It's true that there are more OLED TVs available now, but are they right for you?

Apple iPhone finally uses OLED display for the first time, but it seems that many TV manufacturers are really excited.

Just as the TV industry was constrained by the dual pressures of rising costs and falling sales, in 2017, many domestic and foreign TV brands chose to vigorously promote OLED TV products, trying to bring OLED technology, which was regarded as the future not long ago, into the mainstream market ahead of time.

Apple's current preference for OLED technology will undoubtedly have positive implications for accelerating the popularization of new technologies.

However, using OLED screens on mobile phones is obviously not a new thing, so are we really ready for the OLED era of televisions?

The competition between new technology and production capacity continues

Due to its self-luminous nature and the absence of a backlight source, OLED display technology naturally has characteristics such as high contrast and fast response speed, and also provides a better basic carrier for the display of content such as HDR, which has been hotly debated recently.

In addition, OLED displays have the advantage of greater flexibility, which allows products to be more flexible in terms of innovation, including curved TVs and thinner TV designs.

However, the production capacity issue of OLED panels has become the biggest internal factor hindering its popularization since the birth of the new technology.

On the one hand, although LGD, the main manufacturer of OLED panels, has indicated that it will further expand its production capacity to 6 million pieces in 2020, together with other panel manufacturers such as BOE, the global OLED TV panel production capacity is expected to accelerate to approach the 10 million mark, but if compared with the global annual sales of color TVs of more than 200 million units, the share that OLED TVs can occupy is still negligible.

On the other hand, the supply of OLED technology in the television field is still mainly in the hands of LG, and there is a serious imbalance in the technical strength of a single manufacturer in the upstream of the display industry chain. It is difficult for OLED products to achieve sustainable and healthy development in a short period of time like in the LCD era.

A high-priced OLED product may not necessarily be a good TV

Just as the saying goes "scarcity makes things valuable", the production capacity bottleneck of OLED panels will inevitably lead to the fact that OLED TVs at this stage can only focus on the high-end market.

Statistics show that the current average unit price of OLED TVs is 2 to 3 times that of LCD TVs of the same size. For example, an LCD TV currently sold for around 10,000 yuan is already a true high-end product, but this is only the starting price for most OLED TV products.

Because the production capacity cannot be large-scale, and because of the high price, it cannot be sold quickly, this is obviously the dilemma that OLED TVs are facing right now.

In addition, with the vigorous promotion of OLED technology by TV manufacturers, the disadvantages of OLED products were quickly noticed by the market.

At the end of September this year, the problem of afterimages when OLED TVs display static images for a long time once again caused controversy in the industry. According to Korean media reports, a high-end OLED TV that costs thousands of dollars has been returned in the United States and Russia due to afterimages.

In some terminal stores, shopping guides even recommend other products based on consumers' viewing habits, including asking users whether they have watched TV channels with the LOGO for a long time.

The afterimage problem of OLED TVs displayed in Russian stores is particularly serious. According to relevant statistics, more than 240 of the more than 930 OLED TVs displayed in 310 major stores in Russia have afterimage problems, accounting for more than 1/4.

It is also worth noting that in the public test of short-term afterimage of mainstream TV products conducted by professional audio and video media Rtings last December, almost all LCD TVs scored 10 points, but all OLED TVs failed to reach the passing line of 6 points. This also casts a question mark on whether LG's use of special algorithms to prevent afterimages is really useful.

Therefore, it is not difficult to find that although as OLED TV products are increasingly exposed to consumers and manufacturers are calling for more and more, production capacity, selling price, and old problems including display afterimages still require the entire TV industry to come up with better solutions.

Before this, for most users, an excellent LCD TV may still be a more down-to-earth choice than trying OLED.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.