What Is A QNED TV And Is It Different Than OLED?

Shopping for a new TV can be quite the daunting task, especially when you consider all the odd-sounding acronyms you'll be exposed to. If you've done any kind of research, we're willing to bet you've seen terminology like UHD, 60Hz, and HDMI 2.1 featured everywhere from websites to product boxes. You may have also come across two TV descriptors: QNED and OLED.

QNED is actually a marketing term that LG uses for its mid-tier to premium range LED-LCD TVs, which feature Mini-LED lighting and quantum dot-enhanced colors. We're willing to bet you've heard of QLED TVs, and QNED is simply what LG calls a majority of its own QLED sets.

While a few different TV companies produce OLED TVs, LG has developed an industry-leading reputation for this particular type of panel technology, ditching LED backlighting altogether in favor of a self-emissive display. When it comes to AV knowledge, your friends at BGR know a thing or two about how QLED and OLED TV displays work, and we want to share the facts about these two modern picture technologies.

Want to track down a QNED TV? Walk into your local Best Buy, find the home theater department, and look at the brightest LG TV on display. Chances are, you're looking at a QNED, or quantum dot nano-emissive diode, a bewildering phrase, for sure.

As mentioned, LG's QNED lineup is just the company's stab at QLED (quantum dot light-emitting diode) technology, but with an extra shot of LG. Available in several model types and sizes, LG QNED TVs use LED-LCD backlighting and LG's proprietary NanoCell wavelength filtering to deliver a vibrant picture with excellent color accuracy. That's on top of a layer of quantum dots — nano-sized particles built into QLED TVs that have a strong chemical reaction to LED backlighting, resulting in another big boost in color volume and accuracy. Some QNED models (such as the LG QNED90) swap traditional LED backlighting for more detail-oriented Mini-LED lighting, too.

If you enjoy watching TV at all hours of the day, and your main set is in your brightly lit living room, an LG QNED TV is tailor-made for your viewing circumstances. Because these TVs can get so bright, the glare and washed-out look that ambient lighting (e.g., sunlight, lighting fixtures, nearby device screens) can cause is often overpowered.

OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode. Unlike its QLED cousin, OLED TVs feature zero LED backlighting whatsoever. In lieu of traditional lighting, an OLED panel is fully self-emissive. The screen itself is made up of millions of pixels, and each one of these cells is individually controllable. So, when a pixel isn't being used, it's turned off, resulting in a pure black color. This is a big part of the reason OLED TVs are able to deliver rich and accurate colors, as well as inky black levels.

For a long time, LG was the premier manufacturer of OLED TVs, and it still has a strong foothold in the OLED marketplace. In fact, LG has produced OLED panels so prolifically that the brand started selling its displays to other OLED TV manufacturers, including Samsung and Sony.

Over the years, OLED TVs have gotten a lot better at dealing with ambient lighting, but they're generally no match for the LED lights you'll find in a QLED. An OLED does its best work in a darker viewing space, or at least a room with very controllable lighting. Occasionally, OLED TVs can also fall victim to picture burn-in. This is what happens when an image stays on the screen for too long without any pixel movement. News and sports networks are somewhat infamous for burn-in scars on OLED TVs, primarily due to the ticker (the ribbon at the bottom of the screen that shows breaking news, scores, or storm alerts) and bug (a network's logo that can usually be found bottom-right).