Is OLED better than LCD display?

Is OLED display better than LCD display? besides LCD display technology, as the new generation technology of display, OLED displays have many advantages.

Advantages of OLED displays:

OLED display module is better in power consumption saving:

OLED can emitting light by itself and no need backlight, through the use of phosphorescence (which can convert four times more electricity into light than other materials), OLEDs are significantly more power-efficient than LCDs with backlight.

To oled display module, particularly for monochrome OLED, the screen's power consumption is related to display content, the less display content, the lower power consumption.

For example, a 0.96” OLED screen with 128x64 pixels resolution, the operating current for full display on is 12.3 mA, and the current for displaying on 50% display pixels is only 7.3 mA. These current has been included OLED driver’s current and OLED display screen’s current. While if we use a 0.96" LCD screen with backlight, the backlight commonly have 2 LED chips, only the LCD backlight's current has been up to 30mA.

The lifetime of small OLED display has been comparable to LCD screen:

OLEDs are emissive, similar to plasma displays and cathode ray tubes. They degrade over time. LCDs are transmissive displays that operate by filtering a backlight. LCDs typically last as long as their backlights, which also degrade over time or can fail catastrophically. Early in the development of OLED displays, the lifetime (defined as the time it takes for the display to reach 50% of the original luminance) was lower than typical LCD lifetimes. However, with tremendous progress in materials development, small OLED displays have lifetimes comparable to or better than LCDs. Part of small OLED displays have lifetimes exceeding 50,000 hour. For example, lifetimes for OLED materials being developed by Cambridge Display Technology, and others have lifetimes 2-3 times greater than typical LCDs. Some are in products today and more are expected to reach the market within coming years. Such as Maclight's 0.96” oled in white color, its lifetime can be 50,000 hours in 60cd/m2 brightness display. OLEDs offer great potential for efficient lighting solutions with recent reseach achieving 46 lumens per Watt (lm/W) with lifetimes greater than 10,000 hour (a standard incandescent bulb offers 14 lm/W with a 1000 hour lifetime). On the other hand, the higher brightness of OLED, its lift time would be reduced accordingly.

Small mono OLED display modules have better contrast and viewing angle than mono LCD:

Monochrome oled module has higher contrast than monochrome lcd, OLED screen's  background is much blacker than monochrome LCD, monochrome OLED's background is without light leakage as monochrome LCD in non-display area, OLED's contrast can easily reach 10000:1, while LCD screen has more or less light leakage on non-display area, it lead to LCD display can not reach higher display contrast than OLED display. So OLED screen's contrast is much better than mono LCD in STN LCD or TN LCD display technology.

In the same time, monochrome LCD (stn lcd or TN lcd technology) have the limited viewing angle, their viewing angles are 120° (max), while OLED screen could be 180°, that is without viewing angle limited.

Therefore, mono OLED displays have better display performances than monochrome LCD.

On the other hand, to color AM OLED display modules, AM-OLEDs offer best video display quality, and AM OLED's color can reach higher NTSC standard, AM OLED display's contrast ratio can be up to the range of 1,000,000 to 2,000,000:1, it  makes those colors looked even more brilliant theoretically.

However, as the IPS LCD or LTPS TFT LCD technology are going to mature, color TFT LCD screen is almost near to the color OLED display module in viewing angle and contrast in display performance nowadays, because IPS tft panel has outstanding performance in viewing angle, you would find IPS tft lcd almost has similar display performance as color OLED display (of course, AM-OLED is still little better in wide viewing angle and contrast, but not so much). However, the cost of OLED screen are 2~3 times than TFT LCD screen. Therefore, for color displays, we don't think it is necessary to choose OLED displays. As TFT LCD module, the TFT LCD glass and backlight can be made more thinner than before, their thicknesses are also close OLED module. Therefore,  a better TFT LCD screen is also on a par with small AM-OLED screen nowadays.

OLED display has better working temperature performance:

Oled moduel have outstanding temperature performance than LCD screen, even both OLED module and LCD display module declare they could support -40~+85°C in their datasheets, but the LCD screen always has slightly dimmer in low temperature and fading in high temperature, it is limited by the liquid crystal characteristics, but the OLED module display performance is consistency in high temperature and low temperature working.

Small Oled display is better used for sunlight readable display:

Transmissive LCD display technologies are challenged in bright sunlight, because the light reflects off the display. To mitigate the reflection, the LCDs offer a transflective mode, which is a combination of a reflective and a transmissive display, to lessen the problem but compromise on color and contrast performance in the process.

To OLED display, because it has blacker background in non-display area, and by using specially designed polarizers, OLED display attain better daylight readability in bright sunshine,  OLED display has better retain their color and contrast performance than LCD screen.

In the same time, OLED module has better wide temperature than lcd screen, it hasn't response time problem when in low temperature and display fade in high temperature as comparing to lcd screen. so small  OLED display module is more suitable for sunligh readable display.

OLED display has faster refresh time:

OLEDs refresh time is in microseconds grade that with faster response time, as opposed to LCDs’ milliseconds. In addition, the OLED refresh time would be same in high temperature and low temperature, while LCD screen, its refresh time become slowly in low temperature.

Small OLED displays could be made in more display types : Flexible or transparent

OLED display can be developed in more display types than LCD display module, such as transparent OLED display module and flexible OLED display technology. OLED can self-luminous, OLED display doesn't require the backlight unit, because of its simple structure, small OLED display is better to make transparent OLED display and flexible OLED display module. Without backlight unit, small OLED display module is thinner than traditional LCD display, OLED screen could be made in flexible or transparent by changing the substrate layers to flexible or transparency. All the newest flexible screen are made by OLED display, it is also because low-temperature processing OLED emit light materials can be evaporated to the flexible substrate, while TFT LCD screen can not make it like that, because the liquid crystal have to be sealed inside the tft lcd cell, the flexible substrate can not provide a reliable sealing condition for flexible TFT LCD screen.