OLED, QLED, Mini LED or LED: what’s the difference?

The difference is in how the screen produces light.

• OLED (and QD-OLED): each dot on the screen lights up on its own. When a dot is off, the black is complete. That is why the contrast is high, and the TV usually costs more.
• Mini LED: it’s an LCD screen with a backlight made of thousands of tiny LEDs, split into zones that turn on and off separately. The more zones, the closer to true black, and brightness can be high.
• QLED, QNED and NanoCell: these are manufacturer names for LCD screens with a layer that improves color. The backlight lights the whole screen or just a few zones. In the Radar, they’re in the same group.
• Standard LED: LCD with a simple backlight. It is the panel in entry-level TVs, and it handles broadcast TV and streaming well.

Saying "which one is better" without looking at the room is misleading: the same TV performs one way in a dark room and another in a bright room.

The Radar’s picture score combines panel type, resolution, HDR and, when the spec sheet lists it, brightness. It scores OLED and Mini LED higher than regular LED because the spec sheet for those technologies promises more contrast. But the score doesn’t measure real contrast, peak brightness, glare or viewing angle: those numbers depend on bench testing, and the store’s spec sheet almost never lists them.

39 of the 315 TVs in the catalog don’t list it the panel technology and ficam left out of the numbers below. The technology confirmed on the spec sheet is the floor of the comparison, not the final word.

Medians from the 05/11/2026 catalog, for TVs of all sizes. Since price goes up with the inches, compare within the same size on the chart.

OLED tends to please people who watch movies in a dark room, for the black. Mini LED tends to please people who watch TV in the daytime, in a bright room, for the brightness. This is a buyer’s rule of thumb, not a measurement: the Radar does not have the contrast or peak brightness numbers to decide for you. If your room gets sun, check the brightness in a store before buying. With OLED, the thing to watch is a still image for many hours, like a channel’s fixed logo, which can leave a mark on the screen.

Someone who mostly watches the news, TV shows and streaming at the end of the day gets little out of a top-tier panel. The difference shows in movies with dark scenes, in games and in sports with fast-moving images. At the catalog median, a TV with a regular LED panel costs $329.00 and an OLED TV, $1,639.00. See what each score point costs in the panorama and compare two TVs in the comparison tool.