According to the tests, the OLED display provided better quality

Jun 18, 2014 07:15 GMT  ·  By

The smartwatch ecosystem is growing at an incredibly fast pace, as the smartphone one did before it. And, like in the case of handsets, the most important feature of the smartwatch is its display.

It’s the first thing that draws our attention when we look at such a product, so manufacturers have to be careful to bundle their devices with screens capable of delivering beautiful colors and clarity.

Now, the guys over at DisplayMate have decided to perform a test on the two smartwatch display technologies available on the market, OLED and LCD, in a “Smart Watch Display Technology Shoot-Out.”

Smartwatches typically come with small-ish screens that revolve around the 1.5-inch factor. This means they necessitate a high pixel resolution in order to correctly render images and text.

Furthermore, since we carry the smartwatches everywhere (at least in theory), the colors might look fairly washed out in ambient light, so the displays also need a lot of color saturation.

The two devices put to the test were the Samsung Gear 2 and Sony SmartWatch 2, the former benefiting from a 1.63-inch RGB Strip OLED display with 320 x 320 pixels, while the latter has a 1.60-inch Transflective LCD with a lower resolution of 260 x 176.

Of the two, LCD is the older technology. LCD displays use a backlight and usually absorb more power. Also, they do not offer the same level of contrast as an OLED display.

The Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) take advantage of organic compounds in order to produce their own light. This means OLEDs will be thinner than LCDs, which are a little bit thicker because they have to accommodate the backlight.

DisplayMate started comparing the two displays in terms of sharpness. The SmartWatch 2 has 220 x 176 pixels and is capable of producing 39,000 pixels at 176 pixel-per-inch (ppi). On the other hand, the Gear 2 display has 320 x 320 pixels and delivers 102,000 pixels and 278 ppi.

As it turns out, the SmartWatch 2 proved to be “visibly coarse and heavily pixelated,” while the Gear 2 OLED display “was very sharp, even with fine text and graphics.”

As for brightness, the two displays were almost on par, with the SmartWatch 2 having 495 nits, while the Gear 2 had 415 nits in Outdoor Mode.

Moving on, DisplayMate went to analyze Color Gamut, Saturation, and Depth, where the Gear 2 scored 135%, which is normally a bit too high, but given the fact that this is a pretty small display, it make sense. When the ambient light was added, everything was decreased to 100%.

The SmartWatch 2 has only 91% color gamut to start with and, when ambient light was added, the numbers decreased drastically.

The conclusion of the tests was that the “OLED display on the Samsung Gear 2 performed very well across the board, almost identically to the most recent Galaxy S OLED Smartphones in almost every test measurement and viewing category.”

“On the other hand, the Transflective LCD display on the Sony SmartWatch 2 was quite disappointing across the board, especially for a second generation device.”

Check out the images in the gallery to see for yourself the differences between the two.

Samsung Gear 2 and Sony SmartWatch 2 Display Comparison (2 Images)

Samsung's Gear 2 display gets compared to Sony SmartWatch 2
Comparison images for the two types of display technology
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