The terms you need to know before buying a TV in 2018

"One thing that many consumers don’t know, is that brands often have different names for the same technology and this can make comparing one model or brand to another quite tricky.

Image: Samsung / Supplied

Know your needs

Image: Hisense / Supplied

LED, OLED, ULED, QLED... help

The simplest way to understand these terms is that beyond LCD, there are currently two umbrellas of display: LED and OLED.

OLED stands for Organic Light-Emitting Diode, and OLED TVs have been popular because they can turn off individual pixels on the screen, so you get blacker blacks.

This means better contrast, so colours look sharper and have more ‘pop’. However, the screen longevity may not be as hardy as non-organic technology.

LED TVs differ from OLED, and to that effect, LED TVs using Quantum Dot technology (more below) are not an upgrade from OLED: the two screen technologies are different.

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Quantum Dots are small particles that enhance the colour of a traditional LED TV and they're considered an upgrade from LCD screens. 

Different brands have developed different labels for LED TVs using Quantum Dot technology (that's where the 'Q' or 'U' before 'LED' comes in).

For example, Hisense's offering that incorporates Quantum Dot technology is the ULED series 9. Samsung has named the technology QLED (Quantum Dot LED TV).

Hisense Premium ULED TV. Image: Supplied

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Quantum Dot Technology

"These tiny particles (almost the size of DNA!) are capable of emitting brighter than bright colour that is more accurate to what you’d experience in real life."

Samsung QLED. Image: Supplied