WOLED vs QD-OLED  

How The Panel Impacts Your Monitor

Which Is Better, QD-OLED or WOLED?

With so many marketing terms thrown out there, it can be confusing about the different types of OLEDs available. You're probably wondering whether QD-OLED is better than WOLED, and vice versa. For the most part, QD-OLEDs do have the advantage because of their more vivid colors. However, they only have this advantage in dark rooms because of the black level raise in bright rooms. So, if you want a monitor for bright rooms, WOLEDs have the advantage because they retain their black levels better in bright rooms. Other factors, like text clarity and uniformity, are minor compared to these main differences and can even come down to personal preference.

Essentially, go for a QD-OLED for gaming in a dark room, but get a WOLED if you have a bright room and you can't control the lighting.

However, before buying a new OLED monitor and deciding which panel type you want, it's also important to understand the technical differences between the two.

What Is OLED?

OLED, which is an acronym for organic light-emitting diode, is a type of display that doesn't require an LED backlight. Instead, it consists of an organic light-emitting layer beneath filters that let light pass through. Each pixel in an OLED display is self-emitting, so it produces its own light and can turn on and off. This means that in a 1440p OLED monitor, there are 3,686,400 pixels that work independently of each other, and can turn on and off as needed. The main advantage of this is that OLEDs have a near-infinite contrast ratio for perfect blacks in dark rooms, and there isn't any haloing around bright objects or backlight bleed in dark scenes.

Problems With OLEDs

Burn-In

There are drawbacks to OLEDs, though. The biggest concern with them is the risk of burn-in with constant exposure to the same static elements over time. This can happen if you use an OLED only for work and leave taskbars or windows open on it all day, every day. However, changing what you have on the OLED monitor, like if you game on it after browsing the web, already reduces the risk of burn-in by a lot—the real danger is if the same elements are always on the screen without any change.

We've been running an accelerated longevity burn-in test on 100 TVs since November 2022. There are no significant differences between QD-OLEDs and WOLEDs when it comes to burn-in, though, so if this concerns you, neither panel type offers a clear advantage. You can also keep up with all the results from the TVs on this test.

Brightness

Another downside of OLEDs has to do with brightness. They don't get nearly as bright as many LED monitors, even if OLEDs have gotten brighter over the past few years. They're particularly dimmer with full-screen windows, like if you have a web browser open. You can also learn more about OLEDs vs Mini LED monitors.

Types Of Panels: WOLED vs QD-OLED

OLED is an blanket term that consists of two panel types made by different manufacturers: Samsung Display's QD-OLED and LG Display's WOLED. Although all OLEDs have an organic light-emitting layer beneath the pixels, the exact structure and subpixel layout differs between them.

What Is WOLED?

Starting with LG Display's WOLED panel, they feature a white OLED layer beneath four subpixels: red, green, blue, and white. All four subpixels are never all on at the same time, and the display only uses the white subpixel to produce the color white, while the other pixels help produce other colors.

The exact order of the subpixels has changed, too. Originally, WOLED monitors were made with an RWBG subpixel layout, meaning the pixels started with red, then had white, blue, and green. However, more recent-generation WOLEDs have RGWB subpixel layouts, so the green pixel is next to the red. You can see examples of these below.

RWBG	RGWB

Another thing to note is that, unlike TVs, all WOLED monitors manufactured today use Multi-Lens Array (MLA) technology to boost brightness.

What Is QD-OLED?

The biggest drawback with WOLEDs is their color purity, and this is where QD-OLEDs come in. Samsung Display created this panel without a white OLED layer underneath the pixels; rather, it has a blue layer. And instead of having four subpixels, it has three subpixels with a quantum dot layer that displays a wider range of colors compared to WOLEDs.

Another difference with WOLED is that the subpixels are arranged in a triangular subpixel layout. The green pixels are on top, with the red and blue pixels below them. Unlike WOLEDs, the order of these subpixels doesn't change between panels, but the shape of the subpixels changes between the generations of each QD-OLED panel:

1st & 2nd Gen	3rd Gen	4th Gen

While QD-OLEDs improve on a few aspects of WOLEDs, they still have drawbacks. One of the more well-known drawbacks is the fact that black levels rise in bright rooms due to a lack of a polarizer. This makes blacks look purple, so you need to use them in a dark room to get the perfect black levels that OLEDs are known for. Another downside of QD-OLEDs is that there's fringing around text or at the edges of windows because of the triangular subpixel layout. For example, you'll see a thin green line at the top edge and a thin purple line at the bottom edge of a window that's open on your monitor.

Differences Between WOLED vs QD-OLED

While WOLEDs and QD-OLEDs are made very differently, they still share many of the same characteristics that any OLED is known for, like the near-infinite contrast ratio, perfect black uniformity, and incredible motion handling. Other issues that are known with OLEDs, like VRR flicker and burn-in, happen on both panel types equally. However, below are some of the main differences between the two panel types, and how they impact the picture quality and performance with your monitor.

Text Clarity

One of the bigger differences when it comes to monitor usages is the fact that text looks different on WOLEDs than QD-OLEDs. This is because Windows ClearType doesn't properly render text with either of their subpixel layouts.

Below you can see examples from three monitors that all have a 27-inch screen size, 1440p resolution, and matte screen coating, so the only variable with text clarity is their subpixel layouts. You can see that the QD-OLED has the sharpest text clarity out of the three with ClearType on, while the WOLEDs have some fringing around letters. In fact, the RGWB subpixel layout is a bit better at rendering text than the RWBG layout, but they still have the same issues. You may prefer not using ClearType with a WOLED monitor if this bothers you.

QD-OLEDs have different types of fringing around letters than WOLEDs. You may notice this at the top and bottom edges of straight letters, like with the T and I in the photos. This is something that happens regardless of ClearType. However, it's harder to notice this fringing on QD-OLEDs with higher pixel density, like those with a 4k resolution and 27-inch screen. And whether or not this bothers you at all changes from person to person.

Type	WOLED	WOLED	QD-OLED
Subpixel Layout	RWBG	RGWB	Triangular RGB
Monitor	Corsair XENEON 27QHD240	Sony INZONE M10S	Samsung Odyssey OLED G60SD S27DG602S
ClearType On Windows 11
ClearType Off Windows 11

Ambient Black Level Raise

Another of the biggest differences between the two panel types is the fact that the black levels rise a lot quicker in bright rooms on QD-OLEDs than WOLEDs. This is mainly because QD-OLEDs lack a polarizer, so blacks look purple in bright rooms. Although the black levels don't remain perfect in bright rooms on WOLEDs either, they do a much better job at maintaining their low black levels.

Other factors may impact the ambient black level raise, like the type of screen coating, but generally speaking, there's a clear difference between any QD-OLED and any WOLED. Another drawback is that dark colors desaturate more quickly in bright rooms on QD-OLEDs than WOLEDs, so they look washed out.

You can also learn more about matte vs glossy coatings and how they impact the black level raise.

WOLED	QD-OLED

Colors

While the biggest drawback with QD-OLEDs is their black level raise, the biggest advantage has to do with colors, and in particular their color volume. They do a much better job at displaying a wide range of vivid colors, making your favorite content look punchy and life-like. At the time of writing this article, out of the 36 OLED monitors we've tested on Test Benches 2.1 and 2.0.1, all QD-OLEDs have a better HDR color gamut and volume than all tested WOLEDs, with the exception of a QD-OLED that has some desaturation issues in HDR. 

Below you can see the color gamut and volume graphs from two 4k, 32-inch monitors: the QD-OLED MSI MPG 322URX QD-OLED and the WOLED ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDP. While the WOLED is close to the QD-OLED in terms of the DCI-P3 color gamut, there's a clear difference in their color volumes, especially in the wider Rec. 2020 color space. You can also see each of their Spectral Power Distribution (SPD) graphs, which show the intensity of light at different wavelengths. With this alone, you can see that the QD-OLED is much better at displaying certain colors like green and red.

Type	HDR Color Gamut		HDR Color Volume		SPD
QD-OLED
WOLED

Brightness

Although QD-OLEDs have a clear advantage when it comes to bright colors, the difference in luminosity isn't so clear. Below you can see the mean and average deviation of various brightness tests from the last 21 QD-OLEDs and 15 WOLEDs that we've independently bought and tested at the time of writing this article. Each panel type has its own strengths and weaknesses, but generally speaking, QD-OLEDs are better at displaying small highlights in HDR, WOLEDs are better with medium-sized highlights, and the two are more even with full-sized highlights. You can also see how much dimmer they each get with full-sized windows, particularly in HDR.

You can see the full list of results in this table.

Uniformity

Another factor that can vary a bit between WOLEDs and QD-OLEDs is gray uniformity. As you can see in the table below, using data from 36 OLEDs that we bought and tested at the time of writing this article, QD-OLEDs do have an advantage, but it isn't significant, and uniformity can also vary between units. 

There are some issues that our testing doesn't cover. For example, there are reports of WOLED displays having a pink tint, but this isn't something that our tests capture. Another issue with OLEDs in general is that some have a grid-like pattern in near-dark scenes, but this is hard to see with regular content. Unlike TVs, WOLED monitors don't have the same green tint issue when viewed off-angle, though.

OLED Monitor Market

Of course, you also need to consider the monitor market for each type of panel before looking for a new monitor. The sizes, resolutions, and refresh rates vary between the two panel types, and below are lists of each of the common panels available on the consumer market at the time of writing this article.

Future Of OLED Panels

The biggest technological advancement of OLED panels is the new fourth-generation WOLED panel, which is also known as RGB Tandem. It's meant to boost the brightness and color purity of WOLED panels to challenge QD-OLEDs in terms of picture quality, without the downside of blacks looking purple in bright rooms. This panel is already available on TVs, like the LG G5 OLED, but the first monitors coming out with it, like the Gigabyte MO27Q28G and the LG 27GX700A, are only available later in 2025. This new panel may entirely change the monitor market, and we will update this article once we test a monitor, or monitors, with this RGB Tandem panel.

Conclusion

WOLED and QD-OLED monitors are some of the best on the monitor market, offering better picture quality and superior motion handling compared to LED-backlit displays. The market for them has grown in the past few years, too, with a wide range of options for each panel type. Despite their similarities, there's still a difference between WOLED and QD-OLED displays, though. Generally speaking, QD-OLEDs are better at displaying bright colors, while WOLEDs have the advantage when it comes to gaming in bright rooms because they do a better job at retaining low black levels in a bright environment. Because of this, QD-OLEDs are the better choice if you're going to use it in a dark room, while WOLEDs are better in bright rooms. That said, there are other factors to think about, like the size, resolution, and refresh rate that you want in a gaming monitor.