It only takes a quick glance at our picks for the best TVs to notice that nearly all of them are one of two technologies: OLED and mini-LED. These are the latest and greatest TV technologies and offer the best image quality you can buy. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, though, and depending if you use your TV for mostly watching movies, playing games or a mix of both, one tech might be better than the other.
All TVs can show all kinds of content, of course, but OLED will work better in some cases, and mini-LED will work better in others. Both will look better than most TVs from just a few years ago. Weighing their pros and cons, and keeping price in mind, is key. This guide should help you figure out what’s best for you.
OLED and QD-OLED
Best for picture quality, but pricey
Like
- Excellent overall picture quality
- Excellent contrast ratio
Don’t like
- Not quite as bright as some technologies
- Potential for image retention
- Expensive
For the best overall picture quality, most experts including CNET’s reviewers agree that OLED is the winner. The combination of perfect black levels and a bright image make images pop in a way other technologies, including mini-LED can’t quite match.
All OLED TVs on the market today use panels made by either Samsung or LG. Many Samsung OLEDs are QD-OLED, which pairs the emissive technology of OLED with quantum dots. This can improve the color and brightness even more than traditional OLED. LG’s latest OLED tech uses a stack of 4 OLED layers to improve brightness and color over simpler and older OLED designs. In both cases the top-of-the-line LG and Samsung TVs offer the best image quality we’ve ever seen.
On the downside for OLED, there’s the potential of image retention, also known as burn-in. If you watch the same thing all day (cable news, the same video game), the static parts of the screen can “stick.” Typically this goes away when you watch something else, but if you only watch one channel for hours at a time, OLED’s not for you. Also, while the latest OLEDs are very bright, mini-LED is brighter. So if you regularly watch TV during the day in a brightly lit room, a TV based on that tech might be a better option.
Check out the best OLED and QD-OLED TVs.
Putting the ‘Q’ in QLEDs: Where Quantum Dots Are Made
Mini-LED
Big, bright, with a great image, though not quite as good as OLED
Like
- Bright images
- Great contrast
- Huge screens
Don’t like
- Not quite as good as OLED
- More expensive than some other tech
Technically, Mini-LED is an evolution from LED LCDs that first came to market in the 2000s. Both technologies use LEDs to create light and an LCD layer to create an image. The difference is the size and number of LEDs. Mini-LED has a lot more LEDs, and they’re smaller. This might not seem like a huge difference, but the improvements in image quality and brightness are significant.
The main issue with “normal” LED LCDs is that their contrast ratio isn’t as good as OLED. As such, the picture isn’t quite as good. Mini-LEDs, like all local-dimming LED LCDs, can improve the contrast ratio by dimming certain areas of the screen so dark areas can appear darker. The problem with that is even the best local dimming zone still comprised a fairly large area of the screen. So a small bright object on a dark background — a streetlight, say — would raise the level of the surrounding black area, making it appear gray. While engineers have done a lot over the years to minimize this problem, it persists. It has to, it’s just physics.
With mini-LED, a greater number of smaller LEDs are spread across the back of the TV. In most cases these greatly reduce the size of the local dimming zone, so to a casual viewer the contrast ratio is fantastic. Not pixel-perfect like OLED, but close enough. Mini-LED TVs can also produce some extremely bright images, which can be handy for daytime viewing in brighter rooms. There’s also basically no chance of image retention, so for gamers worried about marring their OLED screens, mini-LED is a great alternative.
The downside? Mini-LEDs are more expensive than their lesser LED LCD counterparts, but are usually cheaper than OLED.
Check out the best Mini-LED TVs.
Looking ahead
Right now, OLED and mini-LED are the cutting edge of TV technology. They offer incredible image quality, but there are other technologies on the horizon that have the potential to be even better. The first is direct-view quantum dots, aka NanoLED. These skip LED and OLED completely, using just quantum dots to make up an image. The tech is promising, with the potential for incredible picture quality. It’s still in the development stages, though, so don’t expect it for a few years. We’ve seen some behind-the-scenes research as well as some working prototypes.
The other is MicroLED. Right now this tech is exclusively in the giant display realm — and it is available now if you’ve got the cash — but is more of a projector replacement than a TV replacement. With typical LED LCDs there are somewhere between a few dozen and a few thousand LEDs which create light which illuminates the image. With MicroLED, each pixel is an LED, so this means there’s millions of them. As the tech matures it’s possible we’ll see more TV-sized MicroLEDs (if “TV sized” means 100 inches to you). In addition to being quite expensive it’s also energy intensive so, like NanoLED, don’t expect a 65-inch MicroLED to compete price-wise with OLED and mini-LED anytime soon.
In addition to covering cameras and display tech, Geoff does photo essays about cool museums and other stuff, including nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, 10,000-mile road trips.
Also, check out Budget Travel for Dummies, his travel book and his bestselling sci-fi novel about city-size submarines. You can follow him on Instagram and YouTube.
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