Should i get lcd or led tv

Thinking of putting together or upgrading your home theater setup? There are many factors to consider, but the process often begins with one major question: What kind of TV should you get? These panels are typically composed of two sheets of polarizing material with a liquid crystal solution between them. Think of it as a shutter, either allowing light to pass through or blocking it out.

Each of these illumination technologies is different from one another in important ways. CCFL backlighting is an older, now-abandoned form of display technology in which a series of cold cathode lamps sit across the inside of the TV behind the LCD. The lights illuminate the crystals fairly evenly, which means all regions of the picture will have similar brightness levels.

This affects some aspects of picture quality, which we discuss in more detail below. Full-array backlighting swaps the outdated CCFLs for an array of LEDs spanning the back of the screen, comprising zones of LEDs that can be lit or dimmed in a process called local dimming.

While there are some drawbacks to edge lighting compared to full-array or direct backlight displays, the upshot is edge lighting that allows manufacturers to make thinner TVs that cost less to manufacture. And OLED organic light-emitting diode technology improves it even further by eliminating the need for backlighting.

However, monitors have changed since then. This turns a single monitor into a modular assortment of countless light-emitting diodes. Additionally, this expands how big the monitor can be without blowing up the cost exponentially. The quality of direct-view LED screens is measured by pixel pitch. The pixel pitch is the distance between two adjacent LEDs on the display.

The smaller the pixel pitch, the better the quality of the image. Let us go through these factors one by one and understand which technology wins in each criterion:. The difference in power consumption increases as the size of the display increases. Light-emitting diodes are considerably smaller than fluorescent lamps used in LCD monitors. Fluorescent lamps have a considerable thickness, but the thickness of diodes is next to none. However, direct-view LEDs offer a better angle for viewing than LCDs as the light source is evenly spread on the screen.

This is the time it takes to shift from one colour to another. Response times are generally measured in milliseconds ms. The shorter the time to respond, the better the quality of the images produced. If you wonder which display will last longer, this debate is also won by LED displays.

LED televisions have a longer lifespan of , hours on average, compared to 50, hours provided by LCD televisions. An LED display provides the option to dim the backlight, along with other eye comfort features.

Not only that, it provides a wider viewing angle without harming image quality. The liquid crystals don't create light, though; that job falls to the backlight. LED stands for light-emitting diode, and these make up the backlights of some TVs. The LEDs either sit behind the screen this is called full array or at the edge of the screen known as edge-lit.

The backlight creates the light, which passes through the liquid crystals, along with a few other filter layers, to create the picture. Instead, these TVs typically use older fluorescent backlights. It's possible that is still has an LED backlight, but, as it still has an LCD display, it's not an inaccurate listing.

Read our TV reviews to find out which models are worth buying. Test score.