Once you go OLED, you never go back

Quick story.

I've owned OLED displays (TV/monitor) since 2020. However, I'm also a display nerd and have been curious about the new advancements in mini-LED technology. Especially in terms of brightness and HDR, which is something that OLED traditionally hasn't been great at.

I decided to try out a 55" TCL QM6K (mini-LED/HVA panel) as a gaming (PC) display. Colors/contrast were actually quite decent - not quite the perfect blacks you get with OLED but tolerable. Halos weren't too bad, especially compared to what I've seen in other displays. 144Hz worked OK but I was getting occasional black frames, like the signal was being dropped, probably a firmware bug.

However, the ultimate dealbreaker was pixel response times and ghosting. These overdriven VA displays still have a fair amount of ghosting, and it's quite obvious in certain scenes. After being used to the instant pixel response times of OLED, it looks like garbage. I quickly repackaged everything and returned it, luckily I kept all of the packaging.

In the end, I bought a Samsung S90D and couldn't be happier. 144 Hz works flawlessly, the brightness is amazing, and the color volume of QD-OLED is hard to beat. Viva OLED!