, and worlds apart from the OLED sets I've seen in similar settings. As an aside, super happy I got the 2021 - a friend got the S95B, and the newer Tizen UI is way more intrusive and more ad-filled.
      - KingOfCoders 3y ago
        Thanks!
dontlaugh 3y ago
Which was always so silly. No amount of screen brightness can make up for loss of detail in a dark scene and even OLED maximum brightness is enough to hurt your eyes.
- arghwhat 3y ago
  Small-format OLEDs are great, but not large-format not yet. 1. Large-format OLED maximum brightness is very low. LG C2 peak SDR brightness is some 425 nits. A Samsung Neo-QLED QN90B does 1200 nits, and an iPhone 14 (small OLED) does 800 nits. In my experience, a room with windows facing the sun with thin curtains require 1000-1500 nits SDR to be comfortably legible. 2000 would be nice to have, but that's not available for the masses yet. 2. That SDR brightness is only maintained for a 10% window, and quickly drops off for larger bright areas. At 50%, it's only 350 nits. The QN90B does 850 nits sustained at 50%. 3. Same panel does peak 6-700 nit HDR, well below the 1000-4000 nits generally needed for HDR content. An iPhone 14 does 1200 nits, The QN90B does around 1700 nits. The high peak is needed to give proper "blinding" effect to e.g. skies or lights, as opposed to just looking like SDR-style bright white surfaces, especially outside a dark cinema room. 4. WOLED, which is the dominant panel technology for large high-end OLED panels, lose color saturation quickly as they approach their (already low) maximum brightness, due to relying on a white subpixel for raw luminance. 5. MiniLED backlight for LCD with 10k+ diming zones - while a stopgap - get dimming artifacts far enough down to be competitive on contrast, while destroying OLED in brightness and color saturation. Large-panel OLED will beat LCD, but right now it is has many shortcomings. QD-OLED shows significant promise, with latest generations finally starting to see some decent brightness, but it's early (and rtings report both thermal throttling and some quite unfortunate burn-in behavior on those). And yes, 1000 nits+ for SDR is retina-searing once the sun sets, but for those who have forgotten how sunlight feels I can report that it is quite bright and requires effort to outshine. Something like ambient light control is necessary to adjust throughout the day to not accidentally go blind.
  - dontlaugh 3y ago
    Personally, 500 nits full screen white at 3m away is enough to hurt my eyes. I’m grateful OLEDs exceed that only for very small areas and briefly. Also, no amount of screen brightness can make dark scenes visible in a bright room. You have to make the room darker anyway, so why bother with a brighter screen?
oblio 3y ago
The thing is: can I buy a big OLED and use it for whatever, without doing anything special to take care of it, and not have it suffer from burn in 10 years from now?
- RamRodification 3y ago
  The (tinfoil hat?) thing about the thing is: Does Samsung actually want their TVs to survive a whole 10 years?
  - golergka 3y ago
    Do consumers want to pay the premium for such a TV? And would those that do choose Samsung?
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      The problem is Trust. Consumers don't trust manufavturers. If I pay 2x premium I have zero trust the product is better made or will last longer. My $300 laptop worked for 10 years, $3000 laptop has issues after 2 years. We have a Toshiba TV that has lasted 15 years. Kinda getting to the end of it's usefull life - its 720p. On the other hand, I don't expect image technology to advance at the same rate any more, we are at the usefull limit of resolution for example. So maybe if I was buying today, I would actually keep the TV for 20 years.
      - golergka 3y ago
        > Consumers don't trust manufavturers. If I pay 2x premium I have zero trust the product is better made or will last longer. My $300 laptop worked for 10 years, $3000 laptop has issues after 2 years. I'm confused — why are you talking about trusting "manufacturers" as a whole? Isn't the whole point of your anecdote that one manufacturer is trustworthy and the other is not?
        ClumsyPilot 3y ago
tinus_hn 3y ago
You can also use a ton of small leds for the backlight, like the display Apple calls the ‘Liquid Retina XDR’ display and there’s probably a world of controller software to improve on for years.
- rbanffy 3y ago
  I find it quite astonishing their newer monitors run iOS.
- rickdeckard 3y ago
  Which is what the LCD-TV industry did for years. It's no longer economic, except maybe in specific high-margin industries (like medical displays) But even in those areas I'm confident that its existing tech, I doubt that there's alot of investment going on. WOLED panels are on a trajectory from Premium to High-Tier with production volume increasing each year, with RGB-OLED increasing in panel-size each year as well. The window for investing into R&D for a large-volume LCD-panel which outperforms OLED in accuracy but at a lower price has already closed.
- sputter_token 3y ago
  The generic term for this is mini-led which is not to be confused with micro-led. Apple is expected to start using MicroLED displays within a couple years.

KingOfCoders 3y ago

I have a recent QLED, my parents in law have a recent OLED (LG), seems to be the same. I'd say the QLED is easier to watch during the daylight with sun in the room.

arghwhat 3y ago
Having a Neo-QLED myself, the brightness is definitely a plus - still a bit dimmer than I'd like with daylight, but certainly better than having, you know, half the brightness with an regular OLED... The main downside I can note is that the dimming zones are way too large - especially noticeable with local dimming set to High, and credits scrolling. Not noticeable for normal content though. Mini-LED backlight would have made it indistinguishable from most OLEDs in anything but the darkest of cinema rooms...
- zelos 3y ago
  I think all Neo-QLED TVs are mini-LED - something like 1000 dimming zones?
  - arghwhat 3y ago
    IIRC, 500-750-ish. Good mini-LED are in the several thousands.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  What generation do you have? 2022 or 2023? Dimming zones get smaller each generation. Neo-QLED branding startet 2022?
  - arghwhat 3y ago
    2021, QN95A75QE, an impulse-buy while they were massively discounted some time before the 2022 release. Mine has some ~700-ish dimming zones IIRC. Moving bright content on dark background reveals the dimming zone resolution as the zones chase the content - credits is the main thing that comes to mind, where the text brightness fluctuates as it transitions zones. A circular loading indicator can also trip this, but the TV recognizes it after a rotation and then evenly illuminates the path. Turning down the dimming from max would likely help, but some may be surprised to hear that credits are not my main content priority. The brightness is great for my bright living room though, and worlds apart from the OLED sets I've seen in similar settings. As an aside, super happy I got the 2021 - a friend got the S95B, and the newer Tizen UI is way more intrusive and more ad-filled.
    - KingOfCoders 3y ago
      Thanks!

dontlaugh 3y ago

Which was always so silly. No amount of screen brightness can make up for loss of detail in a dark scene and even OLED maximum brightness is enough to hurt your eyes.

arghwhat 3y ago
Small-format OLEDs are great, but not large-format not yet. 1. Large-format OLED maximum brightness is very low. LG C2 peak SDR brightness is some 425 nits. A Samsung Neo-QLED QN90B does 1200 nits, and an iPhone 14 (small OLED) does 800 nits. In my experience, a room with windows facing the sun with thin curtains require 1000-1500 nits SDR to be comfortably legible. 2000 would be nice to have, but that's not available for the masses yet. 2. That SDR brightness is only maintained for a 10% window, and quickly drops off for larger bright areas. At 50%, it's only 350 nits. The QN90B does 850 nits sustained at 50%. 3. Same panel does peak 6-700 nit HDR, well below the 1000-4000 nits generally needed for HDR content. An iPhone 14 does 1200 nits, The QN90B does around 1700 nits. The high peak is needed to give proper "blinding" effect to e.g. skies or lights, as opposed to just looking like SDR-style bright white surfaces, especially outside a dark cinema room. 4. WOLED, which is the dominant panel technology for large high-end OLED panels, lose color saturation quickly as they approach their (already low) maximum brightness, due to relying on a white subpixel for raw luminance. 5. MiniLED backlight for LCD with 10k+ diming zones - while a stopgap - get dimming artifacts far enough down to be competitive on contrast, while destroying OLED in brightness and color saturation. Large-panel OLED will beat LCD, but right now it is has many shortcomings. QD-OLED shows significant promise, with latest generations finally starting to see some decent brightness, but it's early (and rtings report both thermal throttling and some quite unfortunate burn-in behavior on those). And yes, 1000 nits+ for SDR is retina-searing once the sun sets, but for those who have forgotten how sunlight feels I can report that it is quite bright and requires effort to outshine. Something like ambient light control is necessary to adjust throughout the day to not accidentally go blind.
- dontlaugh 3y ago
  Personally, 500 nits full screen white at 3m away is enough to hurt my eyes. I’m grateful OLEDs exceed that only for very small areas and briefly. Also, no amount of screen brightness can make dark scenes visible in a bright room. You have to make the room darker anyway, so why bother with a brighter screen?

oblio 3y ago

The thing is: can I buy a big OLED and use it for whatever, without doing anything special to take care of it, and not have it suffer from burn in 10 years from now?

RamRodification 3y ago
The (tinfoil hat?) thing about the thing is: Does Samsung actually want their TVs to survive a whole 10 years?
- golergka 3y ago
  Do consumers want to pay the premium for such a TV? And would those that do choose Samsung?
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    The problem is Trust. Consumers don't trust manufavturers. If I pay 2x premium I have zero trust the product is better made or will last longer. My $300 laptop worked for 10 years, $3000 laptop has issues after 2 years. We have a Toshiba TV that has lasted 15 years. Kinda getting to the end of it's usefull life - its 720p. On the other hand, I don't expect image technology to advance at the same rate any more, we are at the usefull limit of resolution for example. So maybe if I was buying today, I would actually keep the TV for 20 years.
    - golergka 3y ago
      > Consumers don't trust manufavturers. If I pay 2x premium I have zero trust the product is better made or will last longer. My $300 laptop worked for 10 years, $3000 laptop has issues after 2 years. I'm confused — why are you talking about trusting "manufacturers" as a whole? Isn't the whole point of your anecdote that one manufacturer is trustworthy and the other is not?
      - ClumsyPilot 3y ago

tinus_hn 3y ago

You can also use a ton of small leds for the backlight, like the display Apple calls the ‘Liquid Retina XDR’ display and there’s probably a world of controller software to improve on for years.

rbanffy 3y ago
I find it quite astonishing their newer monitors run iOS.
rickdeckard 3y ago
Which is what the LCD-TV industry did for years. It's no longer economic, except maybe in specific high-margin industries (like medical displays) But even in those areas I'm confident that its existing tech, I doubt that there's alot of investment going on. WOLED panels are on a trajectory from Premium to High-Tier with production volume increasing each year, with RGB-OLED increasing in panel-size each year as well. The window for investing into R&D for a large-volume LCD-panel which outperforms OLED in accuracy but at a lower price has already closed.
sputter_token 3y ago
The generic term for this is mini-led which is not to be confused with micro-led. Apple is expected to start using MicroLED displays within a couple years.