This technology is less common than IPS due to its drawbacks of shorter response times and shallower viewing angles. It is also generally slightly more expensive than IPS panels, so if contrast is important to you, you may have to pay more.
Mini LED: Local Dimming on a Smaller Scale
Most LCD displays have a backlight that is normally lit across the entire screen, but TVs have found a way to achieve better contrast by introducing local dimming. The only problem is that creating an array of independently controllable backlights is difficult to scale down to smaller screens.
Introducing Mini LEDs. Mini LEDs are smaller than typical LED backlights (about 200). Micron), which means display manufacturers can pack a lot more into a smaller space—to match the thousands of local dimming zones on laptop and tablet displays. Strictly speaking, Mini LED is a backlight technology and can be combined with a number of different types of LCD panels, but it improves contrast and black levels in any panel it’s used on. There’s also a technology called “Micro LED,” where each pixel acts as its own backlight, but it’s currently limited to very large (and incredibly expensive) displays.
OLED: The Holy Grail of Black Levels
One of the few alternatives to liquid crystals is organic light-emitting diodes (or OLEDs). These panels use pixels that emit light on their own, so they don’t require a backlight. Since each pixel can emit light on its own, there’s no extra light leaking into the dark parts of the image. The black level of OLED panels is virtually infinite, because inactive pixels are functionally identical to when the display is turned off.
Because they don’t have a backlight, OLED panels are very good at producing high-contrast images and reproducing colors accurately. However, unlike LCD displays, they are more susceptible to burn-in. Also, not many companies are manufacturing these panels. In fact, most OLED panels are One manufacturer: LG.
This has made OLED panels more expensive than typical LCD displays, but in recent years they have come down to more reasonable prices. Still, if you want the best picture quality, you’re likely to come across OLED panels, and they’re likely to come at a premium over comparable LCD screens.
QD OLED and WOLED: Brighter OLED
Quantum dot OLED (or QD-OLED) is a relatively new entry into Samsung’s display market. OLEDs emit light on their own, but still need to use filters to produce red, green, and blue wavelengths. Conventional OLEDs use white subpixels to produce that light, increasing the brightness of each pixel.
Like other quantum dot displays, QD-OLED uses a blue OLED as a light source, illuminating the quantum dots to produce the red and green light needed to create a full-color image. This approach combines the benefits of OLED (no need for a separate backlight, high-contrast images) with those of quantum dots (less light is lost through filters, more direct control over color precision).
Recent displays using QD-OLED are among the most beautiful panels WIRED has tested. For example, the Samsung S95C (8/10, WIRED Recommended) wowed WIRED Senior Editor Parker Hall with its perfect black levels, vivid colors, and wide viewing angles.
WOLED is a similar technology that aims to make things brighter, but it also comes with a white OLED layer. This is what LG’s higher-end models, like the new C4 (9/10, WIRED recommends), use to achieve peak brightnesses well over 1000 nits.
Because QD-OLED and WOLED panels are relatively new technologies, displays using them are likely to be more expensive for now, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find better image quality on monitors without them.
