VA = QLED?

[Methanol Ethanolovicz]

Hello there!

I'm on the verge of buying a new monitor. The most viable option for about 250-300$ seems to be Samsung C24FG73F, MSI Gaming Optix G24C or AOC C32G1. (I know that these monitors may not cost 250-300$ in the US, but where I live, everything is usually about 30-50% more expensive) However, unlike the latter two, the one made by Samsung is marketed as a QLED monitor, but e-shops, as well as the official specs sheet list it as a VA monitor. My question is simple: Is QLED the same as VA?

 

The rest of the specs is basically the same for all three aforementioned monitors - 144 Hz refresh rate, 1 ms response time, 250 cd/m^2 brightness, 3000:1 contrast ratio, 1800R curvature. The only difference is that the AOC is a bit larger. I wouldn't be surprised if they all used the same screens.

[Alex Atkin UK]

No, VA is how the LCD is made whereas QLED refers to how the backlight is made.

As I understand it, QLED have tiny little LEDs per pixel (sub-pixel?) so you get a far better contrast as the backlight can be controlled per-pixel, especially allowing true blacks as it can be turned off entirely.  By combining the LED brightness and the LCDs ability to block light precisely, you get more shades of colour.

A traditional backlight any pixel that is off is likely still lit so appears grey, this also limits the contrast range as it depends on how many stages of on/off the crystal itself can handle and how much it blocks the backlight.  At best a normal backlight is separated into several different zones so any dark pixels near light ones will still suffer from being lighter than they should as that zone must be on to light the lighter pixels, at worst the whole panel is always lit so that NO pixel is ever able to get particularly black due to the backlight leaking through/between the pixels.

[LukeSavenije]

Va=/=qled

Va=ips with worse blacks and better whites

[Alex Atkin UK]

Not sure that's true, my monitor is IPS and my TV is VA.  Comparing them side by side the colours on the TV are MUCH more vibrant but I wouldn't say the black level is all that different.  VA only looks good when directly looking at it however whereas IPS looks great from quite wide angles.

[Enderman]

14 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

No, VA is how the LCD is made whereas QLED refers to how the backlight is made.

As I understand it, QLED have tiny little LEDs per pixel (sub-pixel?) so you get a far better contrast as the backlight can be controlled per-pixel, especially allowing true blacks as it can be turned off entirely.  By combining the LED brightness and the LCDs ability to block light precisely, you get more shades of colour.

A traditional backlight any pixel that is off is likely still lit so appears grey, this also limits the contrast range as it depends on how many stages of on/off the crystal itself can handle and how much it blocks the backlight.  At best a normal backlight is separated into several different zones so any dark pixels near light ones will still suffer from being lighter than they should as that zone must be on to light the lighter pixels, at worst the whole panel is always lit so that NO pixel is ever able to get particularly black due to the backlight leaking through/between the pixels.

No, QLED has nothing to do with the backlight.

They use special crystal filled liquids to produce narrow wavelength bands of light from each pixel for better colour volume and higher efficiency.

 

Dimming zones on a backlight just gets more common the more money you spend on a tv, regardless of QLED or regular LED panels.

 

VA is a type of panel technology.

Samsung just replaced the regular liquid crystals in an LCD with their own liquid crystals and called it QLED.

 

The "LED per sub pixel" technology is called micro LED and is not on the market yet.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I see.  Now if we could just get the market to settle on an industry standard for naming things we wouldn't have this confusion.

So basically QLED is just a different kind of liquid crystal and has the same benefit/drawbacks depending on if they lay it out as a VA or IPS panel?  So basically a VA QLED is still going to look richer than an IPS QLED?  But an IPS QLED could potentially look better (or at least as good) as a standard VA panel as its transmitting the light more efficiently to begin with?

[mariushm]

so much confusion

 

QLED is just another "brand name", a different saying for Quantum Dot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot

Quantum Dot is a way to make the backlight better, making monitors capable of reproducing a wider range of colors.

 

The way you see colors on the LCD panel is influenced by the backlight, by the leds that illuminate the panel. LEDs are not perfect, they don't emit the whole spectrum of light that is emitted by incandescent bulbs for example, and what is produced by LEDs is slightly different than the old technology, CCFL (fluorescent tubes)

 

By placing some nanoparticles on the individual LEDs and/or on the LENS that spread the generated light uniformly, you get light in a wider spectrum, so the colors are more accurate and monitors can be better calibrated and so on. 

Quantum dot (to the best of my knowledge) is not in the actual LCD panel, it doesn't have anything to do with crystals in the panel.

 

VA and IPS are two different ways of making LCD panels. basically each pixel is made out of 3 cells filled with liquid cristal that are covered with color filters (red, green, blue). In the corner of each cell is a small transistor... when it's turned on, there's electricity flowing through the cell, which makes the particles of that liquid crystal change their orientation and that makes the liquid crystal opaque.  When the crystal becomes opaque, the amount of light that comes from the back of the panel (produced by the leds) changes. 

 

The differences between VA and IPS are related to how the wires going to each transistor (and each cell) are arranged in the panel, how the transistors are placed... wires have thickness , transistors have volume, different ways of wiring things can affect how much transparency you get when crystal is fully transparent etc (higher contrasts, more backlight bleeding) and how quick each cell changes state from on to off , or from one shade to another.

 

I'm over simplifying things but that's the basic idea.

 

Quote

So basically a VA QLED is still going to look richer than an IPS QLED? 

 

it's more like a calibrated monitor with TN panel and QLED may be able to reproduce the same amount of colors as a VA panel. But the colors on the TN panel would still shift or wash out if you move your head to the sides of the panel - it's a design "flaw" of TN panels... they're super fast, faster than IPS and VA, but view angles suffer.

 

QLED can be useful to enlarge the possible colors that ca be reproduced and make it easier to have 10bit monitors.  Even if the technology is capable of 10bit per color (so way more than 16m colors) that doesn't mean the monitor can actually reproduce all those colors 

 

 

so for example a monitor could say 100 % rec.709 (which is the HD broadcast color space ) but only 80% rec.2020 and 85% DCI-P3 (which are used for 10 bit and HDR)

A monitor with quantum dot could have slightly higher / better percentages for those color spaces used for 10bit and HDR, though when watching HD movies (using rec.709 color space) you wouldn't have any benefits from your monitor compared to others.

[Enderman]

9 minutes ago, James Evens said:

Depends. Quantum dots are used for the backlight.

In the near future mainstream LCD will use them to enhance colors for each single pixel. A third possible way of using them is to place them in front of the LCD without a special structure.

"Quantum dots" are the photoemissive nanoparticles placed in front of the backlight.

It has nothing to do with the backlight.

It uses the same LED backlight that literally any other screen uses.

Higher end tv models have more dimming zones, that has nothing to do with QLED.

[Enderman]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

so much confusion

 

QLED is just another "brand name", a different saying for Quantum Dot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot

Quantum Dot is a way to make the backlight better, making monitors capable of reproducing a wider range of colors.

 

The way you see colors on the LCD panel is influenced by the backlight, by the leds that illuminate the panel. LEDs are not perfect, they don't emit the whole spectrum of light that is emitted by incandescent bulbs for example, and what is produced by LEDs is slightly different than the old technology, CCFL (fluorescent tubes)

 

By placing some nanoparticles on the individual LEDs and/or on the LENS that spread the generated light uniformly, you get light in a wider spectrum, so the colors are more accurate and monitors can be better calibrated and so on. 

Quantum dot (to the best of my knowledge) is not in the actual LCD panel, it doesn't have anything to do with crystals in the panel.

 

VA and IPS are two different ways of making LCD panels. basically each pixel is made out of 3 cells filled with liquid cristal that are covered with color filters (red, green, blue). In the corner of each cell is a small transistor... when it's turned on, there's electricity flowing through the cell, which makes the particles of that liquid crystal change their orientation and that makes the liquid crystal opaque.  When the crystal becomes opaque, the amount of light that comes from the back of the panel (produced by the leds) changes. 

 

The differences between VA and IPS are related to how the wires going to each transistor (and each cell) are arranged in the panel, how the transistors are placed... wires have thickness , transistors have volume, different ways of wiring things can affect how much transparency you get when crystal is fully transparent etc (higher contrasts, more backlight bleeding) and how quick each cell changes state from on to off , or from one shade to another.

 

I'm over simplifying things but that's the basic idea.

 

 

it's more like a calibrated monitor with TN panel and QLED may be able to reproduce the same amount of colors as a VA panel. But the colors on the TN panel would still shift or wash out if you move your head to the sides of the panel - it's a design "flaw" of TN panels... they're super fast, faster than IPS and VA, but view angles suffer.

 

QLED can be useful to enlarge the possible colors that ca be reproduced and make it easier to have 10bit monitors.  Even if the technology is capable of 10bit per color (so way more than 16m colors) that doesn't mean the monitor can actually reproduce all those colors 

 

 

so for example a monitor could say 100 % rec.709 (which is the HD broadcast color space ) but only 80% rec.2020 and 85% DCI-P3 (which are used for 10 bit and HDR)

A monitor with quantum dot could have slightly higher / better percentages for those color spaces used for 10bit and HDR, though when watching HD movies (using rec.709 color space) you wouldn't have any benefits from your monitor compared to others.

This is incorrect.

The backlight does not change.

QLED refers to the nanoparticles used for colour conversion.

These nanoparticles result in a narrower wavelength band of emission.

The QLED particles are replacing the regular colour filter on a standard display.

There are other applications for quantum dots, but in samsung TVs this is what they do.

[Enderman]

12 minutes ago, James Evens said:

One quick literature search later: 

US patent Appl. No.: 13/817,404 

Flexible/curved backlight module with quantum-dots microstructure array for liquid crystal displays: https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-26-3-3466

and 285 additional results.

 

Just because there's a patent for it does not mean that samsung displays are using that technology.

There's also patent for self-emissive quantum dots, quantum dots that use blue backlights only, etc....

[Enderman]

47 minutes ago, James Evens said:

As far as i have checked it they where both for the classic back light.

For research paper it is even worse. Most of the research will never make it into a product and some patents are just straight up fake.

 

Yeah, my point is that the samsung tvs are using quantum dots in the colour filter portion you can see here:

The panel type (for example VA) is the thing that's labeled "liquid crystal" which lets the light through or not for each subpixel.

[Methanol Ethanolovicz]

So the TL;DR is that the Samsung monitor uses the same VA panel, but should have more vibrant colors than the other two, right? I was more attracted towards the AOC since it's the largest and costs about the same, but I might reconsider.

[SolarNova]

QLED is VA+cheap version of Quantom Dot tech (a layer/filter).

So its VA.

 

VA is NOT bad for monitors.

VA has the BEST contrast and blacks levels of the 3 primary LCD panel technologies.

VA has the slowest pixel response, note: this  does NOT mean slowest input lag.

VA has worse viewing angles vs IPS

VA is more vibrant but less accurate colors vs IPS.

 

Long story short VA is the middle ground between TN and IPS, with the bonus of having the best contrast and black levels. Add on QD tech and it makes for the best current picture quality LCD can produce. In terms of picture quality it is the best among LCD, but looses to TN and IPS in other areas such as display frequency, viewing angles, and Pixel response.

[Methanol Ethanolovicz]

Thank you for your explanations, guys!

Now, do you think the QLED Samsung monitor is worth the extra money over the larger WLED backlit AOC monitor?

[Untitled]

On 11/6/2018 at 4:22 AM, Methanol Ethanolovicz said:

Thank you for your explanations, guys!

Now, do you think the QLED Samsung monitor is worth the extra money over the larger WLED backlit AOC monitor?

 

Yes. worth it. I'm currently using QLED. I compared standard VA and QLED VA side by side at the shop, QLED's color win hands down, much improvement on red and green color.

 

P.S. QLED (Quantum Dot) is a kind of "color upgrade" for that panel. QLED is not only for VA panel. sometime you'll see TN panel + QLED.

Edited November 8, 2018 by Untitled

[Methanol Ethanolovicz]

I see. Now that I come to think of it, having a huge 32'' monitor with 1080p resolution would probably not be ideal, the pixel density would likely be pretty bad. So I guess I'll go for the C24FG73F. Or is there any other monitor at a similar price you'd suggest?