- LG OLED Displays Earn “100% Dimming Consistency” Certification from UL Solutions
- OLED handles different brightness zones more consistently than backlit ones
- Somehow AI has been forced to do this too
LG Display’s OLED panels for TVs and monitors have achieved what the company says is an industry first: They have been certified as having “100% dimming consistency” by a third party, UL Solutions. In comparison, LCD panels only peaked at 83%, with some scoring just 43%.
According to LG Display, OLED is even better than the next-generation RGB mini-LED technology. And also that it is “the optimal choice in the age of AI.”
I have no doubt that LG panels prevailed in this test. But I have some questions.
If LG OLED is the winner, who was the competition?
The first and most obvious question is: what is being measured here? And LG kindly explained it when announcing its victory. Dimming consistency is a measurement based on establishing a reference area in the center of the screen, measuring the maximum and minimum brightness, and then reducing the measured area to 1/10 of the panel, then to 11/1000 of the panel, through 5/1000 and finally to 2/1000.
If the minimum and maximum brightness levels remain the same in all measurements, a high dimming consistency is observed. But if it varies, it means that the dimming is more variable depending on the size of the window.
Since OLEDs do not use backlighting and have very small self-emissive pixels, then of course one would expect an OLED to perform very well in a test that, frankly, might as well have been called “Is this an OLED?” proof. LG OLEDs obtained the highest score.
The second question is: what panels were tested and what size were they? We don’t have that information, so while a 43% consistency score for LCD sounds bad, we don’t know if we’re comparing like-for-like, if we’re comparing the same panel sizes, or if we’re comparing high-end OLED to low-end LCD (presumably).
Even if we assume the test treats the RGB mini-LED as a high-end LCD panel option, there are different levels of RGB panels. Companies like Hisense and TCL are offering more affordable and high-end options.
Next thought: where is QD-OLED in this test? LG Display’s OLEDs are the first to score 100% in this test, but is that partly because the other technology likely to score 100%, which is also made by rival Samsung Display, is not included?
And I have the same thought about micro-LED displays. Again, one would assume this would get a 100% score, since it is also self-emissive, but it doesn’t seem to be included.
And finally, this baffles me: LG Display says that “This further highlights OLED as the optimal display for connecting humans and AI. In the age of AI, high luminance, high resolution, and high color gamut performance are essential,” which is a strange claim for a technology that is primarily used to write things in a message.
And that sentence may sound like an oversimplified joke on my part, but LG also said, “Having achieved 100% dimming consistency, OLED can deliver the rich visual information generated by AI in a natural and accurate way,” which doesn’t really sound like a boast that text looks good on OLED. Which, I suppose, is so.
Despite my sarcasm, I think this is interesting information, even if it’s mostly a sermon to the converted: there’s a reason why many of the best TVs for all budgets in our guides are OLED. There is no doubt that good OLEDs can offer better contrast consistency than backlit TVs.
But the margin between the best of each technology is getting smaller, and arguably more and more specific tests are being used to make OLED appear more clearly superior.
The best televisions for all budgets
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