Is QLED TV any good? Should you buy it

Gone are the days when TV was just used to watch DTH channels using dish or cable connection, Now are the days of OTT content – Netflix, Prime, Youtube, etc. Technology is fast-changing and so is the market.

We tend to change our smartphones every 1-2 years, within a few years the smartphone tech becomes obsolete.

This trend is there for nearly 6-8 years but now with newer display technologies developed, we will see this trend in Televisions soon as they become smarter by the day.

The Existing Technologies

It starts from CRT TVs that look like a box, 

The design of such TV contains a funnel-shaped glass tube inside which an electron gun is placed which emits electrons that hits the phosphor coating

This coating emits colored light on the display. 

CRT TV consumes more electricity than modern LED TVs.

Then comes the LED TVs which completely remove the electron gun. It has an LED panel at the back, an LCD panel at the front and some other panels between the both.

The panels used between both vary from TV to TV to increase picture quality, viewing angles or other features.

Light is emitted from the LED panel which goes through the LCD panel. The LCD panel contains liquid crystals that block the light by a degree coming from the LED panel.

This results in image formation on the TV.

LED TVs uses way less power than CRT TVs.

To take the picture quality and contrast ratio to the next level then came OLED display which is the biggest innovation in display technologies in a decade.

OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode. This panel does not require any LED lighting, it can produce its own light from the panel itself.

The contrast ratio and viewing angles are nearly infinite in OLED TVs.

It is very costly to make these kinds of panel.

QLED came to give competition to OLED

Currently, only LG is the sole manufacturer of OLED displays. If any other brand has to sell its own OLED TV then they have to first purchase an OLED panel from LG then use it as their own.

This makes LG a monopoly over premium TVs.

To counter this Samsung introduced their own technology called the QLED TV to enter the premium TV market.

QLED stands for Quantum Dot Light Emitting Diode. It consists of a special panel containing quantum dots which are basically nanoparticles that emit varying frequency light when hit by blue light.

This panel is placed between the LCD and LED panel.

OLED vs QLED

• Contrast Ratio – Contrast is the biggest factor for better picture quality. OLED is superior in terms of contrast ratio thanks to its organic light-emitting diodes which can go completely black and white. This means the contrast ratio is nearly infinite in the case of OLED. While QLED has an enhanced contrast ratio but not near to OLED.
• Brightness Levels – OLED TVs cannot go very bright while QLED can go as high as 4000 nits of peak brightness level. You can watch the picture clearly even in strong daylight.
• Cost – OLED panel is difficult to manufacture making it very expensive. While QLED is way cheaper than OLED.
• Viewing Angles – Like the contrast ratio, the viewing angles are also very good in the case of an OLED panel. On the other hand viewing angles in QLED TV is similar to that of LED TV.  
• Screen Burn-in – This is the biggest disadvantage of OLED TVs. It occurs when a portion of the screen displays a static image continuously for a long time. It is irreversible and the only solution to this is screen replacement which is again costly. While QLED TV does not suffer from this issue.

Is QLED a marketing gimmick from Samsung?

QLED TVs are not as great as OLED TVs but they are still better than LED TVs. One advantage of QLED TV is it can produce very high levels of peak brightness.

Many technology experts claimed that QLED TV is no way near to OLED TV and it is just a normal LED TV with a variation.

These kinds of variations can be seen with every different brand but no one names their TV differently as Samsung did with QLED.

Samsung strategically named their TV QLED which is synonyms to OLED making consumers trick into buying QLED TV because it is cheaper than OLED.

Conclusion

QLED TVs are good considering their price and these mostly come with 4K Ultra HD resolution taking their standards high.

You can buy these if OLED TV does not come under your budget.

If you want more in-depth, informative stuff on TV technologies then checkout DisplayOwl which is a tech blog on display technology, Televisions, and Monitors. Here you will also find buying guides for LED TVs.