oled vs lcd displays manufacturer

If you’re designing a display application or deciding what type of TV to get, you’ll probably have to choose between an OLED or LCD as your display type.

LCDs utilize liquid crystals that produce an image when light is passed through the display. OLED displays generate images by applying electricity to organic materials inside the display.OLED and LCD Main Difference:

graphics and images visible. This is the reason you’re still able to see light coming through on images that are meant to be dark on an LCD monitor, display, or television.

OLEDs by comparison, deliver a drastically higher contrast by dynamically managing their individual pixels. When an image on an OLED display uses the color black, the pixel shuts off completely and renders a much higher contrast than that of LCDs.OLED vs LCD - Who is better at contrast?

Having a high brightness level is important if your display is going to be used in direct sunlight or somewhere with high ambient brightness. The display"s brightness level isn"t as important if it’s going to be used indoors or in a low light setting.OLED vs LCD - Who is better at Brightness?

This means the display is much thinner than LCD displays and their pixels are much closer to the surface of the display, giving them an inherently wider viewing angle.

You’ll often notice images becoming distorted or losing their colors when tilting an LCD or when you view it from different angles. However, many LCDs now include technology to compensate for this – specifically In-Plane Switching (IPS).

LCDs with IPS are significantly brighter than standard LCDs and offer viewing angles that are on-par with OLEDs.OLED vs LCD - Who is better at Viewing Angles?

LCDs have been on the market much longer than OLEDs, so there is more data to support their longevity. On average LCDs have proven to perform for around 60,000 hours (2,500) days of operation.

With most LCDs you can expect about 7 years of consistent performance. Some dimming of the backlight has been observed but it is not significant to the quality of the display.

OLEDs are a newer technology in the display market, which makes them harder to fully review. Not only does OLED technology continue to improve at a rapid pace, but there also hasn’t been enough time to thoroughly observe their performance.

You must also consider OLED’s vulnerability to image burn-in. The organic material in these displays can leave a permanent afterimage on the display if a static image is displayed for too long.

So depending on how your OLED is used, this can greatly affect its lifespan. An OLED being used to show static images for long periods of time will not have the same longevity as one displaying dynamic, constantly moving images.OLED vs LCD - Which one last longer?

There is not yet a clear winner when it comes to lifespans between LCD and OLED displays. Each have their advantages depending on their use-cases. It’s a tie!

For a display application requiring the best colors, contrast, and viewing angles – especially for small and lightweight wearable devices – we would suggest an OLED display.

OLED displays have higher contrast ratios (1 million : 1 static compared with 1,000 : 1 for LCD screens), deeper blacks and lower power consumption compared with LCD displays. They also have greater color accuracy. However, they are more expensive, and blue OLEDs have a shorter lifetime.

OLED displays offer a much better viewing angle. In contrast, viewing angle is limited with LCD displays. And even inside the supported viewing angle, the quality of the picture on an LCD screen is not consistent; it varies in brightness, contrast, saturation and hue by variations in posture of the viewer.

There are no geographical constraints with OLED screens. LCD screens, on the other hand, lose contrast in high temperature environments, and lose brightness and speed in low temperature environments.

Blue OLEDs degrade more rapidly than the materials that produce other colors. Because of this, the manufacturers of these displays often compensate by calibrating the colors in a way that oversaturates the them and adds a bluish tint to the screen.

With current technology, OLED displays use more energy than backlit LCDs when displaying light colors. While OLED displays have deeper blacks compared with backlit LCD displays, they have dimmer whites.

LCDs use liquid crystals that twist and untwist in response to an electric charge and are lit by a backlight. When a current runs through them, they untwist to let through a specific amount of light. They are then paired with color filters to create the display.

AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) is a different form of OLED used in some mobile phones, media players and digital cameras. It offers higher refresh rates with OLEDs and consume a lot less power, making them good for portable electronics. However, they are difficult to view in direct sunlight. Products with AMOLED screens include Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy S II, HTC Legend and PlayStation Vita.

There are plenty of new and confusing terms facing TV shoppers today, but when it comes down to the screen technology itself, there are only two: Nearly every TV sold today is either LCD or OLED.

The biggest between the two is in how they work. With OLED, each pixel provides its own illumination so there"s no separate backlight. With an LCD TV, all of the pixels are illuminated by an LED backlight. That difference leads to all kinds of picture quality effects, some of which favor LCD, but most of which benefit OLED.

LCDs are made by a number of companies across Asia. All current OLED TVs are built by LG Display, though companies like Sony and Vizio buy OLED panels from LG and then use their own electronics and aesthetic design.

So which one is better? Read on for their strengths and weaknesses. In general we"ll be comparing OLED to the best (read: most expensive) LCD has to offer, mainly because there"s no such thing as a cheap OLED TV (yet).

At the other side of light output is black level, or how dark the TV can get. OLED wins here because of its ability to turn off individual pixels completely. It can produce truly perfect black.

The better LCDs have local dimming, where parts of the screen can dim independently of others. This isn"t quite as good as per-pixel control because the black areas still aren"t absolutely black, but it"s better than nothing. The best LCDs have full-array local dimming, which provides even finer control over the contrast of what"s onscreen -- but even they can suffer from "blooming," where a bright area spoils the black of an adjacent dark area.

Here"s where it comes together. Contrast ratio is the difference between the brightest and the darkest a TV can be. OLED is the winner here because it can get extremely bright, plus it can produce absolute black with no blooming. It has the best contrast ratio of any modern display.

One of the main downsides of LCD TVs is a change in picture quality if you sit away from dead center (as in, off to the sides). How much this matters to you certainly depends on your seating arrangement, but also on how much you love your loved ones.

A few LCDs use in-plane switching (IPS) panels, which have better off-axis picture quality than other kinds of LCDs, but don"t look as good as other LCDs straight on (primarily due to a lower contrast ratio).

OLED doesn"t have the off-axis issue LCDs have; its image looks basically the same, even from extreme angles. So if you have a wide seating area, OLED is the better option.

Nearly all current TVs are HDR compatible, but that"s not the entire story. Just because a TV claims HDR compatibility doesn"t mean it can accurately display HDR content. All OLED TVs have the dynamic range to take advantage of HDR, but lower-priced LCDs, especially those without local-dimming backlights, do not. So if you want to see HDR content it all its dynamic, vibrant beauty, go for OLED or an LCD with local dimming.

In our tests comparing the best new OLED and LCD TVs with HDR games and movies, OLED usually looks better. Its superior contrast and lack of blooming win the day despite LCD"s brightness advantage. In other words LCD TVs can get brighter, especially in full-screen bright scenes and HDR highlights, but none of them can control that illumination as precisely as an OLED TV.

OLED"s energy consumption is directly related to screen brightness. The brighter the screen, the more power it draws. It even varies with content. A dark movie will require less power than a hockey game or ski competition.

The energy consumption of LCD varies depending on the backlight setting. The lower the backlight, the lower the power consumption. A basic LED LCD with its backlight set low will draw less power than OLED.

LG has said their OLED TVs have a lifespan of 100,000 hours to half brightness, a figure that"s similar to LED LCDs. Generally speaking, all modern TVs are quite reliable.

Does that mean your new LCD or OLED will last for several decades like your parent"s last CRT (like the one pictured). Probably not, but then, why would you want it to? A 42-inch flat panel cost $14,000 in the late 90"s, and now a 65-inch TV with more than 16x the resolution and a million times better contrast ratio costs $1,400. Which is to say, by the time you"ll want/need to replace it, there will be something even better than what"s available now, for less money.

OLED TVs are available in sizes from 48 to 88 inches, but LCD TVs come in smaller and larger sizes than that -- with many more choices in between -- so LCD wins. At the high end of the size scale, however, the biggest "TVs" don"t use either technology.

If you want something even brighter, and don"t mind spending a literal fortune to get it, Samsung, Sony, and LG all sell direct-view LED displays. In most cases these are

You can get 4K resolution, 50-inch LCDs for around $400 -- or half that on sale. It"s going to be a long time before OLEDs are that price, but they have come down considerably.

LCD dominates the market because it"s cheap to manufacture and delivers good enough picture quality for just about everybody. But according to reviews at CNET and elsewhere, OLED wins for overall picture quality, largely due to the incredible contrast ratio. The price difference isn"t as severe as it used to be, and in the mid- to high-end of the market, there are lots of options.

There are two main competing display technologies in the market today: LCD and OLED. The mature and dominant technology is the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), while the up-and-coming challenger is the Organic Light Emitting Diode Display (OLED display). The main difference between LCD and OLED displays is how they create the light and the colors of the image being displayed. This leads to application dependent strengths and weaknesses of either technology.

OLEDs operate via a solid-state technology, where the individual pixels can emit light in various colors and intensity without the need for an additional light source or color filter. The light-emitting portion of an OLED display is comprised of multiple layers of very specific organic semiconductor materials which can be adjusted to emit light in specific wavelengths. These organic layers have a typical thickness in the order of 100nm. In addition, no backlight is required, allowing for a very thin display module.

The organic layers beginning on the cathode side of the device consist of several electron transport layers, a recombination layer and end with a hole transport layer on the anode side. The electron transport layers in the OLED stack-up allow movement of electrons from the cathode toward holes supplied from the anode. The electrons and holes recombine in the emissive recombination layer of the film stack-up. This recombination relaxes the energy levels of the electrons, which produces an emission of light. The wavelength of the emitted light is dependent on the chemical composition of the organic materials used in the recombination layer. The intensity of the light is controlled by the amount of current flowing through the OLED’s organic layers. In OLEDs, the individual pixels can emit red, green, or blue light, or – alternatively – they emit white light, which must then pass through color filters.

There are two main varieties of OLED screens: active-matrix and passive-matrix. The difference lies in how the pixels are generated. In the passive-matrix version, each pixel is created by the intersection of two wires, through which electrical current is passed to create a different color. In an active-matrix setup, each pixel has its individual transistor, which allows for faster refresh times and creates smoother motion and transitions in the picture.

In LCD display technology, the individual pixels modulate light. An applied voltage changes the orientation of liquid crystal molecules that – in conjunction with a pair of polarizers – function as a light shutter by either blocking or allowing light to pass through. LCD displays, therefore, require an additional light source, either from reflected ambient light or more commonly from a “backlight” (an array of LEDs arranged behind or next to the LCD panel). LCD color can be created by adding color filters to the individual pixels. Because OLED displays don’t require the additional backlight, polarizers, or color filter components of an LCD module, they can be made much thinner than LCD displays of equivalent size and resolution.

OLED display technology can offer power-saving advantages over LCDs, which is important, especially for battery-powered applications such as mobile phones. An OLED’s power consumption will vary with image content and brightness, as light is generated only at the individual pixels needed to display the image. A dark image or a graphic on a black background will consume much less power than bright images or graphics. In contrast, LCD backlights must be ON while the display operates. It’s possible to control individual zones of the backlight separately to save power, but this added complexity is usually only applied in larger displays.

OLEDs can achieve a much higher contrast ratio if reflections from the front surface are carefully controlled. If no current flows through an OLED pixel, it does not emit any light. In contrast the shutter effect of an LCD pixel does not block 100% of the light. Depending on the specific LCD technology used and the angle of observation, a small percentage of the light generated in the backlight can escape. This can wash out dark areas of an image. It is possible but expensive to limit this light leakage to a point where the contrast of an LCD and OLED display become perceptually equivalent.

RGB OLEDs naturally generate a narrow bandwidth of light. This leads to very saturated primary colors and a wide color gamut. This enables OLED technology to display colors which are not easily accessible to LCDs unless RGB backlights or quantum dots are used. Often OLED colors are used “as is”, however, for very high image color fidelity, such high color saturation needs to be electronically ‘tuned down’, to match the color bandwidth of the rendering chain.

LCDs offer an advantage over OLEDs in applications where a continuous static image is required. The light emitting materials in OLEDs are affected by luminance decay as a function of the total amount of current that has passed through the pixel. This decay differs for red, green and blue. The dimming effect is subtle, but when adjacent pixels are illuminated at the same time it can become noticeable as an undesired brightness variation or color shift. LCDs don’t suffer from this dimming effect, which makes them a more suitable solution for applications with static images or images with static elements.

Another advantage of LCD technology is the wide variety of different variations to choose from. Depending on the application certain trade-offs can be very attractive. An example is much lower cost for a laptop display compared to a tablet. This is achieved by allowing poor image performance when viewed from the direction the is usually blocked by the keyboard. In a tablet where good viewing performance is required from any direction, much higher cost LCDs or OLEDs must be used.

OLEDs offer an excellent solution for a variety of applications: Glucometers, thermometers, fitness trackers, professional audio equipment, Wi-Fi hotspots, radar detectors, dive computers, biometric transaction devices, and military communications equipment.

They can be used to replace old TN LCDs or add dynamic push buttons on industrial equipment. They can be customized to various resolutions, FPC configurations, colors, custom shaped OLED displays (e.g. octagonal, round, etc.) and can even be made into flexible and transparent displays. Thanks to their versatility, OLED display panel suppliers can offer some exciting capabilities for their customers – things that were previously impossible with LCDs.

As an experienced LCD and OLED panel supplier, New Vision Display can help you find the right technology for your application. Contact us via the below form to discuss your project.

For all the new technologies that have come our way in recent times, it’s worth taking a minute to consider an old battle going on between two display types. Two display types that can be found across monitors, TVs, mobile phones, cameras and pretty much any other device that has a screen.

In one corner is LED (light-emitting diode). It’s the most common type of display on the market, however, it might be unfamiliar because there’s slight labelling confusion with LCD (liquid crystal display).

For display purposes the two are the same, and if you see a TV or smartphone that states it has an ‘LED’ screen, it’s an LCD. The LED part just refers to the lighting source, not the display itself.

In a nutshell, LED LCD screens use a backlight to illuminate their pixels, while OLED’s pixels produce their own light. You might hear OLED’s pixels called ‘self-emissive’, while LCD tech is ‘transmissive’.

The light of an OLED display can be controlled on a pixel-by-pixel basis. This sort of dexterity isn’t possible with an LED LCD – but there are drawbacks to this approach, which we’ll come to later.

In cheaper TVs and LCD-screen phones, LED LCD displays tend to use ‘edge lighting’, where LEDs sit to the side of the display, not behind it. The light from these LEDs is fired through a matrix that feeds it through the red, green and blue pixels and into our eyes.

LED LCD screens can go brighter than OLED. That’s a big deal in the TV world, but even more so for smartphones, which are often used outdoors and in bright sunlight.

Brightness is generally measured as ‘nits’ – roughly the light of a candle per square metre. Brightness is important when viewing content in ambient light or sunlight, but also for high dynamic range video. This applies more to TVs, but phones boast credible video performance, and so it matters in that market too. The higher the level of brightness, the greater the visual impact.

Take an LCD screen into a darkened room and you may notice that parts of a purely black image aren’t black, because you can still see the backlighting (or edge lighting) showing through.

You’ll often see a contrast ratio quoted in a product’s specification, particularly when it comes to TVs and monitors. This tells you how much brighter a display’s whites are compared to its blacks. A decent LCD screen might have a contrast ratio of 1,000:1, which means the whites are a thousand times brighter than the blacks.

Contrast on an OLED display is far higher. When an OLED screen goes black, its pixels produce no light whatsoever. That means an infinite contrast ratio, although how great it looks will depend on how bright the screen can go. In general, OLED screens are best suited for use in darker rooms, and this is certainly the case where TVs are concerned.

OLED panels enjoy excellent viewing angles, primarily because the technology is so thin, and the pixels are so close to the surface. You can walk around an OLED TV or spread out in different spots in your living room, and you won’t lose out on contrast. For phones, viewing angles are extra important because you don’t tend to hold your hand perfectly parallel to your face.

Viewing angles are generally worse in LCDs, but this varies hugely depending on the display technology used. And there are lots of different kinds of LCD panel.

Thankfully, a lot of LCD devices use IPS panels these days. This stands for ‘in-plane switching’ and it generally provides better colour performance and dramatically improved viewing angles.

IPS is used in most smartphones and tablets, plenty of computer monitors and lots of TVs. It’s important to note that IPS and LED LCD aren’t mutually exclusive; it’s just another bit of jargon to tack on. Beware of the marketing blurb and head straight to the spec sheet.

The latest LCD screens can produce fantastic natural-looking colours. However, as is the case with viewing angles, it depends on the specific technology used.

OLED’s colours have fewer issues with pop and vibrancy, but early OLED TVs and phones had problems reining in colours and keeping them realistic. These days, the situation is better, Panasonic’s flagship OLEDs are used in the grading of Hollywood films.

Where OLED struggles is in colour volume. That is, bright scenes may challenge an OLED panel’s ability to maintain levels of colour saturation. It’s a weakness that LCD-favouring manufacturers enjoy pointing out.

Both have been the subject of further advancements in recent years. For LCD there’s Quantum Dot and Mini LED. The former uses a quantum-dot screen with blue LEDs rather than white LEDs and ‘nanocrystals’ of various sizes to convert light into different colours by altering its wavelength. Several TV manufacturers have jumped onboard Quantum Dot technology, but the most popular has been Samsung’s QLED branded TVs.

Mini LED is another derivation of LED LCD panels, employing smaller-sized LEDs that can emit more light than standard versions, increasing brightness output of the TV. And as they are smaller, more can be fitted into a screen, leading to greater control over brightness and contrast. This type of TV is becoming more popular, though in the UK and Europe it’s still relatively expensive. You can read more about Mini LED and its advantages in our explainer.

OLED, meanwhile, hasn’t stood still either. LG is the biggest manufacturer of large-sized OLED panels and has produced panels branded as evo OLED that are brighter than older versions. It uses a different material for its blue OLED material layer within the panel (deuterium), which can last for longer and can have more electrical current passed through it, increasing the brightness of the screen, and elevating the colour volume (range of colours it can display).

Another development is the eagerly anticipated QD-OLED. This display technology merges Quantum Dot backlights with an OLED panel, increasing the brightness, colour accuracy and volume, while retaining OLED’s perfect blacks, infinite contrast and potentially even wider viewing angles, so viewers can spread out anywhere in a room and see pretty much the same image. Samsung and Sonyare the two companies launching QD-OLED TVs in 2022.

And for smartphones there’s been a move towards AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode) screens for Android screens, while Apple has moved towards OLED for its smartphones and tried Mini LED with its iPad Pro. Technologies are consistently evolving with Superand Dynamic AMOLED versions available, more performance is being eked out.

While LED LCD has been around for much longer and is cheaper to make, manufacturers are beginning to move away from it, at least in the sense of the ‘standard’ LCD LED displays, opting to explore the likes of Mini LED and Quantum Dot variations.

OLED has gained momentum and become cheaper, with prices dipping well below the £1000 price point. OLED is much better than LED LCD at handling darkness and lighting precision, and offers much wider viewing angles, which is great for when large groups of people are watching TV. Refresh rates and motion processing are also better with OLED though there is the spectre of image retention.

If you’re dealing with a limited budget, whether you’re buying a phone, a monitor, a laptop or a TV, you’ll almost certainly end up with an LCD-based screen. OLED, meanwhile, incurs more of a premium but is getting cheaper, appearing in handheld gaming devices, laptops, some of the best smartphones as well as TVs

Which is better? Even if you eliminate money from the equation, it really comes down to personal taste. Neither OLED nor LCD LED is perfect. Some extol OLED’s skill in handling darkness, and its lighting precision. Others prefer LCD’s ability to go brighter and maintain colours at bright levels.

How do you decide? Stop reading this and go to a shop to check it out for yourself. While a shop floor isn’t the best environment in which to evaluate ultimate picture quality, it will at least provide an opportunity for you to realise your priorities. Whether you choose to side with LCD or OLED, you can take comfort in the fact that both technologies have matured considerably, making this is a safe time to invest.

Tech observers and investors revel in lively discussions about the latest, greatest gadget and whose bottom line will get the greatest bounce. They enjoy debating the intricacies and details of materials that contribute to these devices, and the related trends and developments.  For us at Corning, materials innovators for 165 years, it’s been great to see a recent uptick in discussions about OLED versus LCD display panel technology - a genuine #GlassAge debate.

Corning.com staff sat down with Mike Kunigonis, business director for Corning’s High Performance Displays Group, to understand key differences between OLED and LCD display technology.

Corning.com:  Thanks for your time today, Mike. Let’s start with a key question:  In the context of display panels, how does OLED technology work and what are the main differences between it and LCD technology?

MK: OLED stands for Organic Light-Emitting Diode, or Organic LED.  It’s an alternative to LCDs for consumer electronic devices that range in size from wearable to TVs. Like LCD, OLED is a type of panel that enables the displays on device screens. An OLED display picture is generated by turning on and off millions of tiny individual LEDs, each forming the individual pixels of a display. Compare this to LCD, where an always-on backlight projects light through a liquid crystal, sandwiched between two pieces of glass. When the liquid crystal is excited by an electrical current, it lets the light of an individual pixel pass through like a shutter. LCD and OLED display panels both excel at delivering vibrant consumer displays, each in its own unique way.

Corning.com: We’ve heard industry analysts with varying opinions on the benefits an OLED device offers. So why would a consumer prefer a device with an OLED display over an LCD display?

MK: Adoption of OLED displays on smaller, mobile devices is the driver behind most of today’s OLED industry growth, so let me focus on that. A handheld OLED display is attractive to consumers because of the industrial design and display attributes that this technology can support. For example, OLED displays can be curved, or be thinner, or have narrower bezels – or no bezels at all – or flex and bend.  Plus, an OLED display will be a great solution for virtual reality applications because it can provide high resolution and superior response time and latency.

Competition and innovation are hallmarks of the consumer electronics market which has experienced practically uninterrupted growth for decades. Many consumers own a range of electronic devices (laptop, smartphone, tablet, TV, etc.), each of which is available in a plethora of options: brands; grades, formats; technologies. This technological array is further complicated by marketing terms that try to differentiate between competing products. Acronyms like OLED and LCD are rife in the electronics sector, but what is the actual difference between the two?

The inordinate popularity of smart consumer devices continues to drive growth in the global display market, currently valued in the region of $135 billion. Screens based on LEDs (light-emitting diodes) used to be the industry-standard, but trends towards device miniaturization, portability, improved efficiency, and greater picture quality gradually fuelled OLED (organic light-emitting diode) panels. Over the next few years, the OLED market is expected to expand by a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 14.27%.

Currently, OLED televisions outperform traditional LED products on several fronts. They come in a versatile range of formats: panels as large as 88-inches satisfy the demands of premium TV displays; while smaller AMOLED (active-matrix OLED) screens set the benchmark of picture quality in the smartphone industry. Foldable OLED devices have finally begun to enter the consumer electronics market too, fulfilling a long-standing promise from proponents of the technology.

Traditional LED TVs are based on liquid crystal display (LCD) screen technology; a tried-and-tested panel structure. On an LCD screen, images are produced by a thin layer of liquid crystal solution overlaid on a transistor grid which uses small electrical charges to set the individual crystals to an open/closed state. This produces a pattern of light and dark pixels, but the light itself is produced by a bank of LEDs arranged at the edges of the screen or in a backlit array.

The best possible picture on LCD screens is produced using a full-array LED backlight with local-dimming which yields the widest possible contrast. However, LCDs comprise multiple sequential layers within the panel (color filters, polarizers, etc.) which are necessary for producing fully-saturated images but may inhibit picture uniformity and viewing angles. This also makes LED TVs thicker and heavier, rendering them undesirable for applications where reduction of thickness or weight is important.

OLEDs circumvent each of these issues by eschewing a backlight in favor of a self-emissive panel of organic carbon-based material. This allows each subpixel onscreen to be controlled independently. Alongside greater dynamic ranges and energy efficiency, the unique characteristics of OLED panels allow for significantly fewer layers in the screen matrix. Consequently, OLED TVs are typically thinner and lighter in weight than conventional LCDs, but cost significantly more to produce than LCD displays.

Avantama is one of the industry-leading formulators for consumer electronics applications, generating solutions for today’s cutting-edge displays and devices. If you would like more information about our full portfolio of nanoparticle inks and dispersions for OLED manufacturing, simply contact a member of the Avantama team today.

OLED vs. IPS LCD is a topic that comes up whenever consumers upgrade to a newer TV or a smartphone. Should you buy a TV that uses an IPS LCD display or should you pick up a TV with an OLED screen? Well, the answer isn’t so straightforward because they both have their advantages and disadvantages. In this article, we will explain how these screen technologies work and which one you should opt for while buying a TV.

IPS LCD (In-Plane Switching Liquid Crystal Display) and OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) are the two most commonly used screen technologies. Older technologies, such as TN (Twisted Nematic) and PLS (Plane-to-Line Switching) displays, have almost disappeared (except in the world of PC monitors and budget laptops) because IPS LCD and OLED are clearly better in almost all aspects. Other technologies such as Mini-LED, MicroLED, and QNED technologies are extremely new and they won’t become mainstream for a few years.

So, when you are finally deciding which TV to buy, the real battle is between OLED and IPS LCD. So where do these stand? Which is better for you? Which one should you pick for your new home theatre? Read on for more information on the OLED vs IPS LCD battle.

IPS LCD displays are perhaps the most common display type days, especially in TVs and laptops. Laptops, entry-level and mid-range smartphones, and most TVs use LCD displays. So, how do IPS displays work? IPS displays use an array of LCD pixels that shift colour as required. However, they don’t emit light on their own. That’s the reason they need a backlight made up of LEDs (Light-Emitting Diodes). The backlight can be arranged in various layouts: towards the edges, spread across the whole display, or separated into different sections.

IPS screens display the black colour by changing the alignment of LCDs so that pixels block the transmission of light, but some light still gets through. That’s the reason IPS LCD displays can’t display true deep black colour. Instead, they display dark grey and there is some ‘backlight bleed’.

OLED displays have traditionally been restricted to high-end devices. Even today, only high-end TVs and laptops feature OLED displays. In the world of smartphones, though, OLED technology has been democratised and even mid-range smartphones these days use OLED displays with high brightness and high refresh rates.

In a nutshell, OLED displays don’t use separate backlight sources. Instead, every pixel can reproduce its own light (also known as self-emissive displays). So, there’s no need for an additional backlight and each pixel can be turned on or off as needed. Since there is no need for a separate backlight plane, OLED displays are much thinner than LCD displays. They also offer a much better contrast ratio and viewing angles. However, the organic material used in OLED pixels tends to “burn” over the years that results in ghosting. Moreover, they can’t be as bright as LCD, Mini-LED, or Micro-LED displays.

We have given you a brief overview of IPS and OLED technologies. But which one is better? And which of these will be right for you? Here’s a list of pros and cons to help you in your purchase decision, where it is for smartphones or TVs.

OLEDs have a quicker response time: OLEDs individually-lit pixels can switch on/off or change colour faster. This makes for lower ghosting during fast-and-frenetic action scenes or while playing games. Ghosting refers to when the image on the screen seems to be following itself around or is blurry at the edges.

OLED TVs are slimmer and flexible: As we mentioned earlier, OLED displays don’t need a bulky backlight plane, so OLED TVs are really slim. The next wave of display technologies – foldable and rollable displays – will also be powered by OLED.

IPS LCD TVs offer higher brightness: IPS LCD TVs use a powerful backlight which also lets them get much brighter than their OLED counterparts. This can make for better HDR and even offer a better viewing experience if your TV room gets a lot of sunlight.

IPS TVs suffer from backlight bleed and blooming: This is less of an issue with high-end IPS TVs, but some cheaper models may suffer from glow (bright, greyish areas near the corners of the screen) or backlight bleed (patches or leaks of light, usually around the edges).

OLED TVs can suffer burn-in: OLED displays are at risk of burn-in, a condition in which a static image left on for too long can get permanently ‘burned’ onto the display and may appear like a ghostly dark patch.

OLEDs may get dimmer with age: OLEDs use organic substances which tend to decay over time. So, OLED displays lose brightness with age. It is quite slow and modern OLED TVs are not as affected by this as older OLED TVs, and this really shouldn’t be an issue, but you need to be aware of this.

IPS TVs are much cheaper: OLED is a relatively newer technology and is more expensive to manufacture. Currently, very few companies make OLED display panels. LG Display makes most of the OLED panels found on OLED TVs, while Samsung Display, CSOT, LG Display, and BOE make OLED screens for smartphones and smaller products. Most manufacturers also tend to restrict OLED tech to their largest, most feature-packed range, fueling the perception of OLED being expensive.

OLED, an acronym for Organic Light Emitting Diode, is often identified as the modern-age display. Many companies are still using LCDs, but the growing demand for OLEDs overshadows the market of LCDs.

Traditional LCDs use CCFL or cold-cathode fluorescent lamps backlight whereas OLEDs use organic material to emit light in different combinations of colors without using any backlight. In LCDs, the light emitted by the LED backlight passes through a layer of crystal material.

Since LCDs exhibit full-screen brightness with their LED backlights, they get a competitive edge over OLEDs in this parameter. However, in the modern-age displays, brightness is not given much importance in terms of image clarity and light output.

The standard contrast ratio of LCDs of computers may value 1000:1, whereas the contrast ratio of LCD TV displays may go around 4000:1. The contrast ratio of the OLED displays can go as high as 1,000,000:1. The more the contrast ratio is, the better your device’s picture quality will be.

The contrast ratio is the difference between the brightest and darkest visual of a display. Since OLEDs have true black where the pixels turn off when they show black color, which is not the case with LCDs, the OLEDs become a better option for contrast and picture quality.

The number of times a display presents a new image every second is called refresh rate. The OLEDs switch images far faster than LCDs. Today’s OLED displays have a 120Hz refresh rate far more than the 60Hz refresh rate of traditional LCDs. Despite being ahead of LCD, the OLEDs exhibit motion blur, which is a challenge for aspiring electronic equipment manufacturers of today.

Unlike LCDs that always need the backlight to illuminate their pixels, OLEDs use organic material to emit light and create an image. Having true black is another crucial reason why OLEDs consume less power than the contending LCDs. We can say that it is more about the brightness of the image being displayed. The less the light is emitted, the module will consume less energy. It means if we keep the LED backlight of LCDs low, it is possible to make them more energy-efficient than OLEDs.

Viewing angle is one of the most crucial parameters where OLEDs win over LCDs. If you sit off-axis in front of an LCD, you may not consider the image in its actual appearance as the visuals would fade away, which is not the case with OLED displays.

In all the parameters we have discussed here, OLEDs seem more advantageous. Moreover, OLEDs are easier to manufacture. Many OLED displays are offering bendable, foldable, and rollable OLED displays. From small-scale applications such as smartwatches to large-scale applications such as smartphones and TV displays, OLEDs are finding across more and more use cases.

In both LCD and OLED displays, producing these cells – which are highly complex – is by far the most difficult element of the production process. Indeed, the complexity of these cells, combined with the levels of investment needed to achieve expertise in their production, explains why there are less than 30 companies in the whole world that can produce them. China, for instance, has invested more than 300 billion yuan (approximately $45 billion USD) in just one of these companies – BOE – over the past 14 years.

Panox Display has been involved in the display industry for many years and has built strong and long-term partner relationships with many of the biggest OLED and LCD panel manufacturers. As a result, we are able to offer our clients guaranteed access to display products from the biggest manufacturers.

Founded in 2001, AUO – or AU Optronics – is the world’s leading TFT-LCD panel manufacturer (with a 16% market share) that designs, develops, and manufactures the world’s top three liquid crystal displays. With panels ranging from as small as 1.5 inches to 46 inches, it boasts one of the world"s few large-, medium -and small-sized product lines.

AUO offers advanced display integration solutions with innovative technologies, including 4K2K ultra-high resolution, 3D, ultra-thin, narrow bezel, transparent display, LTPS, OLED, and touch solutions. AOU has the most complete generation production line, ranging from 3.5G to 8.5G, offering panel products for a variety of LCD applications in a range of sizes, from as small as 1.2 inches to 71 inches.

Now Sharp is still top 10 TV brands all over the world. Just like BOE, Sharp produce LCDs in all kinds of size. Including small LCD (3.5 inch~9.1 inch), medium LCD (10.1 ~27 inch), large LCD (31.5~110 inch). Sharp LCD has been used on Iphone series for a long time.

Beside those current LCDs, the industrial LCD of Sharp is also excellent and widely used in public facilities, factories, and vehicles. The Sharp industrial LCD, just means solid, high brightness, super long working time, highest stability.

Since its establishment, Truly Semiconductors has focused on researching, developing, and manufacturing liquid crystal flat panel displays. Now, after twenty years of development, it is the biggest small- and medium-sized flat panel display manufacturer in China.

Truly’s factory in Shanwei City is enormous, covering an area of 1 million square meters, with a net housing area of more than 100,000 square meters. It includes five LCD production lines, one OLED production line, three touch screen production lines, and several COG, LCM, MDS, CCM, TAB, and SMT production lines.

Its world-class production lines produce LCD displays, liquid crystal display modules (LCMs), OLED displays, resistive and capacitive touch screens (touch panels), micro camera modules (CCMs), and GPS receiving modules, with such products widely used in the smartphone, automobile, and medical industries. The LCD products it offers include TFT, TN, Color TN with Black Mark (TN type LCD display for onboard machines), STN, FSTN, 65K color, and 262K color or above CSTN, COG, COF, and TAB modules.

In its early days, Innolux attached great importance to researching and developing new products. Mobile phones, portable and mounted DVD players, digital cameras, games consoles, PDA LCDs, and other star products were put into mass production and quickly captured the market, winning the company considerable market share.

Looking forward to the future, the group of photoelectric will continue to deep LCD display field, is committed to the development of plane display core technology, make good use of global operations mechanism and depth of division of labor, promise customers high-quality products and services, become the world"s top display system suppliers, in 2006 in the global mobile phone color display market leader, become "Foxconn technology" future sustained rapid growth of the engine.

Founded in June 1998, Hannstar specializes in producing thin-film transistor liquid crystal display panels, mainly for use in monitors, notebook displays and televisions. It was the first company in Taiwan to adopt the world’s top ultra-wide perspective technology (AS-IPS).

The company has three LCD factories and one LCM factory. It has acquired state-of-the-art TFT-LCD manufacturing technology, which enables it to achieve the highest efficiency in the mass production of thin-film transistor liquid crystal display production technology. Its customers include many of the biggest and most well-known electronics companies and computer manufacturers in Taiwan and overseas.

TCL CSOT – short for TCL China Star Optoelectronics Technology (TCL CSOT) – was founded in 2009 and is an innovative technology enterprise that focuses on the production of semiconductor displays. As one of the global leaders in semiconductor display market, it has bases in Shenzhen, Wuhan, Huizhou, Suzhou, Guangzhou, and India, with nine panel production lines and five large modules bases.

TCL CSOT actively produces Mini LED, Micro LED, flexible OLED, printing OLED, and other new display technologies. Its product range is vast – including large, medium, and small panels and touch modules, electronic whiteboards, splicing walls, automotive displays, gaming monitors, and other high-end display application fields – which has enabled it to become a leading player in the global panel industry.

In the first quarter of 2022, TCL CSOT’s TV panels ranked second in the market, 55 inches, 65 " and 75 inches second, 8K, 120Hz first, the first, interactive whiteboard and digital sign plate; LTPS flat panel, the second, LTPS and flexible OLED fourth.

EDO (also known as EverDisplay Optonics) was founded in October 2012 and focuses on the production of small- and medium-sized high-resolution AMOLED semiconductor display panels.

The company opened its first production line – a 4.5-generation low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) AMOLED mass production line – in 2014, which started mass producing AMOLED displays in November 2014.

In order to ramp up production output, the company began construction of a 6th-generation AMOLED production line in December 2016, with a total investment of 27.3 billion yuan (almost $4 billion USD). The line, which has a production capacity of 30,000 glass substrates per month, produces flexible and rigid high-end AMOLED displays for use in smartphones, tablet pens, vehicle displays, and wearable devices.

Tianma Microelectronics was founded in 1983 and listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 1995. It is a high-tech enterprise specializing in the production of liquid crystal displays (LCD) and liquid crystal display modules (LCM).

After more than 30 years of development, it has grown into a large publicly listed company integrating LCD research and development, design, production, sales, and servicing. Over the years, it has expanded by investing in the construction of STN-LCD, CSTN-LCD, TFT-LCD and CF production lines and module factories across China (with locations in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu, Wuhan and Xiamen), as well R&D centers and offices in Europe, Japan, South Korea and the United States.

The company"s marketing network is all over the world, and its products are widely used in mobile phones, MP3/MP4 players, vehicle displays, instrumentation, household appliances, and other fields. In terms of technical level, product quality, product grade, and market share, it ranks at the forefront of the domestic industry and has become a leading enterprise in the field of small- and medium-sized displays.

JDI (Japan Display Inc.) was established on November 15, 2011, as a joint venture between the Industrial Innovation Corporation, Sony, Hitachi, and Toshiba. It is dedicated to the production and development of small-sized displays. It mainly produces small- and medium-sized LCD display panels for use in the automotive, medical, and industrial fields, as well as personal devices including smartphones, tablets, and wearables.

Although Sony’s TVs use display panels from TCL CSOT (VA panel), Samsung. Sony still produces the world’s best micro-OLED display panels. Sony has many micro OLED model such as 0.23 inch, 0.39 inch, 0.5 inch, 0.64 inch, 0.68 inch, 0.71 inch. Panox Display used to test and sell many of them, compare to other micro OLED manufacuturers, Sony`s micro OLEDs are with the best image quality and highest brightness (3000 nits max).

OLED panels are made from organic materials that emit light when electricity is applied. Different from the LCD which needs backlight, the OLED does not need any backlight to display. Basically, the LCD does not emit light, it only “select ” the right color and intensity from the backlight and thus to display, while for OLED, each pixel of the OLED emits the light by themselves, the customer control all the pixels on/off and the intensity to show the images.

Although there are many famous OLED TV such as the Samsung, but actually nowadays the OLED is most popular used in small-screen devices such as the cell phone and PDA. It is a really good choice for DIY, or small projects. with the advantages especially the flexibility, the OLED attracts more makers and startups to use them in new projects.

Here some famous and popular used OLED modules to share with Makerfabs customers, with these modules, you do not need to care about the detailed principle of OLED or control all the pixels by yourself, with the standard I2C/SPI interface, you can add the OLED in your project immediately.

The most popular used OLED modules, with 128x64 pixels, the size 0.96 inch/1.3 inch available and the color blue/yellow/white available, and the interface I2C/SPI available.

Liquid Crystal Displays or LCD is a fairly old technology that has seen a recent burst in advancement. From calculator screens, LCDs are now fairly common in mobile phones, PDAs, computers, and a lot more applications. OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diode) are an improved version of LEDs that utilizes organic compounds to produce light. OLEDs have been eyed by many manufacturers as a good replacement for LCDs in many applications due to multiple advantages.

From the phrase ‘light emitting’ we can deduce that OLEDs produce their own light unlike LCDs which require a backlight that means fewer parts. Another advantage that this presents is the lower power consumption; a great amount of the power consumed by LCDs goes to the backlight, thus the big power difference. The lack of a backlight also means that an OLED display can be significantly slimmer than an LCD display. OLEDs have also been observed to show warmer images with better contrast making their image quality far superior than what LCDs currently achieve.

Manufacturing OLEDs could also be a lot cheaper than manufacturing LCDs. LCD screens are made out of transistors that are expensive to manufacture. OLEDs on the other hand can be applied to a substrate that has been treated to accept organic compounds via printing methods just like ink. Any inkjet printer can do this, making it easier and more economical to mass produce OLED displays. The printing method of production could also make it viable to have OLED displays on different mediums like cloth and paper which are unthinkable places for LCD displays.

The current problem that most OLED displays face nowadays is the very short lifetime. OLEDs are currently rated to last for up to 14,000 hours of operation before elements in the display begin to fail. This means that it won’t last four years if used for 10 hours every day. LCDs are known to last for over 4 times longer at 60,000 hours. This limitation is currently being looked into to make OLED displays more viable and a good candidate as an LCD replacement.

In market, LCD means passive matrix LCDs which increase TN (Twisted Nematic), STN (Super Twisted Nematic), or FSTN (Film Compensated STN) LCD Displays. It is a kind of earliest and lowest cost display technology.

LCD screens are still found in the market of low cost watches, calculators, clocks, utility meters etc. because of its advantages of low cost, fast response time (speed), wide temperature range,  low power consumption, sunlight readable with transflective or reflective polarizers etc.  Most of them are monochrome LCD display and belong to passive-matrix LCDs.

TFT LCDs have capacitors and transistors. These are the two elements that play a key part in ensuring that the TFT display monitor functions by using a very small amount of energy without running out of operation.

Normally, we say TFT LCD panels or TFT screens, we mean they are TN (Twisted Nematic) Type TFT displays or TN panels, or TN screen technology. TFT is active-matrix LCDs, it is a kind of LCD technologies.

TFT has wider viewing angles, better contrast ratio than TN displays. TFT display technologies have been widely used for computer monitors, laptops, medical monitors, industrial monitors, ATM, point of sales etc.

Actually, IPS technology is a kind of TFT display with thin film transistors for individual pixels. But IPS displays have superior high contrast, wide viewing angle, color reproduction, image quality etc. IPS screens have been found in high-end applications, like Apple iPhones, iPads, Samsung mobile phones, more expensive LCD monitors etc.

Both TFT LCD displays and IPS LCD displays are active matrix displays, neither of them can produce color, there is a layer of RGB (red, green, blue) color filter in each LCD pixels to make LCD showing colors. If you use a magnifier to see your monitor, you will see RGB color. With switch on/off and different level of brightness RGB, we can get many colors.

Neither of them can’t release color themselves, they have relied on extra light source in order to display. LED backlights are usually be together with them in the display modules as the light sources. Besides, both TFT screens and IPS screens are transmissive, it will need more power or more expensive than passive matrix LCD screens to be seen under sunlight.  IPS screens transmittance is lower than TFT screens, more power is needed for IPS LCD display.

Chances are, the screen that you"re reading this article on is either an LED, OLED, or an LCD display. These are just three of the many display types out there in the wild. On the surface, they all seem the same. But deep down, they couldn"t be more different.

So, when it comes to OLED vs. LCD—or OLED vs. LED—what are the differences? Here"s a look at these three display technologies, what makes them different, and which one is the best.

LCD stands for "liquid crystal display". The early roots of LCD displays stretch back to 1888 when German scientist, Friedrich Reinitzer, discovered an odd substance. It was a liquid that had the molecular structure of a solid. It was later named "liquid crystal."  After decades of study, someone eventually saw the potential for this strange substance to be used for displays.

The first LCD displays to be used on consumer devices were on digital clocks back in 1968. The technology developed over the following years, being put into numerous other devices.

LCD display panels are divided into layers. The backmost layer is a light source. This is a translucent sheet that disperses light from bulbs at the bottom of the display.

OLED stands for "organic light emitting diode." During the 1970s, scientists were experimented with organic materials that can emit light. In 1987, scientists at Eastman Kodak developed an OLED display that consumed a low amount of energy. And in 2007, Sony unveiled the world"s first OLED television: the Sony XEL-1.

On the other side of the OLED, the electrons flow from the cathode. The electrons then flow to the emissive layer, where they meet the holes. Since the electrons are sent through a voltage, they are "excited", meaning that they have an excess of energy.

When they meet the electron holes, they have to lose that excess energy in order to relax to the ground state for that atom. They release that energy in the form of photos (light particles). From there, the light travels through the red, blue, and green sub-pixels, just like with an LCD display.

LED displays are virtually indistinguishable from LCD displays. The only difference is in how the two types of displays get their light. Instead of using a translucent sheet, LED displays use individually LEDs. There are three primary arrangements of LEDs in the displays.

Full array LED displays have the LEDs arranged evenly throughout the display. This is the preferred arrangement on higher-end TVs. There are a lot of LEDs behind the panel, which means that local dimming is possible.

The direct-lit arrangement can appear to be similar to full array, but there are some differences. With the direct-lit arrangement, the LEDs are also dispersed evenly throughout the panel, but there are far less of them. Because of this, direct-lit displays can not do local dimming. This arrangement is present on lower-end devices.

A display is usually judged by its ability to create vibrant colors. This is an area where OLEDs come out on top. Compared to OLED displays, LCD displays often appear washed out and not as saturated. This is why OLED displays are becoming more popular in the smartphone market.

OLED displays can also produce images with higher contrast than the other two technologies. Since all of the OLEDs on the panel can be turned on and off individually, darker areas of the display can go as dark as they need to.

Full array LED displays come in right behind OLED displays because, like in the case of OLED displays, the LEDs in an LED display can be controlled individually. Full array LED displays use a method called "local dimming", a technique of shutting off LEDs completely in areas that are darker.

LCD displays come in last place because in order for any pixels to be visible, the entire back panel has to be lit. This means that completely black areas are impossible to achieve.

In terms of price, LCD displays are typically cheaper. High definition LCD displays can run you no more than a few hundred dollars. Since LED displays offer better contrast over LCD, you can expect there to be an added price premium.

When it comes to power consumption, OLED scores a win. Since the OLEDs are powered individually, the display only gives power to the ones that need it. Pixels can be turn off completely when there are blacks in the picture.

Full array LED displays come in second place because of the local dimming functionality. Certain LEDs can be completely turned off when the scene calls for blacks. Even though they have this feature, more energy is consumed per LED because the light has to pass through all of the layers of the LCD before reaching the viewers" eyes.

LCDs are the least power efficient. Regardless of the presence of blacks in the scene, the entire panel needs to be lit. This means that the light source is shining at 100% the entire time.

Each display technology has its benefits and its drawbacks. LCD displays are for people who want to save more money, while LED displays are for people who would like to spend more for a bit more contrast in their picture. You"ll spend more on the TV, but it will have a less significant impact on your electricity bill.

OLED displays are for those who want the best of all worlds. They produce the best contrast with the most vivid colors. You will be paying the most for the actual device, but the more power efficient display technology will help even out some of that cost.

Flat-panel displays are thin panels of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying text, images, or video. Liquid crystal displays (LCD), OLED (organic light emitting diode) and microLED displays are not quite the same; since LCD uses a liquid crystal that reacts to an electric current blocking light or allowing it to pass through the panel, whereas OLED/microLED displays consist of electroluminescent organic/inorganic materials that generate light when a current is passed through the material. LCD, OLED and microLED displays are driven using LTPS, IGZO, LTPO, and A-Si TFT transistor technologies as their backplane using ITO to supply current to the transistors and in turn to the liquid crystal or electroluminescent material. Segment and passive OLED and LCD displays do not use a backplane but use indium tin oxide (ITO), a transparent conductive material, to pass current to the electroluminescent material or liquid crystal. In LCDs, there is an even layer of liquid crystal throughout the panel whereas an OLED display has the electroluminescent material only where it is meant to light up. OLEDs, LCDs and microLEDs can be made flexible and transparent, but LCDs require a backlight because they cannot emit light on their own like OLEDs and microLEDs.

Liquid-crystal display (or LCD) is a thin, flat panel used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. They are usually made of glass but they can also be made out of plastic. Some manufacturers make transparent LCD panels and special sequential color segment LCDs that have higher than usual refresh rates and an RGB backlight. The backlight is synchronized with the display so that the colors will show up as needed. The list of LCD manufacturers:

Organic light emitting diode (or OLED displays) is a thin, flat panel made of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. OLED panels can also take the shape of a light panel, where red, green and blue light emitting materials are stacked to create a white light panel. OLED displays can also be made transparent and/or flexible and these transparent panels are available on the market and are widely used in smartphones with under-display optical fingerprint sensors. LCD and OLED displays are available in different shapes, the most prominent of which is a circular display, which is used in smartwatches. The list of OLED display manufacturers:

MicroLED displays is an emerging flat-panel display technology consisting of arrays of microscopic LEDs forming the individual pixel elements. Like OLED, microLED offers infinite contrast ratio, but unlike OLED, microLED is immune to screen burn-in, and consumes less power while having higher light output, as it uses LEDs instead of organic electroluminescent materials, The list of MicroLED