Black Beauty

LG OLED65E6P OLED Ultra HDTV

- Thomas J. Norton

PRICE $4,000

I VIVIDLY REMEMBER PLASMA displays, and I mourned their passing. But even before 4K came along, LCD TVs—with their brighter images, lighter weight, lower energy consumption, and, toward the end, cheaper prices—were putting a full-court press on plasma technology.

The best LED-backlit local dimming LCDs can now equal or exceed the performance of plasmas in what were their main calling cards: black level and shadow detail. But now, even LCDs have competition. OLED TVs arrived just about the same time that plasmas faded from the scene. So far, they’re offered only by LG, whose current models are much reduced in price from earlier designs—though they’re still not bargain-basement specials.

What’s Inside?

OLED TVs have nothing in common with the LED sets so prevalent in today’s market. An “LED TV” is simply an LCD set with conventional LED backlighting. LCDs don’t produce light; they merely turn their pixels on or off to allow the backlight to shine through, or not. In an “LED Ultra HDTV,” 8 million LCD pixels produce the picture, but without some form of illumination, that picture would be dark and unwatchable. The LED lighting may be configured into either a few zones along the sides or top and bottom of the screen (so-called “edge-lit” models) or up to several hundred zones (typically fewer) across the back (in what’s referred to as “full-array” backlighting).