What everybody must learn about Tandem OLED and WOLED TVs

I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, however I typically pity individuals coming into the home theater area in 2026. Whereas the expertise is healthier than ever — a $500 TV may blow away a $1,000 mannequin launched just some years in the past — there’s such a lot of phrases and standards to know that buying could be intimidating. HDR alone has 4 main requirements, solely two of that are liable to be essential going ahead.

Panel expertise often is the most complicated side for the time being. For a very long time, all you needed to know was that OLED was la crème de la crème. Now, nonetheless, it is not solely being challenged by requirements like MicroLED, however enhanced variations of itself. On this piece I’ll distinguish between two applied sciences, WOLED and tandem OLED, each of which is likely to be extra acquainted than you’d count on.

What’s WOLED?

An outdated acquainted face that also has a spot

WOLED is brief for white OLED (organlc light-emitting diode). Whereas that time period may really feel new, it is doubtless solely as a result of it wasn’t essential to differentiate earlier than. The reality is that if you happen to’ve owned any type of OLED TV prior to now, it was most likely WOLED-based, since shopper options to WOLED solely emerged in 2022. Extra on that in a second.

The gist of WOLED is that by itself, a real vanilla model of OLED would not be nice to your front room. This most simple tech passes white mild via purple, inexperienced, and blue colour filters, producing the colours you see in every pixel. However the consequence is not very shiny, or not less than not sturdy sufficient for regular viewing circumstances. You’d have to look at in a dim room — daylight viewing could be out of the query.

WOLED’s answer to this can be a fourth, unfiltered white subpixel, which boosts brightness to affordable ranges. In reality, fashionable WOLED TVs are highly effective sufficient that in scenes with sturdy highlights, the whites could be blinding. That is enhanced by the first benefit of OLED: superior distinction, created by the flexibility to show particular person pixels on and off. Blacks on an OLED are pure. Most LCDs can solely get near black, since they’re depending on LED backlights which can be not often shut off utterly.

What occurred in 2022 was the emergence of Samsung’s QD-OLED, the QD standing for quantum dot. This differs from WOLED by beginning with blue mild, which is definitely extra intense than white, regardless of the way in which your mind may understand it. This passes via the quantum dots, which emit completely different colours based mostly on their dimension. The result’s much more spectacular colour saturation versus WOLED. Notably, QD tech has since unfold elsewhere, for example showing on Sony TVs.

Different corporations have caught with variations of WOLED, nonetheless, together with LG, which tried to compete with QD-OLED utilizing one thing known as MLA (micro lens array) OLED. This helped focus mild output. Certainly LG’s third-generation OLED units can obtain 3,000 nits of peak brightness, sufficient to be plainly seen in noon solar. Its first-gen OLED merchandise had been capped at simply 500 nits.

So what’s tandem OLED, and what makes it higher?

Double the enjoyable

Credit score: Apple

For many individuals, myself included, the primary they’d ever heard of tandem OLED was doubtless Apple’s 2024 iPad Professional. Up till that time, the corporate had solely used LCDs for iPads. You may as well discover a tandem show in 2025 Pro fashions.

Apple’s model of the expertise actually stacks two panels collectively. This may sound ridiculous, however the result’s amplified brightness, as much as 1,600 nits peak — about 1,000 greater than the LCD-based iPad Air. That is not as shiny as newer TVs, after all, however a pill is often not more than a few toes away out of your eyes. Most TV viewers are sitting not less than 3 times as distant, and the inverse-square legislation dictates that depth diminishes as a sq. of the space from a lightweight supply. You really need increased brightness the additional away you might be, in different phrases.

There are different methods of going tandem. For its fourth-gen OLED TVs, LG has developed one thing dubbed Major RGB Tandem OLED. This separates a yellow layer (used within the third gen) into separate purple and inexperienced layers, elevating peak brightness to 4,000 nits, and general colour brightness to 2,100. You are not getting a number of sandwiched panels. As a substitute, there are merely 4 layers within the stack, the opposite two being blue.

There’s each good and dangerous information right here. The excellent news is that Major RGB Tandem OLED may also be present in some Panasonic and Philips TVs, and with all three manufacturers, the result’s a noticeably brighter image than earlier efforts — it doesn’t matter what you are watching. LG particularly claims decrease energy consumption, in addition to wider protection of the DCI-P3 and Rec.2020 colour gamuts, as much as 99.5% and 83% respectively. Your eye most likely will not discover the additional colour shades, however this does put LG’s tech roughly on par with QD-OLED.

The dangerous information is that there are only a few tandem OLED TVs in the marketplace, they usually’re not low cost. As of this writing, the LG G5 begins round $1,800 for a 55-inch mannequin, and the Panasonic Z95B is $2,000. On condition that some similarly-sized WOLED units are promoting for $1,200 or much less, you must be deeply obsessive about image high quality to justify the leap. The financial savings may very well be put in the direction of a soundbar, a recreation console, or just paying off your payments.

Relative to QD-OLED, there may be barely inferior element in near-black shades. For a purist with a fats funds, this is likely to be a difficulty, provided that the most effective QD-OLED TVs are already as shiny as tandem OLED.

The elephant within the room

Some notes on the longer term

Credit score: Samsung

In the end, all types of OLED could also be on their method out. Do not get me flawed — any mannequin you purchase right now goes to look wonderful, and final a really very long time so long as you keep it correctly. However throughout the subsequent few years, OLED may very well be supplanted by MicroLED and micro RGB, which use microscopic purple, inexperienced, and blue LEDs. These merge the precision of OLED with the brightness and longevity of LCD/LED panels. On high of this, they ship near-perfect colour accuracy.

The actual catch for the time being is value. Each codecs are so new and costly that if you happen to may even discover a set, it is liable to value you tens of 1000’s of {dollars} — Samsung’s 115-inch micro RGB set is $30,000. It is going to take smaller sizes and mass manufacturing to carry costs all the way down to affordable ranges.

Should you already personal a WOLED TV and also you prefer it, then, you should not be in a rush to purchase a tandem OLED product. Slightly endurance might land you one thing higher, assuming these manufacturing hurdles are overcome.