QLED vs OLED

[skysurfer 76]

Greetings.

So I am trying to make a final decision after the lengthy research.

After reading lots of information about today's TV market and technologies and how it work and what is the difference, I am trying to narrow down my choices. Based on what I have read looks like OLED is highly recommended. Per rtings.com LG B7A OLED 55" is considered one of the best TV as PC monitor, however Sony A1E has a higher ratings but it cost way more with similar performance and quality compared to LG. My biggest concern is that all OLED TVs has image retention issue and because of that many gamers do not recommend OLED TVs. QLED TVs do not have such issue. So OLED TVs has better image quality with better black  uniformity but suffer from burn in. QLED has good image quality either but not as good as OLED, but no image retention issues. So I am wondering if anybody has experience with OLED and/or QLED and give me some advice that would be great.

At this moment I am considering  Samsung Q7F QLED as the first choice, LG B7A OLED (maybe C7) as the second one. As the third choice I may go with LG  55SJ8500 LED / Nano Cell™ Display. (all 55").

Thanks for looking.

[Ted Striker 338]

I was in the same dilemma as you a year ago. I wanted the LG OLED for the deeper blacks but didn't know if it was worth the premium for it. I couldn't find any one who had experience with it as a flight sim monitor so I put some screens shots on a USB stick and took them to a store to compare the different TVs. The OLED did have better blacks but I could only tell with night screenshots and on the TVs that were in there dark premium TV viewing room. If you don't hear back from anyone that has the TVs you mention I suggest you try doing that. I ended up getting a 55" Sony 900E. If you like to do a lot of night flying and sim in a dark room the OLED may have more value for you.

Ted

[Pegaso 53]

Edward, I had the same idea before. However it was a severe disappointment after using 4k/5k monitors else in the range of 27/32". Resolution on a large TV is half the one you get on a, lets say, 27" 41k screen. So you should sit as far away from it like from your TV. Personally I keep my high quality monitors for flying (and they even cost less...). You shouldn't buy one before you tested it with your flight sim(!). Whatsoever, have fun!

Fritz

  

[Guest]

OLED technology has some drawbacks so it depends on how long you plan to keep your TV.  OLED TVs require constant calibration (most of this is handled automatically) since the compounds are organic (blue being the most problematic). OLED are subject to burn-in and typically you'll want low light room for OLED.

I'd recommend QLED over OLED.

With that said, most of the current UHD TVs come with a plethora of options that should enable you to get the Hz rate you want and the image quality you want (including black adjustments).  But be aware that for flight simulators (XP11, P3D, AF2, FSW) are all 8bit color so having 10bit or 12bit capable TV is nice but not required.

Either way, be sure to keep your receipt but also be prepared to spend some time with the TV configuration options to make sure you're getting the most out of the TV you select.

Cheers, Rob.

[skysurfer 76]

Appreciate all your responses. 

I was thinking to get 50" or a bit smaller TV but based on research 55" TVs offers more image quality and other options then smaller size TVs. I read somewhere on AVSIM that many people stated that if you want to by a TV then 55" is the way to go, everything smaller is not a good idea. My other concern was screen size. Not sure if 55" will be too extreme for my room and how far do I have to sit from it. I don't have too much space in my room. I have 55" LG in my living room and it looks kind of OK but did not have a chance to connect it to my PC. It is so heavy so it will be a pain to took it from the wall. So looks like a tough call here. I may try 55" first and see how it goes. I can always return it. 

I understood Fritz mentioned he chose a monitor. I have been flying with 3 monitor set for years and I am not sure I will ever return to a single monitor. The other thing with monitors is vertical space. I always wanted some more vertical space. I saw some people who chose TVs over a monitor mentioned that they got much more vertical space. So will see. I hope I won't be screwed 

 

[Ted Striker 338]

23 hours ago, skysurfer said:

how far do I have to sit from it.

I have a 55" and my eyes are about 3 feet from it. I sit a lot further away when using it as a TV. You are not trying to view the entire screen when it is used as a flight sim monitor. Most of the screen area is peripheral vision and lets you see more land area and cockpit panel without having to scroll. For me this was the biggest incentive to get a large 4k monitor, not increased pixel density. If you want higher pixel density than you may want a smaller screen.

 If your TV that is on your wall is 4k why not take your computer to it? Other than that the best way to get a feeling for how close you are comfortable viewing it as a flight sim monitor is to take some screens shots into a store as I stated earlier.

Rob above started with a 49" TV then switched to a 65". I don't know why he increased it to that size. Perhaps he wanted to be able to sit farther from it.

Ted

[skysurfer 76]

53 minutes ago, Ted Striker said:

I have a 55" and my eyes are about 3 feet from it. I sit a lot further away when using it as a TV. You are not trying to view the entire screen when it is used as a flight sim monitor. Most of the screen area is peripheral vision and lets you see more land area and cockpit panel without having to scroll. For me this was the biggest incentive to get a large 4k monitor, not increased pixel density. If you want higher pixel density than you may want a smaller screen.

 If your TV that is on your wall is 4k why not take your computer to it? Other than that the best way to get a feeling for how close you are comfortable viewing it as a flight sim monitor is to take some screens shots into a store as I stated earlier.

Ted

Thanks Ted. Yes, my 55" TV is 4K. I will try to connect it to my PC. Also, do you fly P3D4 by chance? I read a lot that many people complaining about AA issue especially at night, I am one of them. Lights look pretty bad, like tearing. Someone said that using 4K TV or 4K monitor solves this AA issue. Can you confirm that? 

Thanks again. 

[Ted Striker 338]

16 hours ago, skysurfer said:

do you fly P3D4 by chance

I have P3Dv4 installed but do not use it much and have not used it at night. Most of my addons are still in P3dv3 as it does not have the dynamic lighting and other issues except for the VAS limit, which I have been able to manage. Also I am still using a GTX780 until the graphics card shortage is over so I can not take full advantage of P3Dv4 right now. After version 4.2 is released I may start installing some addons into P3Dv4. In P3Dv3 I have no AA issues at night.  Each person has different systems, uses different settings and has different priorities as to which is important to them. What looks good to one person looks bad to another. The best thing you can do is connect your computer up to your living room 4k TV and evaluate it yourself. My understanding is that the higher the pixel density (smaller screen) that you have the less AA you need.

Ted

[skysurfer 76]

OK. I connected my PC to a wall TV. It is a 65" TV, not 55" as I thought (I forgot about). So basically it became a one giant monitor. I still notice AA issue, I guess this is something to do with my graphics. Will keep testing. 

Thx  

[Guest]

1 hour ago, skysurfer said:

I connected my PC to a wall TV. It is a 65" TV, not 55"

I think you mis-understood Ted ... smaller 4K TV (assuming the same seated position/view distance) will result is less easy to spot AA issues (but it will make text icons very small, especially in-sim text) ... you went larger which means you'd need to be further away from the TV.

Also, the depicition of AA issues is very much dependent on you view distance and monitor/TV size.  The human eye can see 0.3m from 1km away, so with given that, everything else can be calculated to determine optimal view distance for any given size TV over a given resolution.

Cheers, Rob.

[Guest]

Bringing this back from the dead ... after purchasing a Samsung 65" UHD (8500 series .... LED based) for my simPit (which I'm very happy with), my wife was impressed with the quality and size.  So she wanted to replace our existing old TV (lets just say "her TV" for now) with something newer.  Initially I had her ok with a 75" LG (8570) for our living room ... so we proceeded to go physically shop for them ... the 75" LG was just too big for her, she just didn't want something that big in the house.  So she wonders over to the LG OLED TV in 65" and was really impressed with it ... so I told her about some of the pitfulls of OLED and their finite life expectancy.  She didn't seem to care, so she starts walking around looking at all the OLED TV's (choices are limited LG or Sony) ... next thing I know the sales guy gets involved and she's looking at the Sony OLED 65" (XRB 65A1E).  At this point I realize that my input is pretty much muted ... so the sales person does his job and gets my wife hooked on the Sony XRB 65A1E (keep in mind that LG were the first to market OLED panels).

So I pay and we leave (BTW, BestBuy were claiming they'll not warranty the TV if I take it home and install it myself, too bad, I did anyway) ... get it home and go thru a rather extensive/careful box extraction and setup.  So I put the TV thru it's paces and frankly was pretty amazed at the image quality and how much better the same Movies I've watched before now look on the Sony OLED ... even my beloved MotoGP streaming from the TV's built in Chrome browser looked almost 4K quality even though I knew it was being up-scaled from 1080 ... something to do with Sony's X1 processor that does the up-scaling.  Netflix 4K content (Altered Carbon, Jessica Jones, Blacklist, etc. etc.) looked extremely good also ... the Sony has a Display option that will show you the current resolution (2160, 1080, 720, 480)  and also shows the data rate as it "fines" the best resolution ... 4K is usually around 15-25Mbps.

So with this Sony OLED looking so good, I had to test it out on my simPit (with the wife's permission of course).  Wow, all my flight sims looked so much better ... P3D, XP11, DCS, AF2, FSW ... the darks were perfect and really brought out the contrast in colors ... the difference was dramatic ... night flying in XP11 visually looked exactly like night flying.  Flying thru nasty weather in P3D with support from ENVTEX/ENVSHADE with perfect haze out to the horizon with glowing sunset introduce a visual fixation I didn't think possible from a flight simulator.  As I loaded up each simulator I was in a state of visual candy overload ... the colors seemed to come to life, the darks were so good and with so little light bleed giving a clean contrast between objects which add sense of depth (almost VR like).  It was really jaw dropping ... 

Sadly, I had to release the Sony OLED back to "normal" TV/Movie duties for the wife and return to using my LED based Samsung for FS duty.  I don't regret my Samsung 8500, it's certainly a good price point to quality ratio, but I should NOT have spoiled myself with testing out the OLED on my simPit ... that was a mistake leaving me feeling "less full" and knowing my simPit could look better ... there will be a OLED TV for my simPit in the future, they'll only continue to get cheaper.

I have no idea how long the OLED will stay looking great, LG/Sony claim current crop of OLEDs will last 100,000 hours ... I've also heard 14,000 hours (about 5 years if one uses the TV 8 hours a day, which neither of us do) ... so who knows, keeping my fingers crossed.

So OLED does indeed look significantly better in every test I tossed at it ... 5-30 yrs potential life is enough for us, so I'll change my original recommendation and say go with current crop of OLED TVs.

Cheers, Rob.

 

[skysurfer 76]

Hi Rob.

Appreciate the feedback. Have you noticed any image retention on OLED TV? I read that it could be a big deal. 

I have not purchased a TV yet for a few reasons. When I connected my 55" 4K LG I noticed the difference. P3D looked better then on PC monitors, everything looked bigger so it was more convenient. However VC looked like I was back on a single monitor, everything is just much bigger but I have limited side views. On my current triple monitor set I can see more around the airplane when I look to the left or right so it helps when I taxi or when I do visual approaches. On a single monitor I can see only small part of the left window and I do not see the right window at all. I fly PMDGs and if I want to see larger angle of views I had to zoom out a bit, bit I cannot zoom out enough because I at some point I find my view behind the seat. So this is the only thing holding me from buying TV. But I really want a TV.  

 

Thanks 

[Guest]

Hi Edward,

If you have ChasePlane (or if you're into setting up your own cameras manually) you should be able to position your view ... use CP's zoom out first, them move view point backwards ... that should provide same (or very close to) the same overall view as 3 monitors but without the monitor partitions and image offset issues.  However, the VC will be visually smaller and it may make it harder to read button/switch/knob/FMC text.

Alternatively, you can also run three 4K monitors and scale them (desktop scaling) ... but before I say that, I should test out scaling in P3D V4.x on my test rig that has three 1440p monitors.  Scaling on a 4K monitor reduces your overall pixel "count" but the native resolution is the same which leads to VERY crisp/clear text and less "virtual" pixels to manipulate.

Cheers, Rob.

[skysurfer 76]

I use Ezdok. 

Interesting thought regarding scaling. What is the difference between surround? 

Also, have you noticed any image retention in OLED TV?

Thanks Rob. 

[Guest]

21 hours ago, skysurfer said:

Also, have you noticed any image retention in OLED TV?

Surround is making 3 monitors look like one large monitor. 

Scaling is keeping the same native resolution but reducing or increasing one's dpi ... default is 96 "dots" per inch so 100% scaling is native to physical screen resolution so that a pixel is a dot.  If you go up or down in scaling you're changing the dpi ... so 125% (120 dpi) means you increase the visual size of everything that is DPI aware (not all apps, and OS elements are DPI aware) ... P3D is DPI aware.  Increasing the size means that more pixels are being used to represent that image, text, icon, etc. which will present itself as sharper/clear and less obvious AA image.

I have not noticed any image retention ... I'm assuming your using "retention" relative to leaving the same image (never changing) over long periods of time?  If not, and you mean the images pixel rate is not fast enough leaving a "ghosting" affect ... then I haven't noticed that either.

On a side note: I never leave my TV's On with a static image for long periods of time, either the power saver mode will kick in or I manually turn the TV/Monitors off.

Cheers, Rob.