QLED and UHD are very different from each other. They don’t even fall under the same category. In this QLED vs UHD article, we will resolve your confusion and help you understand the technology behind these two terms.
You might want to buy yourself a new Television and while surfing the web you came across plenty new terminologies – QLED and UHD being two of them. Don’t worry we will help choose between the two technologies.
What is QLED Technology?
QLED is an acronym for Quantum Light Emitting Diode. It is an improved version of the conventional LED (Light Emitting Diode) Technology. To know QLED, you need to first about LED technology. The LED Display technology uses individual nano-sized LEDs that consist of three colors Red, Green, and Blue (RGB).
These three different LEDs make a pixel and by controlling the intensity of each individual color you can make billions of colors from it if you see the light from a distance. This group of three different LEDs is then combined with other similar groups and an array of pixels are created. By creating a two-dimensional array of three colored LED pixels you can produce an image.
Before LED, LCD was widely used. LCD uses a liquid crystal screen. When the white backlight is passed through the liquid crystal screen you can alter the intensity and color of light, this produces the image. Now, QLED uses both LED and LCD technology and introduces quantum dots in them.
Quantum dots, as the name suggests, are nanocrystals with a very small size typically between 2nm to 10nm in diameter. The size of these quantum dots signifies the color they project. Bigger dots produce red color, whereas smaller dots produce blue color.
The Quantum dots are arranged on a Quantum dot screen where they are colored red and green. The LED backlight behind the quantum dot screen only outputs blue light. So these two screens give the RGB light. Ahead of the quantum dot screen is a Liquid Crystal Display or LCD.
Ahead of the LCD screen is a Red, Blue, and Green subpixel filter after which lies the viewing screen. This arrangement of screens produces brighter images with utmost clarity. Also, this arrangement results in a thicker TV than any other technology.
The problem with LED display was that they were not able to produce brighter images. Even if they were bright the images lacked clarity and the color faded. This problem was solved with a QLED display. Here, the images can be brighter than any other technology and also show the same clarity. These televisions are successful in offering HDR content.
HDR is a kind of content where the Television intelligently delivers images that have varying brightness in different parts of the same image.
In LED panels you cannot control it and in LCD panels you have to produce brighter backlight to make images brighter which results in brightening the whole image at once.
Because of HDR content, these Televisions require a better and faster processor which uses Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to enhance every video frame by frame. Now that you can see televisions with faster screen refresh rates usually 120 Hz and with faster response times usually 6 milliseconds.
These processors are capable of processing high amounts of data than any other technology. QLED TVs also offer better viewing angles than OLED TVs.
QLED TVs are also better than OLED TVs in many areas. OLED TVs have a typical problem of screen burn-in. This is done due to a single image constantly being produced on the same part of the screen for long stretches of time. This causes the image to permanently damage those pixels and you can see the same faded image even if you display different content.
QLED TVs are immune to burn-in. OLED TVs can produce a maximum of 600 nits of brightness whereas its counterpart can produce a maximum of 4000 nits of brightness which is exponentially better. QLED TVs offer a very wide color gamut which means they can produce more colors than standard displays.
OLED TVs are better at producing images in dark areas such as the image of the night sky or the universe because, in an OLED display, the LED in black areas turns off completely which produces dark images. You can see more stars on the OLED screen than on the QLED screen.
QLED was introduced by Samsung in the year 2017. They tried to offer a better alternative to conventional LED TVs and costly OLED TVs. Because of this QLED TVs are slightly costlier than LED TVs and cheaper when compared to OLED TVs. They offer more contrast ratios because of their ability to produce more brightness in a brightly lit room.
Some QLED TVs have edge lighting instead of backlighting, which produces less crisp images and is found in small and cheaper TVs.
There is an improved version of QLED technology which is Neo QLED. This technology uses mini LEDs in the backlighting panel. These LEDs are very tiny than normal QLED displays and therefore offer more control over the image. There is more brightness in the images and HDR content looks better than QLED TVs.
You get better contrast ratios and better viewing angles. This technology was introduced by Samsung in the year 2021 and it is their latest offering.
What is UHD?
UHD is the acronym for Ultra High Definition. It is a description of the amount of definitions in a particular image. You might have seen HD panels which are 720p displays and Full HD panels which are 1080p displays. Ultra High Definition is simply any resolution above 1080p. The Full HD display comes in 1920 X 1080 pixels.
As Ultra High Definition was introduced, a resolution of 3840 X 2160 became the standard for UHD which is now termed 4K. You will never find displays with resolutions between 4K and FHD.
4K means that the number of horizontal pixels is close to 4000. So 3840 is termed as 4K. Also, in movie projection, there is DCI 4K which is 4096 X 2160 pixels. This is also close to 4000 pixels. UHD can also mean 8K resolution which is 8 times the Full HD resolution. UHD can be found in LED, LCD, QLED, and other types of display technologies.
The more pixels you can get in an image the more clear the image will be. Simply try to understand, we discussed what a pixel is, it is just one color out of millions of colors. If I show you just one pixel it will be of one color only, if I show you 10 pixels I can show you different colors in those pixels so more the number of pixels more control over an image.
A higher pixel count is better when viewing on a big screen also the image will look finer.
QLED vs UHD
QLED is a display technology and UHD is the description of the definition of an image. You cannot compare them. QLED can support UHD resolutions. Also, QLED TVs typically don’t come below 4K resolution. So every QLED TV is UHD but not every UHD TV is QLED. You cannot choose a better option between the two. It will be better to choose a Television with both QLED technology and UHD resolution.
Best UHD QLED TVs
These are some handpicked Televisions from the Beatmentors team. These TVs are best in our terms and we tested them so you don’t have to.
SAMSUNG Neo QLED 4K QN90B
This is actually a series of televisions from Samsung. You get a range of sizes to choose from 43-inches to 85-inches. This Television uses mini-LED backlight for ultra precise color production and higher contrast ratio. Blacks are really black. Brightness is at par and you can easily watch content at the brightly lit rooms. HDR content looks great in these televisions and with wide color gamut you can witness realistic colors.
This Television has 4K upscaling which means it uses Artificial Intelligence to improve the resolution of your content to show you full 4K videos. The screen is anti-glare and you can watch the TV from any angle you want. It also has built in Dolby Atmos and Object Tracking Sound system. You feel 3D sound experience from the speakers behind this TV.
Hisense U8H
This Hisense Television is a Samsung QN90B competitor but lacks in slightly lower brightness level. The Television offer 1500 nits of brightness which is an ample amount of brightness. You can easily watch HDR content and the contrast ratio and color gamut is great. It has in-built HDMI, Bluetooth, WiFi and ethernet. With built in Google TV smart platform you can easily install different apps in your television. HDR10+ and Dolby Vision are enabled so you can watch which ever content you like. You also get Dolby Atmos sound system. This is 120Hz television so gaming can also be done easily. You additionally AMD FreeSync support for reduced screen tearing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better QLED or UHD?
QLED and UHD cannot be compared because both are different technologies. One cannot be selected over the other. Most QLED TVs support UHD resolutions. All QLED TVs can be UHD but all UHD TVs cannot be QLED.
Who is the largest producer of QLED TVs?
QLED TVs were marketed by Samsung and are Quantum Dot Television. It is just their name for Quantum Dot Television. Samsung is the largest producer of these TVs, but there are companies such as TCL and Hisense that also offer QLED TVs.
Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed the difference between two technologies – QLED and UHD. You can simply understand you cannot differentiate between the two. It is advisable you buy any television that offers both of these technologies.
If you found the perfect type of TV for yourself, now all you need is wireless headphones to go with it! Check out our article on the 11 Best Wireless Headphones for TV to make the search easier for yourself.