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- QD-EL promises super brightness with OLED contrast
- Samsung, Sharp, TCL and others have shown off prototypes already
- Likely to make its way to compact monitors first
The alphabet soup of TV technology continues to grow, with Samsung turning greater attention to QD-EL. That's short for Quantum Dot Electroluminescent, although the tech is also variously known as NanoLED, QD-LED, EL-QLED and QDEL because life isn't confusing enough. But whatever you call it, it's quite exciting and Samsung is investing heavily in it.
According to new reports in the Korean business press, as spotted by FlatpanelsHD, Samsung is accelerating development for QD-EL displays in order to fend off Chinese competitors. BusinessKorea says that "Samsung has set an internal target to commercialize EL-QD within a few years and is fully committed to its technological development."
Some reports are suggesting that QD-EL could be the future of TV, and they might be right. But I think Samsung is likely to be thinking more about monitors than big TVs for the time being. And that's still pretty exciting.
What is QD-EL and why are people excited about it?
At the moment there are two rival TV technologies: backlit LED TVs, and OLED TVs. The former are generally brighter but the latter have better darkness and contrast because OLEDs aren't backlit.
QD-EL promises to give you the best of both. Like OLED it's self-emissive, so there's no backlight. But because it uses quantum dot LEDs rather than organic LEDs, it promises longer life, more efficient energy usage and no burn-in.
Samsung, and firms including Sharp and TCL, have shown off QD-EL prototypes at trade shows, and attendees have been really impressed. But those prototypes have been pretty small – Samsung's one was an 18-inch display, and is at the end of the video below – and the tech is not yet ready for prime time: BusinessKorea says that Samsung is facing issues with the quantum dots' stability and energy efficiency. Presumably rivals face similar challenges too.
So my money's on this tech moving into monitors first, rather than larger TV screens.
There are two reasons why I think that. The first is that if QD-EL were close to being ready for really big displays, manufacturers would likely be showing them off already.
And the second is that big displays are a big risk when you're talking new technologies. It's common for new emission tech to start small and only scale as manufacturers find ways to reduce the often massive wastage that comes with large panels in the early days of manufacturing something new. You lose a lot less money on material wasted from an imperfect result if your screen is 21 inches than if it's 65 inches.
Here's a great example of that: inkjet-printed OLEDs. TCL started mass producing their panels in late 2024, and those panels are for 21.6-inch monitors. TechRadar's Managing Editor for Entertainment, Matt Bolton, has been told that inkjet-printed OLED won't come to TVs for years for this exact reason – it just won't be cost efficient in the short term to risk it on big screens.
I think QD-EL is really exciting, but I think it'll be a while before it moves off the desktop and into your home theater. Although I'd be happily surprised if I'm wrong: after all, Samsung skipped the monitor stage when it launched its QD-OLED panels in 2022 and launched a range of TVs directly, and then brought the tech to monitors later.