We've been talking about OLED TVs as the ultimate TV display technology for years, and they've finally become affordable enough that many of us can bring one into our living rooms.Add How-To Geek on Google Add as Preferred Source Follow on Google Discover But just as we thought we'd reached the endgame of TV technology, something potentially better comes along: MicroLED, a display technology you probably haven't seen or even heard of.It promises OLED's biggest strengths while eliminating some of its drawbacks, like low brightness levels and burn-in.
The only catch? MicroLED is prohibitively expensive.OLED isn't the endgame for TV picture quality we thought it was There's another level Close Ever since OLED TVs hit the mainstream consumer market, they've been considered the holy grail of TV picture quality that no LED-backlit TV can match.And for a few very good reasons: OLED offers the best contrast ratio, black levels, viewing angles, wide color gamut, and motion clarity, which are arguably the most important aspects of image quality for many types of content, particularly cinematic movies and video games.
A lot of this can be chalked up to OLED's ability to control the brightness of individual pixels and even turn them off completely to produce perfect blacks.When you're watching a scene with lots of highlights and shadows, OLED easily beats traditional LED-backlit panel technologies.The near-instant pixel response time is another massive flex for OLED.
Most TVs advertise pixel response times in the sub-0.1 ms range, a fraction of the 5–20ms response times typical of LED TVs.This allows for exceptional motion clarity with virtually no smearing or ghosting, which looks incredible in anything from action movies to fast-paced video games.HDR content looks particularly impressive on OLED TVs, although their brightness limitations can hold it back slightly.
This particular spec varies a lot between models, as higher-end OLED TVs can achieve surprisingly high peak brightness levels.Even they, however, struggle to keep the entire panel bright.This is because the automatic brightness limiter kicks in to keep power consumption and heat under control.
And that's precisely one of the drawbacks that MicroLED promises to solve.MicroLED offers everything we love about OLED, without its biggest compromises Same strengths, fewer weaknesses MicroLED sounds a lot like Mini LED, but they're fundamentally different technologies.Mini LED displays use numerous small LEDs as a backlight for a traditional LCD panel, allowing them to achieve more local dimming zones and, quite often, higher brightness than conventional LED-backlit TVs.
It's also different from RGB Mini LED that Samsung markets as "Micro RGB", which is essentially an evolution of Mini LED.MicroLED, in contrast, is surprisingly similar to OLED in how it produces an image.It uses microscopic red, green, and blue LEDs to create each individual pixel.
This makes it a self-emissive display where every pixel controls its own brightness, allowing it to achieve the same perfect blacks and contrast as OLED.To understand what MicroLED can do that OLED can't, it helps to understand OLED's biggest drawbacks first.OLED uses organic materials to emit light, and these materials gradually degrade over time.
This can result in uneven brightness across the panel, reduced overall brightness, color shifts, and, when enough static content like TV channel logos is displayed, burn-in.Related I've owned an OLED TV for 8 years—here's how I prevented burn-in Stop worrying about OLED burn-in—My 8-year-old TV has no issues because I follow a handful of careful rules to keep anything from happening.Posts By Jorge A.
Aguilar MicroLED addresses many of these issues by using inorganic materials that are significantly more resistant to degradation.While OLED panels are typically rated for a lifespan of 30,000 to 60,000 hours, MicroLED panels can last over 100,000 hours without significant degradation.Another major benefit is brightness.
MicroLED can be significantly brighter, both in peak highlights and across the entire panel.A high-end OLED TV like the LG OLED evo G6 can achieve a peak brightness of 3,098 nits in HDR mode on a 1% window and up to 4,600 nits in Vivid mode, according to testing by FlatpanelsHD.Now compare that to the Hisense 136MX, an enormous 136-inch MicroLED TV with a claimed peak brightness of up to 10,000 nits.
I know I'm comparing independent testing with a manufacturer's claim, but even if we use the LG OLED's highest measured brightness, the Hisense MicroLED is still more than twice as bright.It's hard to find somewhere to experience MicroLED displays in person, but imagine the incredible contrast of an OLED panel combined with the blinding highlights of a high-end Mini LED TV, without any concerns about burn-in.MicroLED TVs are incredibly expensive because they're a nightmare to manufacture The TV costs how much?! OLED TVs have become dramatically cheaper over time.
LG's first commercially available 55-inch OLED TV launched in 2013 for around $10,000, but today, you can find a decent OLED TV for under $1,000.Better manufacturing yields, improved production processes, increased capacity, and competition have all helped bring prices down.Unfortunately, MicroLED remains prohibitively expensive for most people, even nearly nine years after Samsung first unveiled The Wall at CES 2018, but prices never really went down to consumer levels.
Samsung's premium MicroLED TVs have always started at around $100,000, and nothing has changed.One of the least expensive large-format MicroLED displays I could find is AWALL's 102-inch C Series, which costs $21,500.Don't get your hopes up, though, as this version has a resolution of just 1,920 × 810 pixels and doesn't even come preassembled.
Related What Is an RGB Mini-LED TV, and How Does It Compare to OLED? The battle for TV supremacy is heating up.Posts By Gaurav Shukla There's a reason why all MicroLED TVs are often massive (many are north of 100 diagonal inches) and only come in a resolution of 4K — manufacturing smaller diodes is extremely challenging and expensive.MicroLED panels are manufactured by growing tiny LEDs on sapphire wafers using various semiconductor materials, which are then cut down into individual red, green, and blue LEDs through photolithography and etching.
These LEDs then need to be transferred onto a backplane, typically a TFT-based substrate for large displays, which contains the circuitry needed to control individual pixels.This process is known as mass transfer, and it's where things get particularly difficult.Even the most microscopic failure can leave thousands of defective LEDs that need to be identified and replaced or repaired using lasers and other precision tools.
By the time MicroLED becomes affordable, OLED could be several generations ahead On paper, MicroLED really is the endgame we thought OLED was.Unfortunately, current manufacturing constraints make it prohibitively expensive for most consumers, and while prices will eventually come down, it could be years before MicroLED becomes affordable enough to justify choosing it over OLED.Also, don't forget that OLED will keep improving and getting more affordable in the meantime, potentially reaching a point where its remaining drawbacks no longer justify the premium MicroLED TVs will inevitably carry.
For now and the foreseeable future, MicroLED remains a luxury for people with money to burn and a niche technology for commercial displays, video walls, and high-end retail stores.The rest of us will just have to wait.
Read More
