QD-OLED TV: Everything You Need To Know About The Game-Changing New TV Tech

Samsung’s latest flat-panel TV will be a hybrid between its own Quantum Dot displays and the OLED tech used by its rivals

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Sometimes it seems as if the world of flatscreen displays is dense with terminology that is deliberately created to mislead – from endless, deceptively similar acronyms to old tech rebranded with new jargony monikers.

Developed by Samsung, QD-OLED is one of the newest and most exciting kids on the flat-panel block. For once, its name represents exactly what it is: a combination of the Quantum Dot (QD) displays, endorsed by market leader Samsung as well as the likes of Hisense, Vizio and Roku, and OLED technology – of which Samsung’s arch-rival LG is the dominant player, as the sole supplier of large OLED panels to other manufacturers.

The two screen types have different strengths and weaknesses, and combining them could potentially yield results greater than the sum of the parts, achieving that holy trinity of TV manufacturing: vivid colours, high peak brightness without light bleed, and dark, saturated blacks.

But how will it work? When will it be available? And why has Samsung, an avid anti-OLED campaigner until now, done a U-turn? First of all, since QD-OLED is a hybrid, let’s recap the individual components before tackling the whole.

How does OLED work?

OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) is a type of display that uses an organic carbon-based film through which two conductors pass a current, causing it to emit light. To produce an image, an OLED TV combines blue and yellow light from OLED sources to create almost white light. This is then passed through a colour filter made up of red, blue and green subpixels.