Pixel Structure Showdown: Mini-LED vs WOLED vs QD-OLED vs Plasma

[slaphappypappy]

Yesterday, I made a post arguing that plasma TVs outperform newer panel technologies in terms of color production. KazeoHin brought up a solid point about how pixel structure impacts color production, which got me thinking. While I’ve considered the role of sub-pixel composition—like RGB (QD-OLED, plasma, Mini-LED) versus RGBW (WOLED)—I hadn’t really stopped to think about how the physical layout of the pixels themselves might influence color quality.

After diving into some research, things started to click. One thing that always puzzled me, having owned all these display types, is how Mini-LED comes surprisingly the closest to delivering the rich, impactful colors of plasma. You’d think OLED / QD-OLED would be the closest, given its self-emissive pixel tech, but its not even close.

When you compare them, the pixel layouts of plasma and Mini-LED share a very similar robustness and density that OLED lacks. This structural difference appears to play a big role in why plasma and Mini-LED produce deeper, more impactful oil painting like colors compared to OLED. These pictures speak for themselves.





1) QD-OLED

2) Panasonic Plasma (last gen)

3) LG WOLED

4) Samsung Mini-LED

 

[Dudhunter]

Well done. Will Plasma ever return? I hope so.

 

[El_Capitan]

Well done. Will Plasma ever return? I hope so.

Unless there's new "Plasma" tech, I don't think it will. No one's going to pay high prices for a 1080P Plasma HDTV, nor is there incentive for companies to sell a product where the margins are low. They'd have to lower the weight, toughen up the screen, allow for 4K HDR, add in all the bloated smartware, and sell it for $3K.

 

[kasakka]

I think you are drawing the wrong conculusions here. All those images are taken at different zoom levels and the tech is not comparable like this.

Personally I don't find that my old Panasonic ST50 does anything that I can't get out of my LG OLED.

 

[therealjustin]

My Panasonic UT50 from 2012 still looks amazing and I'd love a updated version. It has the Neo panel so the blacks are excellent and the colors pop much like an OLED. It's also glossy.

I wonder if Panasonic ever experimented with 4K plasma.

 

[Valnar]

I still have a Panasonic ST60 as my main TV and it's not getting replaced until it dies. It's only worthy successor IMO is a Sony OLED.

 

[jolli]

I somehow spaced that Panasonic was selling WOLED televisions in the US. Reviews look good (https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/panasonic/z95a-oled) and the fact that it does Dolby Vision and HDR10+ is pretty cool.

Will definitely consider next time I need a TV, but am otherwise happy with my Sony and LG OLEDs.

 

[brownkc]

I had a 65" Panny ST30 that I bought in 2012. I replaced it with a 77" LG G3 in 2023. The difference was night and day. I was concerned that I wouldn't see much difference but a couple of buddies that had made the plasma to OLED leap a few years earlier sold me on the upgrade. They were right.

I'm sure there was some brightness half-life issues with the plasma after 10 years but it was more than just that. I will still stop what I'm doing and just stare at the appleTV screensaver or pop an HD Bluray in and marvel at the picture on the OLED. Those poor movie makeup artists never realized just how high-res I screens would get. I'm constantly noticing the set and costume imperfections that you couldn't see in older lower-res screens.

 

[texuspete00]

I went 65" Panasonic VT60 to a 77" LG G3 OLED and yeah at the end of the day they were just the tech with the fewest weaknesses of the time, and the LG is worth it for the 4k and size alone. I had a Samsung QLED in between actually, their best TV before they got in the OLED game, that was a mistake.

 

[XoR_]

Well done. Will Plasma ever return? I hope so.

Never ever
It is great tech but there is no way to reduce power consumption to accectable levels. Especially if you want to have really good image quality which is done by having more sub-fields.
And keep in mind that plasma panels were never super bright. I cannot even imagine hitting luminance levels of modern HDR on plasma panels and not have issues with glass melting

I still have a Panasonic ST60 as my main TV and it's not getting replaced until it dies. It's only worthy successor IMO is a Sony OLED.

SONY does not make OLED panels.
Best OLED tech currently is Samsung QD-OLED.

Yesterday, I made a post arguing that plasma TVs outperform newer panel technologies in terms of color production. KazeoHin brought up a solid point about how pixel structure impacts color production, which got me thinking. While I’ve considered the role of sub-pixel composition—like RGB (QD-OLED, plasma, Mini-LED) versus RGBW (WOLED)—I hadn’t really stopped to think about how the physical layout of the pixels themselves might influence color quality.

Pixel structure does not affect colors.
IMHO light spectrum does. Even then it seems some people are more susceptible to see the differences than others. Everyone's eyes and whole vision processing circuitry in the brain is slightly different with different way impulses from eyes being processed.
Other than cones you have also rods and these get desensitized in photopic vision but not so much as to not be operational and not pick differences in light levels. And even with just cones themselves these cells which are type of neurons do produce different signals depending on light wavelength - it is something that is supposed to be filtered in some bundle of cells before going to visual cortex but is it really filtered enough to not cause the same stimulation levels to actually 'look' identical?

Things like subpixel structure if there are visible gaps can influence visual cortex but I dismiss pixel structure as source of color differences because from up close where screen door effects (and therefore pixel structure) are visible and from far away where even indivisual pixels cannot be resolved: in both cases I see the same colors. So in my case this is not a factor.

Another thing to consider are any temporal color differences - like on plasma you have flashing 1-bit images and then phosphors having different decay times. This can and I would say is source for some of the perceived 'color' differences. How much is hard to say but I would say less than light spectrum. For e.g. WCG-CCFL which flicker at less than 100% brightness I perceived obvious green trailing which was somewhat similar to plasma but at 100% it was gone because flickering was gone - no differences were however observed.

After diving into some research, things started to click. One thing that always puzzled me, having owned all these display types, is how Mini-LED comes surprisingly the closest to delivering the rich, impactful colors of plasma. You’d think OLED / QD-OLED would be the closest, given its self-emissive pixel tech, but its not even close.

When you compare them, the pixel layouts of plasma and Mini-LED share a very similar robustness and density that OLED lacks. This structural difference appears to play a big role in why plasma and Mini-LED produce deeper, more impactful oil painting like colors compared to OLED. These pictures speak for themselves.

When you say OLED do you mean "I actually used/saw/tested both WOLED and QD-OLED"? or only WOLED?
To my eyes colors on WOLED and QD-OLED look nothing alike. And sure QD-OLED, especially up close has color fringing which does affect colors a lot but from far away when this is not visible colors should be identical.
It is kinda like if Samsung made QD-OLED have plasma or IPS-like pixel structure: nothing really changes that you cannot simulate by getting much further away from the panel.

 

[Valnar]

SONY does not make OLED panels.
Best OLED tech currently is Samsung QD-OLED.

Umm. TV, Sony OLED TV. I'm aware some people think Samsung TV's are better; I am not one of them.

 

[XoR_]

Umm. TV, Sony OLED TV. I'm aware some people think Samsung TV's are better; I am not one of them.

Which OLED ?
Do you even know which OLED tech you are talking about?

From what I saw in reviews Sony just uses panels from both LG and Samsung, limits maximum luminance and adds lag on top of what you can get cheaper in LG's or Samsung's TVs
Maybe there is some advantage to paying premium for their products but nothing I am aware of.

 

[Valnar]

Which OLED ?
Do you even know which OLED tech you are talking about?

From what I saw in reviews Sony just uses panels from both LG and Samsung, limits maximum luminance and adds lag on top of what you can get cheaper in LG's or Samsung's TVs
Maybe there is some advantage to paying premium for their products but nothing I am aware of.

A panel alone does not a TV make. They have processing too. Do you also think all PC's with the same exact CPU model are the same?

 

[XoR_]

A panel alone does not a TV make. They have processing too. Do you also think all PC's with the same exact CPU model are the same?

I am most likely getting QD-OLED TV this year to replace my older 48 inch WOLED monitor and I will be doing some research what I get with each TV.
For now I can see that 2024 SONY models have more lag in game mode than Samsung and therefore I would not get them if they were the cheaper option. Is this lag there because of "processing" you talk about?

Seriously though my previous post was about SONY not making any panels and why it is terrible example to use to compare to something like Panasonic plasmas.
Especially like you wrote without even providing which OLED panel you refer to - there is world of difference between QD-OLED and WOLED panels where it comes to how image looks on them.

 

[MistaSparkul]

I am most likely getting QD-OLED TV this year to replace my older 48 inch WOLED monitor and I will be doing some research what I get with each TV.
For now I can see that 2024 SONY models have more lag in game mode than Samsung and therefore I would not get them if they were the cheaper option. Is this lag there because of "processing" you talk about?

Seriously though my previous post was about SONY not making any panels and why it is terrible example to use to compare to something like Panasonic plasmas.
Especially like you wrote without even providing which OLED panel you refer to - there is world of difference between QD-OLED and WOLED panels where it comes to how image looks on them.

I'm not sure what kind of superhuman eyeballs you have to say that there is a world of difference between QD-OLED and WOLED when professional reviewers like HDTVTest put flagship models of each panel type in a head to head comparison with reference $30k+ Sony mastering monitors and conclude the difference between the two panels isn't that big. I also had QD-OLED and WOLED monitors side by side and came to the same conclusion. I'm also planning to get a new TV this year but it will absolutely not be the S95F QD-OLED because matte sucks, lifted blacks in a non pitch black room sucks, one connect box sucks, and Samsung OS sucks so I'm aiming for the Panasonic Z95B instead which will use the new 4 stack WOLED panel.

 

[XoR_]

I'm not sure what kind of superhuman eyeballs you have to say that there is a world of difference between QD-OLED and WOLED

In my teens I read the most influential book of my life https://www.amazon.com/Method-Better-Eyesight-Without-Glasses/dp/0805002413
Rather than "if it ain't broken don't fix it" I saw certain ideas presented in this book pointing at an opportunity to entertain idea to improve eyesight by actually learning how to use my eyes and train how my brain does vision.
Today I am almost 40 yo and my eyesight was never better. In fact my 20:20 vision from my teens is like having severe eyesight deficiency in comparison

when professional reviewers like HDTVTest put flagship models of each panel type in a head to head comparison with reference $30k+ Sony mastering monitors and conclude the difference between the two panels isn't that big.

Oh but people like him heavily benefit from never really seeing much differences, especially between high end models. Just think about it. Each year there is mind blowing innovations making this year's models much better than last year but it does not matter if given panel type saw the same level of innovation or its basically last year panel with some tweaks the especially high end models will always somehow end about the same quality and value. Yeah... BS detector is flashing red watching his videos.

Also I would not expect him specifically to have worked on his eyesight single day in his life. There are obvious tale tell signs...

I also had QD-OLED and WOLED monitors side by side and came to the same conclusion.

Observing people and what they perceive and what not I would say that most people at times have flashes of perception which is for me the norm but they won't really be able to focus on colors they perceived and see them directly. It is usually like noticing something and then looking for it with certain level of disappointment or relief depending on if the fleeing perception was pleasant or not. It is obvious when I can at the same time see such otherwise nuances as my normal color perception and also am able to shift my whole visual perception to how people are using vision because I know it, know how to do it and can do it. It was how I used to use my eyes in the past in my teens. Nothing out of ordinary for me really.

Of course usually these things are more fixed and depend on how person used his eyes since childhood where certain choices are being made.
This is why some people will complain about some things like WOLED having terrible colors compared to something else e.g. QD-OLED or Pioneer Kuro while most other people won't know what the guy is mumbling about

I'm also planning to get a new TV this year but it will absolutely not be the S95F QD-OLED because matte sucks, lifted blacks in a non pitch black room sucks, one connect box sucks, and Samsung OS sucks so I'm aiming for the Panasonic Z95B instead which will use the new 4 stack WOLED panel.

Well, to me having my eyes register where there is pure black in the image on WOLED sucks even more than any deficiencies of QD-OLED.
There is simply too much contrast between black and non-black on WOLED because of how it seems to stimulate my eyes. QD-OLED on the other hand looks unrealistic because everything kinda looks black on it but I very much prefer this look and it doesn't cause any issues with the image or anything sticking out in it.

But hey!
There is this new "Primary RGB Tandem" technology on LG OLEDs which new LG OLEDs will have this year which does sound very interesting!
https://news.lgdisplay.com/en/2025/...-lastest-oled-technology-4th-generation-oled/

I would say my current WOLED panel and each and every WOLED that I saw is not very human friendly. It does not cause eye-strain as in causing physical pain at higher levels of brightness like some AUO panels do but my impression always is that they blast at my eyes way too much causing not only this effect where black sticks out but also screwing up with my dark-detail perception causing inevitable black crush no matter how well I attempt at calibrating the display. It is again different thing when directly looking at the given detail with fovea and different when just looking at the screen normally, especially with mix of bright and dark details. And I am not the only person which have beef to WOLED panels for having inherent black crush - just almost no one understands what causes it.

So... I was about to get QD-OLED TV this year but apparently there is a new presumably worthy contender on the horizon!
I will be monitoring these new panels and will go looking for stores how they actually look like and if these new panels are compatible with my eyes or if it is still better to get QD-OLED. I like my QD-OLED gaming monitor a lot even if I would prefer it to be more... let's say balanced. For example LG 27GP950 IPS has better colors imho. Pioneer Kuro LX5090 has if not better colors more natural looking colors.

Hopefully LG delivers.
Also hopefully they fix this near-black luminance overshoot where pixels flash because it is ridiculous and ruins dark scenes.
If I do like colors on these new panels more than QD-OLED but they don't fix the flashing... that will be a pickle. Will probably get QD-OLED for the time being.

p.s. Training vision, better vision... let's say I see much better than anyone I know. It is not IMHO due to better eyeballs - that was the point I tried to make.
It is more like figuring out DLSS2-like algorithms running without AI and more like with NI - natural intelligence
Brain is quite flexible where it comes to image processing. Perhaps too flexible to be always sure that I am not fabricating stuff up but at the same time when something is verifiable like visual acuity then it can be verified.
Color perception is harder. Much harder... there are however signs like I said I am perceiving things other people also perceive rather than fabricating them entirely.
I don't however dismiss possibility it is my tired brain which blows out nuances out of proportions. Especially if I can in few moments reduce visibility of these nuances to almost zero.

Should you or anyone care?
I would say that it is not for me to decide if what I am seeing should or should not be described and just say how I see things. If I did not because other people presumably don't then I am deciding for you if you should care or not.
In this case imho people should be more open about what they see and not try to appeal to some imaginary societal norms or try to make themselves sound like professional reviewers and say how they see. Seeing differences only when you have color theory and numbers to back what you see is what reviewers always do. And if that is what they are doing they might totally not see anything (read: be pretty much blind) and in effect sell you on things with flaws they did not see and did not see in their numbers because they did not run the appropriate test.
Also.. as is the case imho in this review industry: conveniently not run tests showing flaws. There is always "might not be perfect in this near-black area but for most people it will look TOTALLY AMAZING". You get the display and it looks totally broken and you wonder how the flock was this not mentioned in review. That is what reviewers do - they are there to sell you stuff and not give their honest opinions. Worse of all they copy paste sentences from templates and apply everywhere so even something that does sound like yellow or even red flag is not really meanigful. This is exactly why they do it like that. Advertise everything as it but do so in such a way no one can go back to review and be too mad about reviewer because it was mentioned it might not be totally perfect and only people with keen professional eye will see difference. BS level in display reviews is through the roof is what I am saying. My 2 cents.

 

[MistaSparkul]

So in other words, if you're just a regular person who didn't spend decades doing special eye training, which is 99.99% of the population, then you won't notice a huge difference between WOLED and QD OLED. Good to know

 

[XoR_]

So in other words, if you're just a regular person who didn't spend decades doing special eye training, which is 99.99% of the population, then you won't notice a huge difference between WOLED and QD OLED. Good to know

Just imagine that these new RGB Tandem LG panels will have 45% less "blue light" and will somehow still have the same 6500K white

The way I understand LG claims about "blue" light reduction:

BTW. I am not the only person here who received decades or specialized eye training. If not for limitations of our color theory and displays most humans would have much better idea what colors we can see in both theory and practice because we could just check how it looks when there is more or less of said "blue light" by moving slider in paint. Not to mention having on one image this change pop in and out would make it much more obvious along how to see it more clearly. Compare this to how it is today: most displays cause unpleasant experiences if you even for a moment attempt to mix-in stimuli from rods in to your visual queue. Isn't it 'training' you? Like animal trainer trains animals to behave or they get hit.

Anyways, this is not the topic of this thread.
The on topic note is: perhaps if you see plasma and are mesmerized by how good colors on it look compared to contemporary displays you have experienced it is because we as a humanity failed to create proper color theory and live in a lie that calibrated displays look the same. The way I see different displays is they have different colors because they do have different amount of "blue light".

But that also means these new RGB Tandem displays should be very interesting!
Chances are these displays will be much closer to plasma than anything we have today. From OLEDs at least.
WOLED has too much of this "blue light" and QD-OLED too little to match plasmas.
From the two the latter is much better - not ideal for all use cases but much better.

I am in the market for about 65 inch TV this very year. I was certain it will be QD-OLED but since LG G5 at 65 inches is supposed to have this new fancy panel I might get it instead if I like its colors
I will be sure to give feedback if I do and directly compare it to Pioneer Kuro.
Maybe LG will aim at colors they are known from their own plasmas. If anything colors on these were pretty amazing.
I would not complain if these new OLEDs had colors like my nano-IPS LG 27GP950. In some sense I do like colors on this monitor more than QD-OLED next to it.

 

[PimpUigi]

Bought the Panasonic Z95B for now...
Never thought I'd upgrade from my Kuro Elite PRO-111FD Plasma TV but here we are.

XoR, did you buy a TV yet?? I'd be super curious to hear the thoughts of an eye trained HardOCP enthusiast who also had a Kuro!

I went from an 34XBR960 to the PRO-111FD, to I suppose next week, the Z95B.
I may lack the appropriate vocabulary to communicate my insights. I had tried my best to calibrate my Kuro to make it look as close to my friends QD-OLED monitor at HDR400 with one of those HDR Calibrator YouTube videos since at the very least, these 36-bit Kuro panels supported Deep Color. I got decently close enough! MadVR's Tonemapping has never left me wanting.

Always possible I'll get buyers remorse testing these out next to each other and return the Z95B.

 

[Wade88]

We have 2 panasonic vt65 and the samsung competitor 2 as well of the 8500 I think they called it but it's been so long that I don't really remember. We bought them in 2013. The Samsungs are better in bright rooms but in dark rooms the VT65 is an ideal 1080p bluray display.

 

[XoR_]

XoR, did you buy a TV yet?? I'd be super curious to hear the thoughts of an eye trained HardOCP enthusiast who also had a Kuro!

Unfortunately I have not seen these Primary RGB Tandem panels in person yet so I cannot assess how their colors compare to QD-OLED or Kuro plasmas.

Myself I planned and still plan on getting QD-OLED. Have 3rd gen QD-OLED monitor and to me its image quality is near perfect.
Color fringing is somewhat visible in some cases so I'd prefer if Samsung fixed subpixel structure and of course there should be rolling scan option for lagless strobing at not only 60Hz but more. If that was what this year models offered I would have one already. Otherwise I don't feel too compelled to make any changes.

Panasonic Z95B is total mystery to me. Cannot buy one where I live or check one in shops.