LG QNED vs Samsung Neo QLED next-gen display tech explained

CES 2021 is just getting started, and LG and Samsung have already unveiled their next-generation display technologies for the high-end TVs of 2021. LG supports its QNED technology while Samsung Neo offers QLED as the next best. Both offer improved colors, peak brightness and contrast ratios for HDR content and will be available in 4K and 8K resolutions. So you should look pretty good.

But what are the differences, if any, between these two technologies? Which one should you keep in mind for your next TV? Let’s dive deeper to find out.

A quick look back at improvements to the TV display

LG’s QNED is a mini LED based display technology. The best way to understand what this means is to resort to LCD LED TVs, which have become common in the market over the past few years.

LCD technology creates colors by filtering a common backlight. The disadvantage of the original LCD technology is that the backlighting turns into dark pixels and reduces the contrast ratio. This means that black with the LCD is never completely off. This leads to poorer contrast ratios compared to other OLED panels, which is a noticeable disadvantage for HDR content.

To counteract this, LED televisions are introducing multiple backlights with “local dimming”. Splitting the backlight into multiple lights, each of which is dimmed individually, improves the overall contrast ratio. Dark areas of the screen can be dimmed or turned off, while colors and whites still benefit from brighter backlighting. There are several ways to arrange the backlighting to achieve dimming, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Local dimming with a full array and a backlit grid behind the screen is the best, but most expensive option. Edge-based dimming is cheaper but looks inferior.

See also: OLED vs LCD display technology: what’s the difference?

Even with local dimming with a full array, the number of dimming zones remains a limiting factor. LED televisions often have a halo or blooming artifact between adjacent lit and unlit areas. Details that are smaller than the backlight, such as B. bright stars in a dark sky do not benefit from the improved contrast ratio. They can appear washed out compared to the wider picture.

Increasing the number of dimming zones helps compensate for these errors and improve performance, but it makes the panels more expensive. You’ll have to turn to OLED for the per-pixel dimming features, but the LCD bridges the gap in contrast ratio. This is where LG’s QNED technology comes in.

LG QNED explains

LG QNED is the company’s first mini LED TV technology. This extends the permeable LCD LED formula we discussed with 2,500 local dimming zones and up to almost 30,000 mini LEDs per panel on its 8K model. The crux of the breakthrough is the small size and density of the mini LED backlight. This significantly increases the number of local dimming zones to achieve an improved contrast ratio and a reduction in flower artifacts. With this technology, LG promises a contrast ratio of 1,000,000: 1 and a refresh rate of 120 Hz.

The crux of the breakthrough is the small size and density of the mini LED backlight.

The Q part of LG’s QNED moniker stands for Quantum Dot, which deals with the color filter parts of the display. The full title is Quantum NanoCell Emitting Diode. Keep in mind that QNED is still a filter-based LCD technology and filters block the light, resulting in less saturated colors. The quantum dot technology improves / replaces the conventional colored photoresists in an LCD color filter with submicroscopic conductive nanocrystals. In LG’s case, QNED uses its internal NanoCell material to shape the backlight’s spectral power, which is then filtered through a quantum dot enhancement film.

Continue reading: What You Need to Know About Quantum Dot Displays

In short, quantum dots reduce the loss of light and crosstalk of conventional LCD color filters. This results in more vivid colors and a wider gamut. In combination with a large number of small, locally damped backlights, the LG QNED should do a good job of adopting expensive OLED HDR displays. Note that OLED remains LG’s premium TV technology even with the announcement of QNED, which is now between LG’s NanoCell and OLED lines of products.

Samsung Neo QLED explained

Just like LG’s QNED, the Samsung Neo QLED is a translucent mini LED backlight technology. The ‘Q’ in QLED also stands for Quantum. With Samsung’s Neo QLED, this is related to the Quantum Matrix technology and the image-optimizing Neo Quantum Processor. Confusing I know Samsung uses a quantum dot layer for enhanced colors that promises 100% reproduction of the DCI-P3 color space.

The outstanding feature of Samsung technology, similar to LG, are the smaller LEDs with backlighting. Samsung’s new Quantum Mini-LED is 1/40 as high as the previous design, which allows for a significant increase in density. Samsung has not provided exact figures for the number of dimming zones on these TVs. To do this, the company is removing the packaging and lens from the LED chip and replacing them with a new ultra-thin microlayer to guide the LED light.

Samsung downsized its mini LED backlight to 1/40 of its previous height.

Samsung’s Quantum Matrix technology offers precise dimming, improved local power distribution and a new Black Detail Boost option to extract more details from dark areas. The Neo Quantum Processor now offers 16 different neural network models that have been trained to upscale content. This should help make the most of the TV’s 4K and 8K resolutions, even with older content.

Additional Neo QLED features include 12-bit steps of LED brightness control for local dimming. However, this does not necessarily mean that the panel supports 12-bit HDR content. It’s likely used after Samsung’s processing chain instead. Samsung’s Nano QLED TVs also offer refresh rates of 120 Hz and Nvidia G-Sync support to adjust frame rates while gaming.

In the same press release, Samsung also mentioned its micro-LED emitting technology (not to be confused with transmissive mini-LED). These TVs will be available in 110-inch, 99-inch and smaller sizes by the end of 2021. However, this is certainly not going to be an affordable mainstream product anytime soon.

Continue reading: What is MicroLED and how can it change display technology?

LG QNED versus Samsung Neo QLED

Both LG and Samsung are using smaller, denser mini-LED backlighting technologies to bridge the quality gap between cheaper LCD TVs and their top-tier OLED ranges. While there are bound to be differences in image quality, we’d have to look at both brands side by side to make any definitive comparisons.

An interesting point of comparison between LG and the latest technology from Samsung is the LCD color filter layer used. While we don’t know which panel layer LG Display is using, it will likely stick with In-Plane Switching (IPS), which is based on previous versions. Samsung has already switched to vertically oriented LCD, which offers better contrast than traditional IPS at the expense of narrower viewing angles. This trade-off between HDR contrast and viewing angle could be the biggest noticeable difference between the two.

While there are important hardware and software differences between LG’s QNED and Samsung’s Neo QLED, they both share a fundamentally similar approach to solving the contrast and color deficit of LCD and OLED TVs. If you’re looking for an OLED-quality TV without the staggering price tag, be on the lookout for TVs powered by these technologies in 2021.