19 Years Ago, Sony Released A Game-Changing $2,500 TV

When you go to buy a TV these days, chances are you are going to see quite a few billed as OLED — or organic LED displays. OLED, which stands for organic light-emitting diode, are display panels that don't utilize a backlight. Instead, each individual pixel provides its own colors and brightness, allowing for a cleaner, more vibrant appearance. While OLED displays have become extremely popular over the past decade, when the world's first OLED TV was released in 2007, the market looked a lot different.

In fact, even the first OLED TV made by Sony was a lot different than what you might expect in this day and time. That's because while TV displays tend to range between 24-inches to 100+-inches diagonally now, back then Sony's first ever OLED TV, the XEL-1, was only a whopping 11-inches diagonally. That's smaller than some iPads. The other kicker? It cost roughly $2,500 — putting it on par with some of the best smart TVs you can buy right now.

Now, of course, many companies have switched to OLED panels over the traditional LCD or LED, and there's a good reason for that. The picture on an OLED display just looks better. But when Sony first launched the XEL-1, it was taking a bit of a gamble.

At the time of its release, the Sony XEL-1 was heralded for its brilliant picture quality — especially because of its darker colors and contrasting images, and its thinness. Measuring in at just 3mm thick, the small size of the TV was also a key topic of discussion, as an 11-inch TV was small even back in 2007, and we already had some companies like Sharp unveiling massive 108-inch TVs. 

There were also some complaints from many that the OLED display offered on the Sony XEL-1 was only rated for 17,000 hours of usage versus the 30,000 hours that Sony reportedly claimed at the time. But while it was expensive, the Sony XEL-1 fared well enough that Sony continued producing roughly one thousand units a month until 2010, when it discontinued the TV set in favor of other ventures. This was also consumer's first real exposure to the pitfalls of OLED, like burn in, which is one major determining factor for how long an OLED TV lasts.

Despite the lackluster usage time, though, and its small size, Sony's XEL-1 has continued to be an eye-catcher even almost 20 years later, with YouTubers like Linus Tech Tips revisiting the age of the world's first OLED TV to compare it to newer displays like those found in the iPad Pro, and finding that despite the almost 20 year difference, Sony's XEL-1 OLED panel was actually really punchy and continues to hold its own for the most part.