Quantum dot TVs outperform RGB LED TVs, says the company that makes QDs for TVs

At the Los Angeles Convention Center, two 85-inch TVs sit side by side inside a Nanosys conference room at Display Week — an annual conference between companies focused on the technology that goes into displays of all kinds. One TV was a tiny LED panel with super quantum dots, and the other was an RGB LED — the hottest TV trend of the year. Both TVs were showing the same content at the same time to highlight the differences between the two technologies — or more specifically, to show the potential failings of RGB LED backlighting when compared to super quantum dot (SQD), which uses blue LEDs for backlighting.

Maybe I should mention that Nanosys is the company that made the quantum dots in the first TV.

The TV on the right, which contains Nanosys super quantum dots, is labeled as TCL X11L – The striped lower grille confirms this – and the other was most likely the TCL RM9L. Nanosys hasn’t confirmed this, but I’ve personally seen RGB LED TVs from Hisense, Samsung, LG, and Sony, and that’s not the case. Jeff Yurek, Nanosys’ vice president of marketing, told me that both TVs were in Filmmaker mode and the colors were set to native mode to allow both to reach the widest possible gamut.

As a quick refresher, RGB LED TVs use red, green, and blue LEDs grouped into zones to create a colored backlight based on the image displayed on the screen. In theory, this gives the TV more vibrant and saturated colors than small LED TVs like the blue-backlit X11L, without having to rely solely on quantum dots. the Basic potential issue It is that the colored light provided by the backlight will leak into neighboring pixels or areas that differ in color, resulting in what is called color crosstalk. In practice, this can cause a bright red shirt or hat to turn the wearer’s skin red. And that’s exactly what this demo showed.

During the entire demo, the same video feed was sent to both TVs. One slide showed three rows: two rows of boxes in primary and secondary colors—blue, green, red, cyan, magenta, and yellow—and a third with a thin white cross on a black background below each color box. The top row of boxes will then switch between a solid box and one with a white cross inside. On an RGB LED TV, when the white cross appeared in the top row, it was easy to see the color of the area around the cross become slightly lighter and less saturated. The color overlap did not just occur within the top row of squares; The box color from the middle row also bleeds clearly into the bottom row of crosses. This is shown on television Color Gradient BT.2020 Measurements too, with the introduction of the white cross, reducing the overall coverage of BT.2020, more dramatically with the blue and green color dots.

But unless you’re a measurement freak like me, you won’t be watching solid blocks of color on your TV for fun. The effect is also present in skin colour, which is easy to notice as humans. Just as the color of the blocks bleeds into the white cross, so the colored background bleeds into the skin tone; Still images of a woman’s face with a colored background caused her skin tone to shift toward the background color. To make sure my eyes weren’t the cause of the color bleeding, unlike the TV, I used binoculars to focus only part of the woman’s face, blocking the rest from my view. I could still tell which background color was displayed by the change in her skin tone.

The SQD TV did not show any color fringing. It also has better contrast, which is due to the number of dimming zones. The X11L is advertised as having up to 20,000 dining areas According to Ratingsthe 85-inch model has 14,400 — a still impressive number. I’m told the RGB LED TV used in this comparison has about 8,000 dimming zones. One reason the number is so low is that each dimming zone on an RGB TV, at a minimum, needs three LEDs – red, green and blue – and these take up space. But when the backlight consists of only blue LEDs, a single LED can be a dimming zone, providing better control.

All of this can be realized in the actual content. During a fast-moving, fast-cutting action scene, I could still tell the differences as the bright colors affected those around them, especially with skin tones. In night scenes, the contrast difference was noticeable. If the RGB LED TV was in the room by itself, without an SQD TV to compare, I don’t think the color interference would look as stark. Our eyes can quickly adapt to visual problems, and we stop noticing them. But eliminating the comparison does not eliminate the problem.

This is not entirely new information. Industry experts have been concerned about the potential for color fringing in RGB LED TVs since the technology debuted at CES 2025. These concerns have increased as more RGB LED TVs hit the market this year. LG Display, particularly an OLED panel maker that competes directly with RGB LED, Produced videos A few weeks before this year’s CES, the problems are highlighted.

Of course, both Nanosys and LG Display have vested interests in downplaying RGB TV technology. And the performance of a single RGB LED TV doesn’t tell the story everyone RGB LED TVs. I didn’t notice any crosstalk issues when I checked Hisense UR9although the more I saw other RGB LED TVs, the more I thought Hisense might bypass the problem and go back to a white backlight, not RGB, the more colors there would be on the screen. And the processing capabilities of Sony’s upcoming RGB LED TVs could make color fringing a non-issue on those sets. And we’re still at the beginning of the RGB LED TV story. As technology continues to evolve and improve, these issues should be mitigated. But for 2026, it looks like SQD at least will have the upper hand.