Edge-Lit TVs, a type of LED television that places light-emitting diodes around the perimeter of the screen in order to illuminate the display, may suffer from signs of deterioration, including visible uniformity issues, as early as 2,200 hours of use, according to new tests that have been published online. This is around one year of use for a typical U.S. household, per a report that explains how thin LCD TVs break faster under prolonged use, derived from data that was gathered after running 100 TVs for over 10,000 hours.
Some of the TVs where uniformity issues appeared relatively quickly:
- Samsung AU8000 2021 (2,200 hours)
- Samsung Q70A QLED 2021 (2,200 hours)
- Samsung Q60A QLED 2021 (2,200 hours)
- Samsung The Frame 2022 (3,300 hours)
- LG NANO85 2021 (3,300 hours)
From a report:
- “Not considering major electronic or electrical failures (e.g., power supply failures, motherboard failures, burnt connectors, etc.), many uniformity issues have popped up on TVs in our test.”
- “Excluding the 18 OLEDs, which have burn-in from constantly streaming CNN, over 25% of the 82 LCD TVs in our test suffer from visible uniformity issues.”
- “Seven out of the eleven (64%) edge-lit models in our test suffer from uniformity issues, one has outright failed, and others are in the process of doing so. In contrast, only 14 out of the 71 (20%) full-array local dimming (FALD) and direct-lit TVs have uniformity issues.”
- “It didn’t take 10,000 hours for issues to appear on our tested edge-lit TVs. Of the seven with visible uniformity issues, three started showing signs of deterioration at 2,200 hours of testing or sooner…”
A video that reveals many of the problems, including warped reflector sheets, cracked light guide plates, and burnt-out LEDs:
RTINGS added:
Our sample size is modest in absolute numbers, but it offers good insights into the long-term durability of edge-lit TVs from both Samsung and LG when subjected to our test conditions. So many LG and Samsung edge-lit TVs are in our test because they’re the market leaders for these products, with Samsung being the most represented manufacturer with eight edge-lit TVs in our test. For reference, they’re run at their maximum brightness setting and subjected to thermal cycling through on/off cycles every day.