LCD vs LED: What's the Difference?
By Xianheng
June 21st, 2017
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LED stands for light emitting diode. Although it has a different name than liquid crystal display, it's not something entirely different, but really just a different type of LCD screen.
The major difference between LCD and LED screens is how they provide backlighting.
Backlighting refers to how the screen turns light on or off, something that's crucial for providing a great picture, especially between black and colored portions of the screen.
A regular LCD screen uses a cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) for backlighting purposes, while LED screens use more efficient and smaller light emitting diodes (LED's). The difference in the two is that CCFL-backlit LCD's can't always block out all the black colors, in which case something like a black on white scene in a movie may not appear so black after all, while LED-backlit LCD's can localize the blackness for a much deeper contrast.
If you're having a hard time understanding this, just consider a dark movie scene as an example. In the scene is a really dark, black room with a closed door that's allowing some light through the bottom crack. An LCD screen with LED backlighting can pull it off better than CCFL backlighting screens because the former can turn on color for just the portion around the door, allowing all the rest of the screen to remain truly black.
Note: Not each and every LED display is capable of dimming the screen locally like I just described. It's usually full-array TV's (versus edge-lit ones) that support local dimming.
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