After having made appearances in several expos, the first OLED TV finally makes it into our lab.  It’s the Sony XEL-1!

But this good new should be taken with a grain of salt.  The XEL-1 isn’t a TV as we know it but rather a pocket model measuring only 11 inches or 28 cm.  In addition, it’s only sold in Japan for an exorbitant price of roughly 1500 Euros.  However, it does allow us the opportunity to measure the characteristics of this promising technology for the first time, which we will go ahead and tell you is very impressive.

Characteristics

The definition of ‘’only’’ 960x540 shows that we can easily attain High Definition on diagonal sizes inferior to 26 inches.  This is also something Samsung demonstrated with several prototypes in various expos.  The XEL 1 is equipped with a digital tuner and therefore internal decoder which enables it to read files from a mass storage USB peripheral (key, hard drive, etc.).  We cannot give you all the details on the formats supported because the TV we were loaned was Japanese model (notices and OSD menus not in other languages).  There were also several incompatibility issues with some of our sources and we suspected a frequency problem with HD 50 Hz signals, but this isn’t certain.  The XEL 1 was only in our offices for less than a day which meant we couldn’t do any in-depth investigation.

First and foremost a screen test

The above small hitch wasn’t too dramatic.  The interest of our test was mainly to obtain the first measurements on an OLED type screen and to draw some initial conclusions.  Note that the final grade in this case only takes into account OLED technology and not the product itself.

Equipped with our sensor, we then dived into tests.  First of all, we started with a study of 11 shades of gray, from black to white, in order to evaluate black levels, brightness of white, contrast and color temperature.  Next, an analysis of red, green, blue, cyan, magenta and yellow enabled us to have a closer look at the color spectrum displayed as well as their accuracy.

Brightness, contrast, black and white

We start with, and this is the surprise of the test, black measured at… 0 cd/m²!  This is an absolute black and we have never had such a result.  The most impressive is that the gray at 10% attains a brightness equivalent to the black (0.27 cd/m²) of a majority of LCD screens.  As for white, it’s impressive at 359 cd/m².  Of course, this is too high a value for viewing in a room with controlled lighting and it will therefore appear less bright.  It does however especially enable us to see the capabilities of this technology; an OLED can easily display an image with good visibility in a well lit room.  We can even imagine laptops equipped with OLED screens which we can finally use outdoors even in summer without having to look for a shady spot.

As you probably know, contrast is calculated using the ratio of brightness in white and the level of black.  If the latter is at zero, it’s impossible to precisely determine the contrast ratio; however, we can look to the figure announced by Sony (1,000,000:1) without frowning – contrary to many announced LCD characteristics.


To be a little more precise, our sensor displays a reading of 0 cd/m² from the moment when the black level is inferior to 0.0049 cd/m².  Even if we took this maximum value, we would still get a contrast of 73,000: 1, or a figure that is quite simply exceptional when compared to what is currently found in on products in stores.

Colors

As for colors, the result is a little more lukewarm.  As you can see on the below image, we obtained a very large CIE triangle:


In practice, this means that colors are « mapped » (extended) to others to use all the colors which are displayable.  This is a good thing to show a screen’s capacity but bad for accuracy.

We can’t really criticize OLED technology for this because it’s simply an adjustment in the control program (firmware) for display.  Moreover, you can sometimes deactivate this ''mapping'' in a television’s options menu.

Color temperature doesn’t attain the ideal 6500K of movies in the theater but this is once again just a question of settings; our deficiency in Japanese didn’t enable us to change the TV into a warmer mode.  However, one thing did catch our attention:  usually, temperature is too hot or too cold but in a linear fashion and for example, an LCD TV, is often set by default to 8000 or 9000K (colder tones) by the manufacturer.


Here, hues are cold but not linear.  The more we go towards white, the more the temperature of grays increases to reach 8178K on gray at 10% and 9814K on gray at 90 %.

Response time

Afterglow is absent from the panel and various photos taken of object in rapid movement do not show any perceptible ghosting.  This is a big improvement over LCDs which also is accompanied by an equally big gain in contrast.  Gamers will be thrilled! To get an idea of its reactivity, consult our Product Face-offs (monitors) where you will see that this OLED has even higher performances than a CRT display (the good ole’ cathode tube monitor).

On the other hand, power consumption is rather high.  We had readings of 25 to 30 W on this 11 inch or a value equivalent to a 17 or
19 inch LCD.

Besides this small detail, we have to admit that OLED technology left us mighty impressed.  Its small width (3 mm for the XEL-1), exceptional contrast, gamut and extreme response time make it the best in current display capabilities.

Our only concern is future availability in larger diagonal sizes at decent prices and in reasonable time frames.  It’s obvious that at 1500 Euros for an 11 inch, it will be some time before we will see an affordable 40 inch in stores.