Sony’s OLED Lifespan Rated At 17,000 Hours

By Greg Tarr -- TWICE, 5/7/2008 9:16:00 AM

Austin, Texas — Sony’s much publicized XEL-1, which is the first commercially marketed OLED TV, has a calculated panel lifespan of 17,000 hours, less than that estimated by Sony, according to a report from market research firm DisplaySearch, an NPD Group company.

In a new report released Wednesday on the characterization of active matrix organic light emitting diode (AMOLED) display technology, DisplaySearch addressed the Sony XEL-1 TV and the technology’s sub-pixel architecture, micro cavity, and compensation circuits.

The report includes measurements of lifetime by color and image, power consumption differential aging, burn-in, contrast ratio and luminance.

DisplaySearch also addresses the system architecture as well as the organic material, including thicknesses.

“The RGB architecture is very sensitive to the image and has a 5,000 hour lifetime for white and a 17,000 hour lifetime for the typical video image, well below the published specifications of Sony,” the report concludes. “Moreover the panel suffers from differential aging: After 1,000 hours the blue luminance degraded by 12 percent, the red by 7 percent and the green by 8 percent.

The results demonstrate that the Sony display is significantly inferior in many ways to the current AMOLED designs. Consumers who are amazed by their first experience with OLED TVs can only expect significantly improved performance in the future.

A representative for Sony told TWICE the 17,000 hour lifetime claim is "simply untrue-  our quote of 10 years or 30,000 hours to half life is accurate."