The OLED Black Depth Lie – When Panel Type and Coating Matters

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Just putting this here. I know we have more than a few display junkies out there, myself included and it's commonly known that folks have their own preferences.

This is a very long read but I do recommend it.

The OLED Black Depth Lie - When Panel Type and Coating Matters - TFTCentral

Testing and evaluating the perceived black depth and contrast on different OLED and LCD panels, in different lighting conditions. Does technology or panel coating really have an impact?

tftcentral.co.uk

 

[Brian_B]

That is an interesting read. They are comparing "perceived black", which incorporates whatever effect ambient lighting is having on the panel as well. Quantum Dots react strongly with ambient light - I hadn't thought about that, but it makes sense. And it makes Samsing QD-OLED panels fare worse than VA and not much better than good IPS monitors.

It's hard to TLDR that article, they shotgun a lot of data out there.

This graph would be for most of your current generation LG screens (non-QD)



This one current generation QD-OLED - they use the same scale.



I will say, even though this graph clearly shows Glossy screens fairing better for perceived black - I hate trying to watch on glossy screens, because any amount of ambient lighting turns them into a mirror. It makes sense though, if you are measuring the effect of ambient light, a glossy screen is going to be the least impacted.

They do state at the end in their TL;DR (which is quite lengthy in and of itself and hard to parse without getting into the context up above) - that all the OLEDs were actually displaying true black - These graphs are just illustrating the effect of the ambient lighting and how it affects the screen and what we see sitting back on the couch. And this is just looking at that "black level" we see, it isn't looking at things like max brightness, color fidelity, HDR quality, features, etc. So just a very narrow, ver very detailed view at one aspect of monitor panels.

 

[Niner51]

Just putting this here. I know we have more than a few display junkies out there, myself included and it's commonly known that folks have their own preferences.

This is a very long read but I do recommend it.

The OLED Black Depth Lie - When Panel Type and Coating Matters - TFTCentral

Testing and evaluating the perceived black depth and contrast on different OLED and LCD panels, in different lighting conditions. Does technology or panel coating really have an impact?

tftcentral.co.uk

Very good read. Thank you for sharing.

 

[Grimlakin]

Well I mean checking out microcenter there are some 48 inch OLED monitors going for 800 bucks... teeeemmmppppttttiiiinnnnnggggg..

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

I prefer glossy for entertainment but fully agree that once enough light/reflections come into play it's game over. I like matte for work and situations with brighter lighting. However, if enough ambient light comes into play then even matte begins to look horrible to me.

 

[Niner51]

I had my 48" CX and the 42" C2 on my desk and it was just a bit overbearing so I moved the 48" to another room, and got the Alienware 34" AW3423DWF QD-OLED on sale, and honestly I really like it to the point where it's my main gaming monitor now. I'm surprised how nice the display is compared to the C2.

 

[Brian_B]

I did come up with a way to sort of summary this:

TN has the worst black levels - under pretty much all conditions.

IPS beats out TN, and VA beats out IPS, and WO OLED (LG) beats out VA = again, under pretty much all conditions.

All of the above panels, more or less, follow the same slope when it comes to perceived darkness as ambient light increases.

QD OLED (Smasung) though - it can look better than VA under low light levels, but it quickly gets worse as light levels increase. At moderate light it's no better than average and under bright light it can actually look worse than most IPS. This is the outlier in that it's perceived darkness level degrades much faster with respect to ambient light than other panel technologies.