Isn’t that quite a controversial and chic titled question? There‚Äôs no comparison between the two because there‚Äôs really no such thing as what has been marketed as an LED TV. Yup, it’s just another case of the TV industry using misleading nomenclature to confuse all consumers. What TV manufacturers have been advertising previously as LED TVs are just LCD TVs that use LEDs for backlighting.
Where an LCD produces color by shining the light produced by LEDs through color filters, an OLED Technology uses LEDs that generate both light as well as colour. The term organic comes from the materials used being carbon Рand not silicon Рbased, which sounds touchy and feely, but doesn’t put them in the same class as lettuce or free-range chicken, if you know what I mean.
OLED technology isn’t exactly new to the consumer electronics space anymore. Mobile phones have been using OLED screens in some form or another since 2001. But now that OLED televisions from Samsung and LG are beginning to hit showrooms in the US, people’s interest in OLED is beginning to tick up, and they have questions.
How OLED works
OLED’s magic comes from electroluminescence. Basically, an electrical charge stimulates an electroluminescent substance that produces the desired color: red, green, or blue. The OLED itself is more or less a glass sandwich with a cathode and an anode (negative and positive terminals), plus two organic layers that transport electrons, and a middle layer that emits light.
You could make an entire wall from a single OLED, and there are lighting applications where a similar approach is not only feasible, but being done the stylish way.
The OLED advantage as it applies to TVs
Aside from super thin and flexible, the fuss over OLED TVs is stirred by their impressive picture quality. OLEDs turn off and don’t leak light as LCDs do, so you get a genuine black which makes for excellent contrast ratios. It’s a much more luxurious picture than your average LED-backlit LCD TV. I think of it as cashmere versus common wool.
In terms of picture quality as well, OLED TVs are superior to LED/LCD TVs in nearly every way. Both of the recently introduced OLED TVs are capable of covering a wider gamut of color space than LED/LCD televisions. Very basically explained, this means they can reproduce finer shades of more colors within the visible color spectrum.
Apart from technical and theoretical arguments, isn’t the latest technology always a better technology?
Make the smart choice, it being right comes along simultaneously.
