LED Television Purchasing Advice
"LED" TV's are really LCD TV's with LED back-lights. Therefore, all the flat panel LCD TV Pros and Cons also apply to LED TV's, with the exceptions and additions described below. Unlike fluorescent tubes, LED's last almost forever. Besides, if one of the LED's in the set failed, you would never know! LED TV's currently come in three basic flavors:
- Edge-lit LED TV's have the LED's arranged around the outside of the LCD display or along the upper and/or lower edge, only. A special diffuser spreads the light evenly across the entire screen. Edge-lit TV's can be made very thin, but they can only do a limited form of local dimming (described below).
- White LED backlit TV's have white LED's evenly spaced behind the LCD display. Some of these may use local dimming.
- Color LED backlit TV's have red, green and blue LED's evenly distributed behind the LCD display. The point of using color LED's is to optimize color reproduction by automatically adjusting the relative brightness of the red, green, and blue LED's. These may also use local dimming.
Local Dimming:
Local dimming LED TV's improve black levels by turning off LED's behind the dark areas of the picture. For example, a bright street lamp in a dark scene would cause the set to turn on a group of LED's behind the street lamp, while the LED's behind the rest of the screen would be turned off. Current local dimming models cannot dim individual LED's, so the LED's are divided into zones that are dimmed as a group. Some edge-lit TV's also do local dimming by using plastic light guides to direct light to the various zones on the screen. Local dimming greatly improves contrast ratios, but some weird "halo" effects can appear where light from the zone of LED's surrounding a bright object leaks through the LCD display. This is rarely visible in normal video. To see this effect, watch bright movie credits on a dark background. A dimly lit "cloud" will surround the credits as they rise up the screen.
Pros:
- Longer life- LED TV's are unlikely to fail due to backlight problems.
- Thinner- LED's are much smaller than fluorescent tubes, which allows manufacturers to make these TV's thinner.
- Better contrast ratios (local-dimming models)
- Possible lower energy consumption- Check Wattage ratings of the models you are considering.
- Bright picture, and no burn-in: See LCD Flat Panel TV Purchasing Advice.
Cons:
- Off-axis performance, easily broken, and slow response times: See LCD Flat Panel TV Purchasing Advice.
- May have poor sound quality. (See General TV Purchasing Advice)
Best Brands:
Currently, the best and most reliable brands of LED TV's are Sharp, Samsung, and LG.