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Trusted Reviews – Excellent/Unbiased Comparison of OLED and QLED
August 27, 2018 Trusted Reviews did a really good job of explaining and comparing the differences in front of screen (FOS) performance between a high end OLED TV from LGE and a high end QLED TV from Samsung. They explained the differences in terms of how it affects the viewer, rather than providing useless numeric specifications. They took into consideration, the differences in luminance and the LCDs use of dimming areas, when HDR is used, and they were able to assess the value of response time, when video processing is considered. Trusted Reviews report is summarized in the table below and it is surprising how close the performance of the two TVs are. The reviewers said they would have to operate the TVs for too long a period to invoke image sticking. One surprising difference was that the OLED TV was actually less expensive than the QLED. The Samsung Q9FN is a backlit LCD with about 480 dimming zones and a peak brightness of over 2000 nits. The LG C8 is an OLED whose brightness never breaks the 1000-nit barrier. For the most part, this is a clear victory for the Samsung QLED TV. Bright HDR scenes, such as the exterior real-world sequences in Ready Player One, or Mad Max: Fury Road’s daylight desert sequences, blaze off the screen with an intensity that really feels like daylight. This overwhelmingly bright sort of HDR image looks significantly less intense on the OLED set. Bear in mind though that the extent of the difference in brightness between the two screens is pretty much negated with standard dynamic range playback. It also depends on how brightly an HDR source was mastered. The Samsung Q9FN is a backlit LCD with about 480 dimming zones and a peak brightness of over 2000 nits. The LG C8 is an OLED whose brightness never breaks the 1000-nit barrier, but it has per-pixel lighting precision, which helps with contrast. For the most part, this is a clear victory for the Samsung QLED TV. Bright HDR scenes, such as the exterior real-world sequences in Ready Player One, or Mad Max: Fury Road’s daylight desert sequences, blaze off the screen with an intensity that really feels like daylight. This overwhelmingly bright sort of HDR image looks significantly less intense on the OLED set. However, the extent of the difference inbrightness between the two screens is pretty much negated with standard dynamic range playback. It also depends on how brightly an HDR source was mastered. Also, while the Samsung QLED model wins comfortably on brightness with mostly bright HDR content, there is an exception to the brightness ‘rule’.The QLED set can, thanks to its direct lighting system, deliver near-perfect black levels as well as brightness peaks that are more than twice as high as the OLED’s. The issue is that even with its excellent local dimming system, the QLED set can’t deliver both those blacks and those whites simultaneously as well as LG’s OLED can. OLED can maintain inky blacks just a pixel away from bright whites and colors. There’s no need to compromise one to achieve the other. So while the LG C8 might not hit the same light peaks, shots containing a strong mix of dark and light content look punchier and more dynamic on the LG OLED. In fact, really extreme content, such as candles or street lights appearing against dark backdrops, look almost luminous on the OLED, whereas they can look really quite muted on the QLED. The difference in the way the QLED and OLED screens deliver their light also gives a clear advantage to the OLED when it comes to shadow detail in very dark parts of the picture. For instance, as Patrick Hockstetter searches the sewers in It, there’s a shot of him illuminated by a cigarette lighter against an extremely dark backdrop. On the OLED, you can still make out subtle details of brickwork and reflections in the dark area around him. On the QLED, much of this detail is lost due to the way the TV has to take so much light out of the darkest parts of the picture to maintain its class-leading (for LCD) deep black levels. Table1: QLED vs. OLED 65” TVs 
Source: Company
While the QLED higher color volume, getting more out of the potential of 4K Blu-ray’s HDR and wide color technologies to make the action look more ‘real world’. The QLED TV does so well here because:
But the OLED delivers color during dark scenes. The way the QLED TV needs to dim down its lights to deliver good black levels means colors in dark areas can look flatter – sometimes much flatter – than they do on the OLED. |
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