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Are OLED TVs overrated?

wvnative

Member
OLED TVs are worth the hype when you watch content that properly takes advantage of them.

but that content isn't super common. lots of games and movies have poor HDR, and if you mostly just watch tv shows its kinda not worth it yet imo.

I've had a 2017 model for nearly 3 years, with lots of gaming and internet surfing use. still no sign of burn in.
 
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I'm talking about results, not promises. And Vincent has little credibility especially when it comes to TCL considering they fly him around. In fact, his coverage was absolutely pathetic for the 8-series and only once everyone showed how bad the TV really was did he start talking about how awful it really was. I have very little trust in him but he still has some useful info from time to time.


It's both. There's a lot of caveats to burn-in based on usage & settings. If we look at the RTINGS tests, the CNN TVs show burn it on magenta showing clearly at 20 weeks (for max brightness) or 30 weeks (200 nits brightness). Now obviously if you don't watch the same thing over & over, the rate at which you hit the pixels in the same way will vary wildly based on content, so the 20 weeks (or 2800 hours) is the worst case scenario. If we look at the other footage, you can see they all pretty much give up around 100 weeks, with the exception of COD WW2 which is the least stressful test you'd ever do, so you that's at 14000 hours or so. So let's say that you can expect to be mostly burn-in free for between 3000 and 14000 hours.

Now the reason I say it's going to burn-in before the useful life of the product is because, think about it, will the OLED PQ suddenly be so bad it's unusable or you wouldn't want to watch it 5-10 years from now? Ofc not, just look at CRT & Plasma still kicking ass today. 14000 hours at 8hrs a day is less than 5 years. And since it would still have great PQ even if you were to upgrade then, you could still have used it in another room or given it away to a friend/relative to use, but with burn-in pretty much guaranteed by that point, you can't.

So that's why I say think about OLEDs in a much more disposable luxury kinda way.

The RTINGS test shows that at normal use, you won't have any burn-in issues. With varied use and all the anti burn-in measures available on the newer TVs, these things will still look good in 10 years. Maybe not perfect, but still good.
 

H4ze

Member
OLED is the greates way to watch anything, it's not overrated.
I also can't think I could ever go back to an IPS-Panel smartphone after I had the one I own atm with an OLED screen.
 
ive got a 65" e6 and a 55" c6. used for basically nothing but gaming with static huds for years with 0 burn in on either

enable the screen refresh option in the settings and you dont even really have to think about it
 
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V2Tommy

Member
OLED is the greates way to watch anything, it's not overrated.
I also can't think I could ever go back to an IPS-Panel smartphone after I had the one I own atm with an OLED screen.

Exactly. Nobody would accept an LCD display on a new phone and yet line up to buy giant TVs of the same caliber.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
ive got a 65" e6 and a 55" c6. used for basically nothing but gaming with static huds for years with 0 burn in on either

enable the screen refresh option in the settings and you dont even really have to think about it
I really doubt that having seen burn in on my LG EF950V and ZDNet and RTINGS having positive burn in tests on C7 and C8.

Burn in on earlier than 2019 models is a concern for heavy gaming. The newer models have been designed with burn in in mind so it makes sense they're more resilient.
 
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BluRayHiDef

Banned
Someone please explaine to me the naming convention of LG's OLED TVs. Are "B" TVs higher tier or lower tier than "C" TVs? Are there "A" TVs?
 

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
Yes oleds are mad good

Made me pick the iphone XS MAX over the iphone 11
 

MrS

Banned
You'd think that it'd be the other way around, but whatever. What's LG's best OLED TV that's 55" and less than $2000 USD?
I'm not in USA so it's hard to say. You won't go wrong with either the CX 55" or 65". google the prices on those. Last years model, the C9, is superb also. It will be much cheaper than the CX if you can find one available. The feature sets are very similar, some say C9 is better but it won't get supported as much as CX moving forward.
 
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V2Tommy

Member
Yes oleds are mad good

Made me pick the iphone XS MAX over the iphone 11

And the iPhones ones are a filthy Pentile AMOLED as well. LG's WRGB OLED has a much nicer fillrate, but they don't exist in phone sizes.

_ED2l4EiX6oqG7XU5LeFIBzHyv_IsusbsUiPS9Toniw.png
 

V2Tommy

Member
because at that high DPI it does NOT matter AT ALL :messenger_tears_of_joy:

I can still see the Pentile pattern on most things on my 11 Max. It's a step down from LCD fillrate of the last phone, but otherwise superior. But also, no one's making AMOLED televisions, which is a shame, because they could be a good budget option for those that love perfect blacks. Samsung had Pentile plasma back in the day and it was decent outside of watching full-color slides.
 

BluRayHiDef

Banned
I'm not in USA so it's hard to say. You won't go wrong with either the CX 55" or 65". google the prices on those. Last years model, the C9, is superb also. It will be much cheaper than the CX if you can find one available. The feature sets are very similar, some say C9 is better but it won't get supported as much as CX moving forward.
55" C9 or CX or 65" B9 if you care more about size and less about brightness and features.

According to Rtings, it supports HDMI 2.1 as well, but supports only 40Gbs rather the full bandwidth of the standard, which is 48Gbs. It's $1,807.31 after tax and shipping are applied. Yikes!

5RhAcCH.jpg
 
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V2Tommy

Member
According to Rtings, it supports HDMI 2.1 as well, but supports only 40Gbs rather the full bandwidth of the standard, which is 48Gbs.

Non-issue. The 48Gbps would allow it to accept signals for display modes it couldn't even display (12-bit color) so it's more of an academic thing. Only "real" issue would be if Nvidia continues to not support 10-bit color on consumer cards, forcing you to go to 8-bit. This is unclear for now.
 

Skyr

Member
According to Rtings, it supports HDMI 2.1 as well, but supports only 40Gbs rather the full bandwidth of the standard, which is 48Gbs. It's $1,807.31 after tax and shipping are applied. Yikes!

5RhAcCH.jpg
The 40gb bandwith doesn't matter tho.
>40gb would only matter for 12bit colors and the panel is 10bit.
 

BluRayHiDef

Banned
The 40gb bandwith doesn't matter tho.
>40gb would only matter for 12bit colors and the panel is 10bit.

Well, the brightness levels still bother me, especially for SDR, so it's no good to me anyway. I can't wait until TCL's 6 Series and 8 Series for this year are released.
 

V2Tommy

Member
Well, the brightness levels still bother me, especially for SDR, so it's no good to me anyway. I can't wait until TCL's 6 Series and 8 Series for this year are released.

Can you not get Vizio? Because Quantum X is about the brightest TV money can buy, ain't it?
 
I agree. Instead of buying OLED I'd rather just wait for the newer technologies to mature like MicroLED, perfect black levels with none of the drawbacks like lower brightness/burn in etc..
Micro-LED is Samsung Electronics pet project. It's falling on hard times. It's astonishingly difficult to scale down micro-LED. Also, a dirty secret with current micro-LED is that the actual size of said LED is actually more in line with mini-LED. Not that any of that matters cause the yields on mico-LED are absolutely terrible. Even when, or if at all, they figure that out, it will be insanely expensive. Meanwhile, Samsung's sister company, Samsung Display, is going a different direction with QNED. This is much more realistic to reach average consumers at this point, although still expensive, but nowhere near micro-LED. I'd like to add, for next year, expect Samsung to release a mini-LED top-end set to compete with Vizio and especially TCL's Vidrian.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
Well, the brightness levels still bother me, especially for SDR, so it's no good to me anyway. I can't wait until TCL's 6 Series and 8 Series for this year are released.
That's why you also need a dark room so the brightness matters less and you get to see those inky blacks.
 

Rbk_3

Member
You'd think that it'd be the other way around, but whatever. What's LG's best OLED TV that's 55" and less than $2000 USD?

They are all pretty much the same. B series has a slightly inferior processor. C & E are the same aside from aesthetics and the E has a built in sound bar. The panels are the same across the board.

Black Friday the B series typically goes for around $1100 USD

You can get the 55 B9 for $1300 now

Buy from somewhere with a solid return policy if you think you may want to return it. I guarantee that you won't though. The brightness is going to be a non issue.
 
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BluRayHiDef

Banned
They are all pretty much the same. B series has a slightly inferior processor. C & E are the same aside from aesthetics and the E has a built in sound bar. The panels are the same across the board.

Black Friday the B series typically goes for around $1100 USD

You can get the 55 B9 for $1300 now

Buy from somewhere with a solid return policy if you think you may want to return it. I guarantee that you won't though. The brightness is going to be a non issue.

The low brightness is a genuine issue, considering that movies are mastered to 4000 nits. LED LCD TVs come the closest to reaching this evel of brightness.
 
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MacReady13

Member
Started off with a 3D Samsung Plasma. Was simply stunning watching blu ray films on it.
Moved to a Sony 4K LED. Picture quality is stunning and colors really pop on it.
With next gen almost here and me wanting to upgrade my PC, thought I put splurge on an LG CX. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best picture quality I have seen. Playing Horizon Zero Dawn on this TV is just something else! Everything looks just so sumptuous!

I really can't convey just how much I truly love the picture quality without someone who hasn't seen the picture finally seeing it themselves. It is sublime! Had mine for about 3-4 months now and I'm just in love!
 

Ulysses 31

Member
The brightnees is a genuine issue, considering that movies are mastered to 4000 nits. LED LCD TVs come to closest to reaching this evel of brightness.
Not every UHD movie is mastered at 4K. Current displays aren't close to accurately display many UHD movies so so that's a strange concern to have.

MicroLED might be the first to display 4K nits and that's still years off before it becomes affordable.

Mad Mad Fury Road was mastered at almost 10k nits, will be a while before there's a screen that can display it without tone mapping. :lollipop_grinning:
 

BluRayHiDef

Banned
Not every UHD movie is mastered at 4K. Current displays aren't close to accurately display many UHD movies so so that's a strange concern to have.

MicroLED might be the first to display 4K nits and that's still years off before it becomes affordable.

Mad Mad Fury Road was mastered at almost 10k nits, will be a while before there's a screen that can display it without tone mapping. :lollipop_grinning:
My point is that the brightest displays, which are LED LCDs, come the closest to providing the truest HDR experiences in terms of peak luminance. OLEDs are being left farther and farther behind every year. Vizio's Quantum X Series of 2019 and TCL's 8 Series of 2019 can both reach around 2000 nits (2373 nits for the Quantum X and 1884 nits for the 8 Series) and it's been said that their corresponding series of 2020 will be able to reach ~3000 nits. As for Mad Max: Fury Road, it's an anamoly; the highest level of brightness at which most movies are mastered is 4000 nits.
 
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sobaka770

Banned
Until Microled come out and get the benefit of pure blacks and high nit brightness, OLED are definitely not overrated at all.

The jump in quality between my old TV and a C9 is astounding. And since most programming is still in SDR and doesn't require 1000+ nits to look good, OLED makes all this old content shine like never before.

Once you go true black...
 

Rbk_3

Member
The low brightness is a genuine issue, considering that movies are mastered to 4000 nits. LED LCD TVs come the closest to reaching this evel of brightness.
My point is that the brightest displays, which are LED LCDs, come the closest to providing the truest HDR experiences in terms of peak luminance. OLEDs are being left farther and farther behind every year. Vizio's Quantum X Series of 2019 and TCL's 8 Series of 2019 can both reach around 2000 nits (2373 nits for the Quantum X and 1884 nits for the 8 Series) and it's been said that their corresponding series of 2020 will be able to reach ~3000 nits. As for Mad Max: Fury Road, it's an anamoly; the highest level of brightness at which most movies are mastered is 4000 nits.

Except there is a lot more to HDR than peak brightness. I am telling you, the HDR on my C9 is better than on my KS8000 that has a peak brightness of 1600 nits, and the KS8000 has a very solid contrast ratio of 7000:1 too but it can’t compete with inf:1.
 
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Haribokart

Banned
To the people saying burn in isn’t an issue on newer models, what if you only play one game which is 75% of your TV usage. Sometimes long 6/7 hour sessions. would this seriously not cause burn in?


I used to get it on my Panasonic Plasma (RIP baby) and that was when I used to switch up what I played a lot.
 
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BluRayHiDef

Banned
Behold, the fantastic black levels of my mere TCL R617, captured via my Fujifilm X-T3. OLED is unnecessary.

IIvqaq6.jpg


The stream (Legion Season 3) isn't even in 4K-HDR; it's in 1080p-SDR streamed via Amazon Prime.
 
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BluRayHiDef

Banned
Except there is a lot more to HDR than peak brightness. I am telling you, the HDR on my C9 is better than on my KS8000 that has a peak brightness of 1600 nits, and the KS8000 has a very solid contrast ratio of 7000:1 too but it can’t compete with inf:1.
See my post above.
 

Leyasu

Banned
Burn in was the reason that I didn’t get an OLED. I got a Samsung Qled instead.

but not just burn it. Before getting my tv last week Idid some searching and watched some videos. One in particular was a direct gaming comparison between an oled and a qled (both 2020 models). On thing that really caught my eye was that the oled really lost a lot of details in Dark areas. Gears 5 in particular was affected. On the other hand though middle to longer distances looked amazing.

I’ll have a look this afternoon and see if I can find the vid

I am not trying to defend my purchase. Burn in, with two young kids is what stayed my hand.

Oled will be my next tv
 
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BluRayHiDef

Banned
Burn in was the reason that I didn’t get an OLED. I got a Samsung Qled instead.

but not just burn it. Before getting my tv last week Idid some searching and watched some videos. One in particular was a direct gaming comparison between an oled and a qled (both 2020 models). On thing that really caught my eye was that the oled really lost a lot of details in Dark areas. Gears 5 in particular was affected. On the other hand though middle to longer distances looked amazing.

I’ll have a look this afternoon and see if I can find the vid

I am not trying to defend my purchase. Burn in, with two young kids is what stayed my hand.

Oled will be my next tv

Does the TV that you bought support HDMI 2.1? If not, then why didn't you wait?
 

Kagey K

Banned
Burn in was the reason that I didn’t get an OLED. I got a Samsung Qled instead.

but not just burn it. Before getting my tv last week Idid some searching and watched some videos. One in particular was a direct gaming comparison between an oled and a qled (both 2020 models). On thing that really caught my eye was that the oled really lost a lot of details in Dark areas. Gears 5 in particular was affected. On the other hand though middle to longer distances looked amazing.

I’ll have a look this afternoon and see if I can find the vid

I am not trying to defend my purchase. Burn in, with two young kids is what stayed my hand.

Oled will be my next tv
With pixel shift and pixel refresher it’s not really a problem anymore.

I had the red Netflix logo burned into some of my older Lcds.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
It has its strengths, but I think many OLED owners are underestimating the quality of the medium/high-tier LEDs of the last few years.

For most of my gaming experiences, there’s very little actual difference in image quality between my OLED and recent consumer LEDs, especially for very colorful games like Nintendo games. More realistic games definitely benefit from better blacks and contrast. But the real difference is in watching movies.

I seriously don’t understand the argument about OLED brightness. Like I said in another thread, my OLED can get insufferably bright when the sun goes down. Sometimes I’ll lower the “OLED light” setting to 60 from 80 when gaming at night because even 80 can be too bright. I have virtually no problem with reflections and screen brightness even on a sunny day, and my living room can get pretty bright. I really can’t imagine needing that much more brightness. I’d been using plasmas for almost 15 years before getting an OLED, and plasmas were much, much dimmer. In short, I doubt anyone would find OLED ”too dim” in most real-life settings.
 
My mommy got one, so far its not really a step beyond. It's displaying blacks correctly and viewing angles are important.

It also looks about like my KS8000, which gets left on constantly. I did think about it a lot with my Plasma and dont miss that. LCD did not impress me from the get go, it took a lot of tweaking it didnt handle low res stuff very well. OLED is no better there.

Right now, I will probably go for an LCD that is 10 inches bigger for half the price.
 
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Ulysses 31

Member
It has its strengths, but I think many OLED owners are underestimating the quality of the medium/high-tier LEDs of the last few years.

For most of my gaming experiences, there’s very little actual difference in image quality between my OLED and recent consumer LEDs, especially for very colorful games like Nintendo games. More realistic games definitely benefit from better blacks and contrast. But the real difference is in watching movies.

I seriously don’t understand the argument about OLED brightness. Like I said in another thread, my OLED can get insufferably bright when the sun goes down. Sometimes I’ll lower the “OLED light” setting to 60 from 80 when gaming at night because even 80 can be too bright. I have virtually no problem with reflections and screen brightness even on a sunny day, and my living room can get pretty bright. I really can’t imagine needing that much more brightness. I’d been using plasmas for almost 15 years before getting an OLED, and plasmas were much, much dimmer. In short, I doubt anyone would find OLED ”too dim” in most real-life settings.
Yeah, comments like "it's still LCD tech" are funny to read.

Took a while for me to adapt to OLED brightness going from a Q950R. I still think OLED brightness is on the dim side with SDR content so I'm curious which OLED tv model you're talking about with insufferable brightness. My room needs to be nearly pitch black for me to not mind the lower OLED brightness.

Right now I enjoy best of both worlds with a LG CX and Samsung Q950TS.
 
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Rbk_3

Member
Yeah, comments like "it's still LCD tech" are funny to read.

Took a while for me to adapt to OLED brightness going from a Q950R. I still think OLED brightness is on the dim side with SDR content so I'm curious which OLED tv model you're talking about with insufferable brightness. My room needs to be nearly pitch black for me to not mind the lower OLED brightness.

Right now I enjoy best of both worlds with a LG CX and Samsung Q950TS.

What backlight setting do you use? In a pitch black room, a properly calibrated C9/CX for SDR should have an OLED light of around 25 for the ISF standard of 120 nits.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
What backlight setting do you use? In a pitch black room, a properly calibrated C9/CX for SDR should have an OLED light of around 25 for the ISF standard of 120 nits.
I use auto energy saving which disables OLED light but otherwise I put it on 100. Tried moviemaker mode with 25 OLED light and that's way to dim for me. Maybe I'm tainted by years of Samsung bright (over?)saturated colors? :p

I use tweaked ISF Expert (dark room) mode settings for SDR watching.
 
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Madflavor

Member
Yeah they are. I got a 52" QLED in my living room, and my guests jaws hit the floor when the see the quality. OLED is obviously very nice and arguably better, but it's not better to the point of "Go OLED or bust."
 

BluRayHiDef

Banned
It is not the best. But I only intend on buying one next gen console. So I am good for the generation.
Why do you suppose that only one of the TV's HDMI ports is 2.1? Would it somehow have cost more to make all of the other HDMI ports 2.1? Also, what do you think of the black levels of my TCL R617? Link.
 

Leyasu

Banned
Why do you suppose that only one of the TV's HDMI ports is 2.1? Would it somehow have cost more to make all of the other HDMI ports 2.1? Also, what do you think of the black levels of my TCL R617? Link.
Black levels look great in that picture. Do you know how many local dimming zones your tv has?

I honestly cannot fathom why samsung cheaped out on HDMI 2.1 ports. I should imagine that the cost is peanuts.

perhaps they are waiting a year to have all 4 as selling point next year.
 

MaestroMike

Gold Member
Kinda curious do you need to break in new oleds like you did with plasmas with those color slides?? I think I had to do it for like 200 hours or something with my plasmas.
 
Kinda curious do you need to break in new oleds like you did with plasmas with those color slides?? I think I had to do it for like 200 hours or something with my plasmas.

Glad I wasnt alone in this. I think they are out of the box...what they are. You cant copy other people's white balance tweaks. They are static out of the box. I could be highly uninformed though.

I actually found a unique calibration tool online. It is a pc program that uses a camera's white balance to let you gauge what 2point adjustments you need to do. It got me to my final tweaks on this ks8000 4 years in.

The colors are about as on point as my plasma with 200 hours of break in slides and applying other users tweaks to the technician menu.
 
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