OLED and several other innovations in television may be on the horizon, but LCD, plasma and LED TV are the latest technologies widely available for televisions today. And between LCD, plasma, and LED, the latter are becoming more and more popular and are generally very high in quality. Samsung even integrated 3D technology into their latest and greatest models of LED television and introduced the world’s first 3D LED TV this year. The drawback is that they are much more expensive than LCD or plasma TVs. Before you decide to buy a LED TV, here are a few things to look at.
First of all, it is informative to start with what an LED TV actually is and how it works. LED is light emitting diode. What you should keep in mind is that a LED television is not truely a LED TV, but just a LCD TV that uses LED as backlight. This is different from traditional LCD TVs which use a fluorescent as backlight.
There are two kinds of LED television. The first type is called the RGB Dynamic, which has LED scattered all around at the back of the panel. This allows the TV to have a higher contrast ratio and to portray the black and white areas in truer color. This way it doesn’t get in the way of the detail and allows small bright objects on a dark background to shine.
The second type is called the Edge-Lit LED TVs, where the LED is located around the edges of the screen. This method distributes light across the screen and allows the television to remain very thin. Some models are even less than an inch thick.
The benefit of LED TVs are that they have higher dynamic contrasts compared to other types of TVs (dynamic contrast is the balance between the black and white areas on a TV). Besides that, an LED TV is typically thinner than other flat-screen TV and has a good range of color balance, with more colors. They are also environmentally friendlier.
Another benefit of LED TVs is that these units have better black levels than traditional TV units, with richer colors and brighter color span. They also have a longer lifespan than the plasma or LCD. Plasma and LCDs typically start to show damaged pixels or sometimes die after a few years of usage.
The main drawback of LED TVs however is that, at least for today, they cost much more than the average flat screen TVs. And though they are touted as environmentally friendly, they can use more energy than either LCD or plasma TVs.
While the quality difference between LED TV and traditional flat screen TV is quite obvious, the LED TV cost is considerably higher making the value questionable. Is the improvement is picture quality with an LED TV worth the extra cost at this point? Probably not for most people. That’s why some people might still prefer to go for LCD or plasma which are much cheaper and with acceptable quality.
In the end, the best LED TV is for those who can spend the money and want top notch quality. For people on a budget that still want a beautiful looking television, they may consider looking into plasma or LCD which are still miles better than the previous generation of televisions and a great value now that prices have dropped considerably.
