Go and search for any old TV, preferably older than 15 years, in your house or your neighbour’s house. Watch any content on it and compare it with any new flagship TV available in your neighbourhood.
You may notice that the blacks in the dark scenes in the new TV appear much better than in the older one, in which they appear slightly greyish.
Now, you will think, what to do with the blacks?
The deeper the blacks, the better the contrast ratio, you may say. The difference between the deepest black and the brightest white lays the foundation of the panel quality.
What is contrast ratio?
Contrast ratio is the ratio of the whitest white to the darkest black which can be displayed on a TV screen.
For example, if a TV has a contrast ratio of 1000:1, it means that the brightest image on the TV can be 1000 times brighter than the darkest image on it.
The larger this difference is, the clearer distinction between the brightness of different areas in an image is observed.
Let us take a look at a night scene from two TVs, one having a low contrast and another having a high contrast.
In the image with low contrast, the blacks in the sky appear slightly greyish and washed out. The highlights, such as the light of the firecracker, don’t appear as bright as they should be. There is a little difference between the brightness of the bright and dark areas of the screen.
In the image with high contrast, there is a clear distinction between the bright and dark areas of the image. The street lights and the light of the firecracker are as bright as they should be. They are distinctly highlighted in the dark black sky.
By comparing the above two pictures, we can see how a better contrast increases the life of an image and makes it more realistic.
Which TVs have the best contrast ratio?
The OLED TVs rule in this regard as their contrast ratio is infinite.
They produce the best blacks, thanks to their self-emissive pixels. These pixels turn themselves completely off during a night scene or a dark scene, producing pure blacks on the screen.
The best LCD TVs also produce comparable blacks, thanks to local dimming. Although those blacks are not matchable to what you get on OLEDs, they still come very close.
Their brightness is greatly enhanced as we see in the premium QLED TVs. Most of them can hit upto 2000 nits of brightness.
The more the peak brightness, the better the contrast ratio.
Moreover, the purer the blacks, the better the contrast ratio.
Note: Most of the hype is created around the resolution of the TV. But believe me, if you put even an HD OLED TV side by side with a 4K LED TV with not-so-good local dimming, most people will prefer to buy the OLED TV due to its more realistic picture quality.
This is the power of contrast ratio. Due to this, some of the best 4K OLED TVs are able to beat many 8K TVs in HDR performance, despite having lower resolution.
