4 reasons I’m skipping an OLED TV upgrade

Depending on who you ask, OLED TVs are the best displays on the market. In many ways, that’s true. There’s still not a panel out there that can match the accurate colors an OLED screen displays, especially when it comes to black levels. For OLED TVs, when the screen needs to display something black, it simply turns off the pixels entirely to produce true blacks. Other TVs don’t work that way, so there’s no competition on that end.

Despite the fantastic picture quality, I don’t really have OLED TVs on my radar. I have an aging Sony Bravia X90J in my living room, and while it’s still trekking along nicely, I know it won’t last forever. I’ve already started to look into new TVs, and there are so many options out there that appeal to me. I have a unique situation where my living room TV is facing directly opposite a window, so I have some nasty glares to deal with. Due to lower peak brightness than the competition, OLED isn’t actually the best option for me. I’m not saying OLED screens can’t get bright, but I’d much rather have one in a room where I can easily control the brightness.

Other TVs can get brighter

Hello, Mini-LED

In rooms where you can easily control the brightness, like my spare bedroom, OLED feels like a great option. For people who have rough afternoon glares, they don’t make as much sense. Bright TVs can combat this quite easily, and that’s where something like a 5,000 nit display that you see on flagship Mini-LED screens, such as the TCL X955 makes a lot of sense. That’s a top-of-the-line pick, but the more budget-friendly options are still good performers against glare. The TCL QM6K can often be found for under $1,000, and it can hit about 900 nits.There’s a misconception that OLED TVs can’t be bright, however. While it might not compare with the aforementioned X955, an LG C6 still reaches beyond 1,000 nits, and that makes it a good option to fight off glare. The downside is that this is a very expensive TV that costs $2,000 for just the 55-inch model. If having the brightest TV you can get while still being on a budget is the goal. I would say going OLED doesn’t make a lot of sense. You might be able to make it work, but it’d be easier with a Mini-LED TV. I like tweaking settings as much as the next person, but sometimes it’s nice to have something work great out of the box.

Price is a tough pill to swallow

Out of range for many people

High-end OLED TVs are firmly out of reach for many people, as evidenced by that 55-inch $2,000 LG OLED I mentioned earlier. However, the same thing can be said for expensive Mini-LED displays. If we’re talking about the $1,000 sweet spot, I find that you can often find a larger Mini-LED display for cheaper than a comparable OLED. At this price point, I’m more interested in getting as big a screen as possible. A 65-inch LG B5 or Samsung S84F costs about $1,000, and both are solid picks for OLED displays. However, that TCL QM6K I talked about earlier costs $700 at Best Buy at the time of this writing, and it’s 75 inches.

I know size isn’t everything, but if I’m on a strict budget, I do place it higher than picture quality, especially if the quality isn’t that far off. When you start to climb the pricing ladder, OLED is more competitive. In the $2,000 price range, I don’t think brightness is an issue, at least as far as glare is concerned. Whether it’s OLED or Mini-LED, any model in that price range should be able to reasonably fight off glare. This means you can start considering other things, like what you plan to use your TV for. I think for gaming, OLED is pretty much unmatched, but Mini-LED is closing the gap there, too.

Displays are getting better across the board

HDR formats are helping, too

The nice thing about TV screens is that improvements are being made constantly. While the 4K resolution remains the same, you’ll notice a difference between a cheap LCD screen and a high-end OLED or Mini-LED screen. I use an Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED in my spare room, and I don’t think it looks bad at all. I’d consider QLED to be a step down from both OLED and Mini-LED. There are a lot of gains being made in color accuracy, and if you’re in the market for a new TV today, there’s one reason I’d wait a little bit longer — Dolby Vision 2. I’m a huge fan of what Dolby Vision brings to the table, and it’s one of the biggest factors in why I prefer Mini-LEDs over OLED.

In case you’re out of the loop, Dolby Vision is an HDR format that enhances picture quality across the board. Your bright colors will pop off the screen more, and your black levels will look a lot darker. This doesn’t hit the levels that an OLED can hit, but I’d say it comes close enough for most people. More and more content each day supports Dolby Vision, and if you are a physical media collector, you’ll notice that many 4K discs come with a Dolby Vision transfer. It’s my favorite HDR format, but if you have a display with HDR10+, that’s no slouch either. The problem with HDR10+ is that far fewer things support it, so you’re often finding yourself in a situation where you have the ability for your picture to look better, but there’s no way to utilize it.

Viewing habits matter

Streaming won’t benefit as much

When you see people talking about those dark, inky blacks, I’d wager that a good number of them are talking about how it looks with physical media. The reality is that streaming services have so much compression that the true black that you might see in Game of Thrones looks more gray on streaming. If the majority of your time spent watching something on your TV is streaming, then the gains you’ll get from an OLED panel are diminished. I’m not saying it’ll look like junk, but it does feel like you’d be spending more money on something than you need to.

OLED screens are often used in home theater setups, and if you can get one with a large screen, I have no doubt you’ll be happy. In fact, an OLED screen might finally be the eye-opener that you need to see how much worse streaming looks compared to physical media, even if you take 4K streaming into account. Then again, I think that if you’re spending big money on a high-end OLED TV, you’re probably pairing it with physical media. If you aren’t, then that’s the next step that you should take.