WLED vs LED - What Is The Difference? [Simple Guide]

What's the difference between WLED and LED? The short answer is that there is no difference. Let's find out why.

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Answer:

There’s no real difference between LED and WLED displays; in other words, it’s just marketing. LED stands for Light Emitting Diode, whereas WLED means White Light Emitting Diode.

LCDs (Liquid Crystal Displays) have two polarized glass layers. These liquid crystals block or pass the light to the display based on the image.

The crystals do not produce any light whatsoever. The light comes from a series of lamps at the display’s backside — the backlight.

LCDs have either an LED or a CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps) backlight.

LED TVs and monitors use less power, can be lighter and thinner, and have better image quality than CCFL LCDs.

However, while LED or WLED backlights covering the standard 100% sRGB color space are most common, there are a few different LED backlights available targeting wider color gamut coverage, such as:

Nowadays, almost all modern LCDs utilize LED backlighting. Some new LED displays use mini LED backlights, which offer even better image quality.

There are also OLED displays that don’t have a backlight but produce their own light, which allows them to create superior image quality with an infinite contrast ratio, though their brightness levels are lower.

LCDs also have different panels, including IPS, TN and VA, which you can learn more about here.

Rob is a software engineer with a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Denver. He now works full-time managing DisplayNinja while coding his own projects on the side.