So-called “LED TVs” were one of 2009’s surprise success stories – Samsung alone claims to have sold 2.6m units last year. But even the name is a bit of a gimmick. We’re all meant to think there are now three types of flat-panel TV – LCDs, plasmas, and LEDs. This is far from the reality. While LEDs offer a number of benefits in terms of design, power consumption, and colour accuracy, they’re really just an LCD with a different type of backlight. That means, of course, that you also get all of LCD’s disadvantages – poor black levels, blurry motion depiction, and narrow viewing angles.
The thing is: Everyone knows that plasma TVs display films better – as long as you watch them in the dark. The colours are more accurate, motion looks crisper, the contrast is higher, and you can watch them from far to one side before the picture starts to degrade. But LCD is more affordable and provides a bright picture even in day-lit rooms – not to mention the lower power consumption.
So the TV industry has set out, in a way, to combine the advantages of LCD and plasma. We want bright, contrast-rich pictures with accurate colours, and which look good from all angles. In other words, we want OLED, not LED-LCD TVs. We won’t go into OLED too deeply here – in simple terms, it’s a promising new display technology slowly making its way into the mainstream TV market.
Samsung's edge-lit UE 40 B 7000: "One of the most slender LCDs ever."
There are two major benefits to LED-LCD TVs, however: Firstly, using a large number of LEDs behind the panel as a backlight allows the TV to dim individual areas of its screen separately – so black areas of the picture lose that wishy-washy blue colour we’re used to on LCDs. Secondly, mounting the LEDs around the edge of the screen instead means the TV’s casing can be much, much thinner.
Spot the obvious problem: You don’t get both benefits in the same TV. And guess which benefit consumers have decided they prefer – yep, they went for the slim casings. At Televisions.com, we’re all sticklers for a great picture, so this just sounds like madness to us. Of course, it’s nice to have a sleek, wall-mounted flat-panel, but when faced with a direct choice between picture quality and design, we’d always favour the former.
Nevertheless, manufacturers have been forced to meet the consumer market’s wishes. Philips does a neat range of “Local Dimming” LED-LCD TVs – that is, the ones we would have chosen – but other manufacturers are sticking with the so-called “edge-lit” LED models.
Rant over.
Actually, we’ll admit having a bit of a soft spot for edge-lit LED-LCD models – they really are attractive. And technological advances across the board mean the problems we’ve discussed here are becoming less and less critical. Exhibit A has to be Samsung’s B7000 series – our review of the UE 40 B 7000, for example, praises the TV as “one of the most slender LCDs ever” and “a beautiful piece of work”. But still, if you look closely, you’ll find the telltale signs of the inferior backlight technology. If you want our “two cents’ worth”, we’re sticking to plasma for the mean time, and we explain why in our guide to LCD vs. Plasma.