OLED v QLED

[scarletlion]

Another one of these threads sorry. I'm absolutely torn and cannot decide.

My situation is:

I have a 50 inch 4k Panasonic TV. It's nice but I sit a little under 8 feet away from it, and I find I'm not getting the most out of 1080p and 4k stuff at that distance. I mainly watch movies (say 5 a week) and watch about 3 sports matches a week too. I watch an hour of news a day. It just feels too small.

I have the green light to spend around £1500 on a new TV. At a push (and I mean a real push) I could go up to £1999. And hope the wife never finds out. I have young children that will probably watch an hour or two of youtube a day. I cannot babysit this TV 24 hours a day.

I feel the jump to 55 inch is too small a gain. I'd prefer a 65 inch but that's then an extra £400 or so.

So :

-Is an OLED too risky given this situation? (burn in and damage etc)
-Should I risk it and get it from somewhere like John Lewis with extra damage protection?
-Will the Black Friday deals in November see a 65inch LG or equivalent enter my budget range?
-Should I be looking at QLED ? Is that the right gear for my situation, or will I regret not getting an OLED when I had the chance?

Thank you for any replies.

[ditcin]

I had the last Samsung TV release just before their first QLED one. I purchased the QLED release and found horrible. It was their top of the line and found it had less menu options, and picture setting options. Not to mention the color was terrible. I finally just returned it a day later and took the top of the line SONY - it exceeded my expectations.

I gave the Samsung I had to a friend and he's extremely happy with it. That last release previous to QLED had wonderful option in the menu and great color.
I can only hope Samsung has made changes to their sets.

If I were you, I'd go to a Best Buy or other store and play with the menu options and and compare with other TV to see which gives you more for calibrations purposes.

[Big-D]

Originally Posted by scarletlion

Another one of these threads sorry. I'm absolutely torn and cannot decide.

My situation is:

I have a 50 inch 4k Panasonic TV. It's nice but I sit a little under 8 feet away from it, and I find I'm not getting the most out of 1080p and 4k stuff at that distance. I mainly watch movies (say 5 a week) and watch about 3 sports matches a week too. I watch an hour of news a day. It just feels too small.

I have the green light to spend around £1500 on a new TV. At a push (and I mean a real push) I could go up to £1999. And hope the wife never finds out. I have young children that will probably watch an hour or two of youtube a day. I cannot babysit this TV 24 hours a day.

I feel the jump to 55 inch is too small a gain. I'd prefer a 65 inch but that's then an extra £400 or so.

So :

-Is an OLED too risky given this situation? (burn in and damage etc)
-Should I risk it and get it from somewhere like John Lewis with extra damage protection?
-Will the Black Friday deals in November see a 65inch LG or equivalent enter my budget range?
-Should I be looking at QLED ? Is that the right gear for my situation, or will I regret not getting an OLED when I had the chance?

Thank you for any replies.

I originally had a Samsung QLED quantum dot tv, but due to having three faults with the main board within a year, I swapped it for an LG OLED. All I can say is that it'll be the best money you'll ever spend.

There is some trepidation when you buy OLED for the first time, as there have been reports about alleged screenburn etc. But as long as you're careful and don't have considerably high brightness, paused playback or prolonged static images, then you'll be absolutely fine.

If you're in no great rush, I'd wait for the sales and you potentially could bag yourself a bargain. I've bought electrical goods from John Lewis before and they're quite good. But I tend to stick to Richer Sounds now, as they give you a six year warranty on their TVs.

[Rayjg]

When I bought a plasma six years ago I was told to break it in by running different colored slides for something like 24-48 hours. Is it recommended to do the same with an OLED? Also, I use the screen wipe on the plasma whenever I pause something for more than a few minutes. Do OLEDs offer a similar feature?

[Big-D]

Originally Posted by Rayjg

When I bought a plasma six years ago I was told to break it in by running different colored slides for something like 24-48 hours. Is it recommended to do the same with an OLED? Also, I use the screen wipe on the plasma whenever I pause something for more than a few minutes. Do OLEDs offer a similar feature?

LG OLEDs offer a similar function to plasma screenwipe, it's called pixel refresher. It's supposed to correct pixels and any quality issues caused by the TV being on for an extended period of time.

With regards to a 'breaking in period' nothing is required and after 200hrs, the panel will have settled in. Only thing required is not to run the TV at full brightness.

[David M]

The real question is “OLED vs LCD” - QLED as it exists at the moment is another rebranding of LCD technology (following on the extremely successful rebrand of it as “LED TV”). Yes, Quantum Dot technology does add benefits to LCD, but not enough to transform its performance into a new product category. It still looks and quacks like an LCD.

Can you burn an OLED? Yes. Will you? Probably not, unless you watch nothing but the same rolling news channel and nothing else. YouTube use is probably much safer than the cable news channels, which have irresponsible onscreen graphics. I don’t think too many YouTube videos have gigantic fixed solid logos. For the ones that do, OLEDs now have image analysis functions that detect such screen graffiti and dim the respective part of the screen. LG’s OLEDs let you turn the sensitivity of that function to a high setting if you’re especially worried about it.

If you’re leaving your kids unsupervised with it, you can also leave the TV set on one of the Zoom modes for an extra layer of protection. The LG OLEDs have fully customizable controls so you can zoom and reposition the picture as much as you want.

I run a bunch of OLEDs both at home and at work, and of course when they were brand new I was more protective of them. I’ve seen temporary image retention once or twice, but never burn, and I play a ton of video games on my home OLED.

My opinion: the risk of burn on an OLED is not big enough to warrant downgrading to LCD picture quality. How much do you care about picture quality and true zero black?

[teddyballgame]

As long as it's not going in a very bright room (like windows everywhere) OLED would be my preference. I was a little worried about burn in too, but I set my parents up with OLED and they love the picture quality. Just to be sure I also suggested the Apple TV 4k streamer which has a built in screensaver of moving aerial footage of cities etc - it takes over after like 5 minutes of inactivity, or if you're stepping away just tap a button twice and it's on and the pixels remain active. Burn in used to be a bigger risk in the early days but now we have some built-in countermeasures and safeguards which help. The thing to understand about burn in is that it's a cumulative effect, it's not like you can ever "undo" it by simply viewing different content. What's used is used. The panel will try to compensate but at some point the material is diminished. There's also the possibility of something like inverse burn in if you only watch letterbox content. The black bars aren't being used and so the screen is not wearing in a level fashion. For most people it will never be a problem.

If we still had high end LCD options from the likes of Sony...say something like a 55 or 65" with 600+ zones then that might be compelling. I want high nits as much as the next guy but it's gotta come with a reasonable amount of control. I just can't get with FALD when the zone count is so low these days. Maybe mini led can offer more in that regard down the road.

[scarletlion]

All very helpful thank you. Going to bust a gut to go OLED.

[motorheadache95]

I always tell people: if you mainly watch sports or news channels, or play the same game, like Fortnite or some kind of online shooter, with the same HUD logos day in, day out, don't get an OLED. Otherwise, you're probably like most people who vary their content enough that it's not a problem.

I have a 2016 C6, and I follow a few basic guidelines. I avoid YouTube on it, because I've heard some people say the red logo can get burned in. I never hooked up certain games on it, like Zelda: Breath of the Wild, because I was nervous about those red hearts in the top corner of the screen, and it's the kind of game you spend a lot of time with wandering around.

If I had kids that liked YouTube, I'd buy them their own cheap smaller TV or a tablet or something to watch it on (I myself have a dinky little 32" 720p set I use for stuff like youtube, retro games, SD content, etc.).

[David M]

Originally Posted by motorheadache95

I have a 2016 C6, and I follow a few basic guidelines. I avoid YouTube on it, because I've heard some people say the red logo can get burned in.

What red logo? Does the YouTube app on the 2016 C6 have the YouTube logo on screen permanently?

I never hooked up certain games on it, like Zelda: Breath of the Wild, because I was nervous about those red hearts in the top corner of the screen, and it's the kind of game you spend a lot of time with wandering around.

I had this same concern with BOTW and played a ton of it, and yet, no burn.

[motorheadache95]

Originally Posted by David M

What red logo? Does the YouTube app on the 2016 C6 have the YouTube logo on screen permanently?

I had this same concern with BOTW and played a ton of it, and yet, no burn.

The red logo that is there when scrolling through videos. I know really saturated red is more of a burn-in risk, which is why the most common things that burn into the screen is red logos such as the youtube logo or the CNN logo (from what I've read, at least).

Now, I don't necessarily think you need to avoid Youtube entirely, but I don't care about using it anyway (I primarily watch youtube videos on my phone), so I just avoid using the app on my OLED. I also don't run my Switch on it, as I play it a lot portably anyway, but I have my PS4 and XBox One X hooked up to it. Probably overly-cautious on my part, but again, it's nothing I really feel the need to use my big screen for anyway.

[dianabol5mg]

If you have any doubt, there are more professionals, like Dave MacKenzie, on the AVS forums, that will stear you to OLED, also. The pros definitely outweigh the cons.

[Paul.R.S]

Originally Posted by dianabol5mg

. . . The pros definitely outweigh the cons.

Unless you want something larger than 77" . . .?

[dianabol5mg]

Originally Posted by Paul.R.S

Unless you want something larger than 77" . . .?

Then I guess you'll have to splurge and get yourself the 88" LG . This poster, though, needs a 65" television.

[Paul.R.S]

You didn't qualify your original, quoted statement.

My point is that OLED gets very expensive above 77". The Sammy 85ers are more reasonably priced for those who want bigger than 77". So the pros don't always outweigh the cons.

[oddbox83]

Originally Posted by scarletlion

All very helpful thank you. Going to bust a gut to go OLED.

Not to throw a spanner in the works, but IMO OLED is a boys toy and family use would worry me. Burn in might not be that widespread, but some users have reported it and if it's going to be a constant source of worry, maybe don't discount something like the Sony FALD sets like the X950 which are supposed to be fantastic, pretty much as good as LED can get.

I think OLED vs. QLED might have just muddied the waters a bit with the other alternatives like the Sony. I'd definitely go with the Sony over Samsung's QLEDs (as other posters have said, QLED is still LED with fancy marketing spin).

[dianabol5mg]

Originally Posted by Paul.R.S

You didn't qualify your original, quoted statement.

My point is that OLED gets very expensive above 77". The Sammy 85ers are more reasonably priced for those who want bigger than 77". So the pros don't always outweigh the cons.

Straight from the OP, "I feel the jump to 55 inch is too small a gain. I'd prefer a 65 inch but that's then an extra £400 or so."

We are not talking about 77" or anything above that, we are talking 65" and you can get an OLED 65" LG or Vizio for far less than a Samsung high end LCD. I can get a 65"OLED for 1999. A comparable Samsung 65" Q950T will cost you about 5K and it still won't even be as good.

[scarletlion]

Originally Posted by oddbox83

Not to throw a spanner in the works, but IMO OLED is a boys toy and family use would worry me. Burn in might not be that widespread, but some users have reported it and if it's going to be a constant source of worry, maybe don't discount something like the Sony FALD sets like the X950 which are supposed to be fantastic, pretty much as good as LED can get.

I think OLED vs. QLED might have just muddied the waters a bit with the other alternatives like the Sony. I'd definitely go with the Sony over Samsung's QLEDs (as other posters have said, QLED is still LED with fancy marketing spin).

Yeah I think if I do go OLED I'm going to put this TV in the TV room rather than the family room to minimise burn in risks. That means it will be showing 95% movies. 5% sport. Hopefully that will mean no youtube and no news channels etc.

I'm looking at getting the 65 inch LG BX. Black Friday will maybe be kind to me.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by David M

The real question is “OLED vs LCD” - QLED as it exists at the moment is another rebranding of LCD technology (following on the extremely successful rebrand of it as “LED TV”). Yes, Quantum Dot technology does add benefits to LCD, but not enough to transform its performance into a new product category. It still looks and quacks like an LCD.

Can you burn an OLED? Yes. Will you? Probably not, unless you watch nothing but the same rolling news channel and nothing else. YouTube use is probably much safer than the cable news channels, which have irresponsible onscreen graphics. I don’t think too many YouTube videos have gigantic fixed solid logos. For the ones that do, OLEDs now have image analysis functions that detect such screen graffiti and dim the respective part of the screen. LG’s OLEDs let you turn the sensitivity of that function to a high setting if you’re especially worried about it.

If you’re leaving your kids unsupervised with it, you can also leave the TV set on one of the Zoom modes for an extra layer of protection. The LG OLEDs have fully customizable controls so you can zoom and reposition the picture as much as you want.

I run a bunch of OLEDs both at home and at work, and of course when they were brand new I was more protective of them. I’ve seen temporary image retention once or twice, but never burn, and I play a ton of video games on my home OLED.

My opinion: the risk of burn on an OLED is not big enough to warrant downgrading to LCD picture quality. How much do you care about picture quality and true zero black?

True black is fine, that's what people always parrot about OLED, it's the near black response and stuff like chroma overshoot (© your pal Vincent) that gives me the heeby-jeebies when I read about people's adventures with OLED on forums.

You know your stuff and you know I respect that, but it's amazing the amount of times in the UHD threads someone casually mentions "oh, I had this problem with x movie on my OLED" and then several other people chime in with the exact same issue, funny how it never came up before. We can't have the cult of perfect black be diluted by the reported imperfections of other aspects, can we? Some of that shit would drive me insane, more than it would any of the foibles of my horrible LCD TV. As for zooming in the picture to get rid of static logos I was having to do that with my Pioneer plasma like 15 years ago, "the more things change..." etc etc

Not that there will ever be the perfect TV, but if my ZD9 goes bang tomorrow the only one I'd even consider replacing it with is the Panny HZ2000 OLED.

[Paul.R.S]

Convenient, selective focus. The actual original post notwithstanding, the thread title belies your point, methandrostenolone.

Just qualify your remarks appropriately. All of MacKenzie, much less AVS more broadly, commentary about the subject title of the thread does NOT contemplate "[OLED] pros "definitely" outweighing the [QLED] cons."

(Ironically and perhaps tellingly, it sounds like COST and the WAF are the only reasons the OP isn't going larger.)