- Inkjet-printed OLEDs are very close to mass production
- Samsung Display seems to have resolved EL-QD’s life problem
- Don’t pause your new TV plans if you are currently shopping
The race to find the next big thing in TV Tech just passed two big milestones: TCL CSOT-TCLS Display-Making-subsidiary has shown its inkjet-printed OLED tech in a TV size with panels up to 65 inches, and Samsung Display has shown the potentially OLED-BEFE-QD in a new and strong version.
IJP OLED and EL-QD are struggling to be the next technique that replaces the current OLED production, and both are self-missive technologies like current OLED.
Both are very exciting, but none of them will come to your front room soon and of the two, printed OLEDs will probably arrive long before EL-QD. But they could both turn out to be revolutionary.
Why are we a little enthusiastic for printed OLED and EL-QD
Inkjet-printed OLED panels are the most immediately exciting because they can be used in a wide range of applications: phones, tablets, laptops, PC screens, TVs, Bildashboards … pretty much anywhere wherever you might want to put a display.
TCL has shown the Ink-printed 65-inch panels before: An early prototype in 2021, and a curved prototype in 2023. But this is much closer to production than before, and some of the smaller panels that TCL showed included a new oxide back plan that apparently delivers faster response times and lower power consumption.
Although TCL CSOT says it has become “the first producer to commercialize a complete family pan with IJP [inkjet printed] OLED products “We don’t hold our new TV plans yet: Every new panel technology starts with eye-catching expensive until the yield improves and costs come down.
IJP OLED is still very much an OLED technology as it uses organic material to create self-emissive pixels, but the structure of the panel is completely different due to the manufacturing process, so it’s very much a next generation of OLED rather than just finishing the current technique.
It has the potential to be more power-efficient and cheaper long-term-but it’s not quite ready to go.
TCL has told Techradar directly that it is likely to be several years before IJP OLED will be affordable in TVs – but it already lands on smaller screens.
Is the future light for electric qd?
El-QD sounds like it should be the name of a bullfighter, and the Samsung display is bullish about its prospects: It uses quantum dots as light-emitting diodes and could deliver wider color tension, faster response times and lower power consumption than other display technologies.
Like TCL CSOT, Samsung Display showed its tech on the SID show in the US. It brought some printed OLEDs and some flexible, but the most technically interesting thing was El-QD because Samsung seems to have solved that Tech’s biggest problem.
So far, electric-QD screens have a bit of a lack of long life: early versions used cadmium, and it is prohibited in many countries; Without it, the life of the blue materials that were essential for electric-QD was not great. But the Samsung display says it has “dramatically increased” the life of its latest cadmium-free prototypes.
It enabled Samsung to make the brightest electric-QD prototype to date, but it still falls far below the brightness you want in your front room: The latest EL-QD panel has 400 nits; Many of the best OLEDs deliver over 1,000 nits, while my mini-led TV appears to postpone 90 billion nits.
It is also slightly smaller than your TV: 18.2 inches with 3,200 x 1,800 pixels.
EL-QD is far from production, if you assume it ever makes it mass production at all. The future is bright, but it has to get much brighter before it can be a HDR -TV.
