3 ms·

It's no surprise that companies are pushing OLED as they actually wear out, while LCDs don't.

Mistletoe 2y ago
I don’t understand what you mean. Both of our LCD TVs have failed or degenerated and I was looking to OLED for something that would last longer. >Furthermore, LCD screens have a finite lifespan, typically around 30,000 to 60,000 hours, after which the quality of the display can start to degrade. In contrast, OLED screens can potentially last up to 100,000 hours
- EugeneOZ 2y ago
  ~45000 / 7 hours per day = 17 years. 17 years ago was 2007 - I can’t remember every TV our family had since 2007, but it was more than one or two, for sure.
- iamthepieman 2y ago
  Maybe I don't use tvs the way most people do. But the most pessimistic lifetime estimates for my use case on a 30,000 hour panel is 41 years. I don't really see a television as something to pass on to my heirs so that seems like a solved problem for non-commercial use. I've had televisions fail but it has always been a connector or capacitor that I could replace with a sautering iron and about 46 minutes of disassembly/re-assembly
  - Mistletoe 2y ago
    A lot of us watch more tv than two hours a day. I have over 1000 hours in the game Elden Ring alone! :) I also consider life estimates as very fluid. My gf’s Hisense 75 inch can’t be more than a few years old and it has already gone to pot with weird circles visible on any scene with a white or light background. 8 hours a day for a few years is only ~6,000 hours, far less than 30k.
- userbinator 2y ago
  The failure points for LCDs are usually not the panel itself (the most expensive part), unlike with OLEDs.
p1necone 2y ago
Everything wears out. Early OLED's wore out faster than already very mature LCD tech, but that's just the nature of early adoption of new tech.
jeffbee 2y ago
Isn't that the opposite of the conclusions from https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/longevity-results-after-10-months https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/longevity-results-after-10-m... ? Every LCD in their test seems to look like stark junk.
- simoncion 2y ago
  It's definitely incorrect to say that backlit LCD screens don't wear out. However, it's definitely correct to say that quality OLED screens wear out much, much faster than quality backlit LCD screens. And as always, garbage-grade screens [0] fall to pieces much, much faster than good ones. You might also be interested in this follow-up report that was published about a year later than the link you posted: <https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/longevity-burn-in-test-updates-and-results https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/longevity-burn-in-test-updat...>. Also interesting is a video that RTNGS made a little while back that I cannot currently find where they took some of the TVs from this test with failing screens that looked SUPER bad in the pictures, and showed them in the video with moving pictures, asking the question "So, hey, can you spot the problem?". For some the answer was an obvious "YES", but for others, no, not at all. [0] Like dreadfully thin edge-lit ones: <https://www.rtings.com/research/thin-lcd-tvs-break-faster-under-prolonged-use https://www.rtings.com/research/thin-lcd-tvs-break-faster-un...>
  - jeffbee 2y ago
    Some of those look pretty bad but I feel like having a news chyron on-screen for 10000 hours indicates something deeper than having bought an imperfect TV.
    - nine_k 2y ago
      Just a TV somewhere in the lobby of a doctor's office, or some such, that permanently shows news, interspersed with some short information pieces from the medical establishment. It would also usually run closed captions at all times, also at about the same area of the screen.
skyyler 2y ago
I collect old laptops. The difference in brightness and colour reproduction in a pair of 2003 PowerBooks, one used heavily and the other just stored… It’s quite stark. Dim backlights and washed out colours.
- Calamityjanitor 2y ago
  Yeah just like OLED, the LED backlight on a LCD doesn't last. I just recently swapped out the backlight on my ~10 year old TV with a $30 new one off aliexpress. Way brighter again, and way less color accurate. At least it doesn't need to be ewaste now.
  - ComputerGuru 2y ago
    Apple TV is the only option I know of (other than using it as an HDMI output device for a PC) that allows for color calibration. This needs to become mainstream!
    - mastax 2y ago
      TVs generally have a service menu with color calibration options.
      - ComputerGuru 2y ago
        With a colorimeter?
        daoistmonk 2y ago
        it uses a known (to apple) iphone camera as a colorimeter
        ComputerGuru 2y ago
        I’m aware, that’s what I was referring to in GP. Read the post I was replying to again.
NavinF 2y ago
LCDs are still widely available and dirt cheap thanks to cutthroat competition, but the only reason why you'd buy one these days is if you can't afford OLED. (That includes everyone that's worried about burn-in)
- theshackleford 2y ago
  Or if you know, you want to maintain any level of brightness over a greater than a 10% window. I have OLED's and MiniLED on my desk. Each excels in a different area. The OLED can't even get close to the MiniLED's HDR performance, whilst the MiniLED gets close enough to the OLEDs strength for 95% of content. Save for motion, OLED reams LCD in motion. I just wish I could have everything in the one panel but alas we are just not there. I'm hoping we see major bumps to OLED on the desktops brightness over the next few generations of panel as it's still early days to be fair. For now, it's likely ill keep both on my desk. OLED for darker tighters only supplying the occasional highlight, MiniLED for everything else including titles calling for large and sustained brightness values.
- EugeneOZ 2y ago
  No, it doesn't include everyone. My daughter loves to put a beautiful image on her iPad and make it stay like a picture frame for hours. She’s a kid, she doesn't care if pixels burn out, and if I try to prohibit it, it will just happen more often. For me, OLED is better, sure.
- hedora 2y ago
  OLED brightness still hasn’t quite caught up, and many of the bright LED backlit LCDs have great color gamuts, and supposedly almost true black: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/best/bright-room https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/best/bright-room Anyway, if you have a big window in the room where your TV is, brightness probably should be the deciding factor.
DaoVeles 2y ago
OLED do burn in but it take a LOT of time. Here is the OLED Switch that has 18,000 hours of static screen time. Yes, it has burned in but on the most extreme situation possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po8jAQjvd88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po8jAQjvd88
- bmitc 2y ago
  I don't think that's true, certainly not in my experience. My LG OLED has burn in for something that's rarely on the screen.
bee_rider 2y ago
Maybe planned obsolescence has something to do with it. But mostly, OLEDs look so much better than LCDs. I can’t believe we put up with light grey “black” pixels for so long.
- dylan604 2y ago
  We've put up with gray for black since 1950s when the first CRTs were sold. Not sure why you stopped in history for LCD. LCD was an improvement just like LED/OLED was the next improvement over LCD.
  - userbinator 2y ago
    since 1950s when the first CRTs were sold 1930s.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    It isn’t that mysterious. I stopped at LCDs because they were the direct predecessor to OLED, and so they are the familiar comparison point for most people. I wouldn’t call them an improvement over CRTs, except in terms of weight. But, no accounting for taste.

I don’t understand what you mean. Both of our LCD TVs have failed or degenerated and I was looking to OLED for something that would last longer. >Furthermore, LCD screens have a finite lifespan, typically around 30,000 to 60,000 hours, after which the quality of the display can start to degrade. In contrast, OLED screens can potentially last up to 100,000 hours

EugeneOZ 2y ago
~45000 / 7 hours per day = 17 years. 17 years ago was 2007 - I can’t remember every TV our family had since 2007, but it was more than one or two, for sure.
iamthepieman 2y ago
Maybe I don't use tvs the way most people do. But the most pessimistic lifetime estimates for my use case on a 30,000 hour panel is 41 years. I don't really see a television as something to pass on to my heirs so that seems like a solved problem for non-commercial use. I've had televisions fail but it has always been a connector or capacitor that I could replace with a sautering iron and about 46 minutes of disassembly/re-assembly
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  A lot of us watch more tv than two hours a day. I have over 1000 hours in the game Elden Ring alone! :) I also consider life estimates as very fluid. My gf’s Hisense 75 inch can’t be more than a few years old and it has already gone to pot with weird circles visible on any scene with a white or light background. 8 hours a day for a few years is only ~6,000 hours, far less than 30k.
userbinator 2y ago
The failure points for LCDs are usually not the panel itself (the most expensive part), unlike with OLEDs.

p1necone 2y ago

Everything wears out. Early OLED's wore out faster than already very mature LCD tech, but that's just the nature of early adoption of new tech.

jeffbee 2y ago

Isn't that the opposite of the conclusions from https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/longevity-results-after-10-months https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/longevity-results-after-10-m... ? Every LCD in their test seems to look like stark junk.

simoncion 2y ago
It's definitely incorrect to say that backlit LCD screens don't wear out. However, it's definitely correct to say that quality OLED screens wear out much, much faster than quality backlit LCD screens. And as always, garbage-grade screens [0] fall to pieces much, much faster than good ones. You might also be interested in this follow-up report that was published about a year later than the link you posted: <https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/longevity-burn-in-test-updates-and-results https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/longevity-burn-in-test-updat...>. Also interesting is a video that RTNGS made a little while back that I cannot currently find where they took some of the TVs from this test with failing screens that looked SUPER bad in the pictures, and showed them in the video with moving pictures, asking the question "So, hey, can you spot the problem?". For some the answer was an obvious "YES", but for others, no, not at all. [0] Like dreadfully thin edge-lit ones: <https://www.rtings.com/research/thin-lcd-tvs-break-faster-under-prolonged-use https://www.rtings.com/research/thin-lcd-tvs-break-faster-un...>
- jeffbee 2y ago
  Some of those look pretty bad but I feel like having a news chyron on-screen for 10000 hours indicates something deeper than having bought an imperfect TV.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Just a TV somewhere in the lobby of a doctor's office, or some such, that permanently shows news, interspersed with some short information pieces from the medical establishment. It would also usually run closed captions at all times, also at about the same area of the screen.

skyyler 2y ago

I collect old laptops. The difference in brightness and colour reproduction in a pair of 2003 PowerBooks, one used heavily and the other just stored… It’s quite stark. Dim backlights and washed out colours.

Calamityjanitor 2y ago
Yeah just like OLED, the LED backlight on a LCD doesn't last. I just recently swapped out the backlight on my ~10 year old TV with a $30 new one off aliexpress. Way brighter again, and way less color accurate. At least it doesn't need to be ewaste now.
- ComputerGuru 2y ago
  Apple TV is the only option I know of (other than using it as an HDMI output device for a PC) that allows for color calibration. This needs to become mainstream!
  - mastax 2y ago
    TVs generally have a service menu with color calibration options.
    - ComputerGuru 2y ago
      With a colorimeter?
      - daoistmonk 2y ago
        it uses a known (to apple) iphone camera as a colorimeter
        ComputerGuru 2y ago
        I’m aware, that’s what I was referring to in GP. Read the post I was replying to again.

NavinF 2y ago

LCDs are still widely available and dirt cheap thanks to cutthroat competition, but the only reason why you'd buy one these days is if you can't afford OLED. (That includes everyone that's worried about burn-in)

theshackleford 2y ago
Or if you know, you want to maintain any level of brightness over a greater than a 10% window. I have OLED's and MiniLED on my desk. Each excels in a different area. The OLED can't even get close to the MiniLED's HDR performance, whilst the MiniLED gets close enough to the OLEDs strength for 95% of content. Save for motion, OLED reams LCD in motion. I just wish I could have everything in the one panel but alas we are just not there. I'm hoping we see major bumps to OLED on the desktops brightness over the next few generations of panel as it's still early days to be fair. For now, it's likely ill keep both on my desk. OLED for darker tighters only supplying the occasional highlight, MiniLED for everything else including titles calling for large and sustained brightness values.
EugeneOZ 2y ago
No, it doesn't include everyone. My daughter loves to put a beautiful image on her iPad and make it stay like a picture frame for hours. She’s a kid, she doesn't care if pixels burn out, and if I try to prohibit it, it will just happen more often. For me, OLED is better, sure.
hedora 2y ago
OLED brightness still hasn’t quite caught up, and many of the bright LED backlit LCDs have great color gamuts, and supposedly almost true black: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/best/bright-room https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/best/bright-room Anyway, if you have a big window in the room where your TV is, brightness probably should be the deciding factor.

DaoVeles 2y ago

OLED do burn in but it take a LOT of time. Here is the OLED Switch that has 18,000 hours of static screen time. Yes, it has burned in but on the most extreme situation possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po8jAQjvd88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po8jAQjvd88

bmitc 2y ago
I don't think that's true, certainly not in my experience. My LG OLED has burn in for something that's rarely on the screen.

bee_rider 2y ago

Maybe planned obsolescence has something to do with it. But mostly, OLEDs look so much better than LCDs. I can’t believe we put up with light grey “black” pixels for so long.

dylan604 2y ago
We've put up with gray for black since 1950s when the first CRTs were sold. Not sure why you stopped in history for LCD. LCD was an improvement just like LED/OLED was the next improvement over LCD.
- userbinator 2y ago
  since 1950s when the first CRTs were sold 1930s.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  It isn’t that mysterious. I stopped at LCDs because they were the direct predecessor to OLED, and so they are the familiar comparison point for most people. I wouldn’t call them an improvement over CRTs, except in terms of weight. But, no accounting for taste.