Plasma vs LCD
Comparing Plasma vs LCD
The #1 question that comes up for people looking to buy a new television is this: Plasma vs LCD – which is better?
Simple question, and it deserves a simple answer. We feel that LCD TVs are a better choice now as there is a whole variety of full 1080p resolution sets that are very reasonably priced in the market today. For those who do not know, 1080p is the highest resolution in a HDTV today. Therefore if you’re looking for a new TV for your home, you can be assured that the latest models pack a punch for your viewing pleasure, at affordable rates that have been falling over time.
In order to compare Plasma vs LCD TVs, the key areas that we would be focusing on are picture quality, power consumption and price, in that order of importance.
It is not exactly a piece of cake to understand picture quality of televisions, yet it is undeniably one of the most important considerations governing your decision to purchase one, so let’s take a little more time explaining it.
Picture Quality:
When talking about picture quality, it is not easy to simply pick one winner between Plasma vs LCD TVs. This is because there are a whole lot of in-depth features and specifications involved in this comparison, including but not limited to the contrast ratio, resolution, panel response time, refresh rate, and the image processing of the different types of high definition televisions.
=> Contrast Ratio: Simply put, contrast ratio is a measure of the blackest black to the whitest white of a television. Good contrast ratios allow you to watch content from DVDs and video games with exceptional clarity, and Plasma TVs consistently outperform LCD TVs in this department. However, LCD TV manufacturers (especially the top brands) have been making drastic improvements to their contrast ratios and have kind of caught up with that of Plasma TVs.
=> Resolution: The whole objective of purchasing a HDTV is to get a higher resolution as compared to the standard TVs. As for now, the flat-panel HDTVs are available in 720p, 1080i or 1080p. As mentioned above, 1080p is the highest resolution in a HDTV today. Both types of displays, Plasma vs LCD, are capable of producing true 1080p resolution, and therefore resolution is not much of a deciding factor when we compare between those two displays.
=> Response Time & Refresh Rate: This two features actually work hand in hand to allow a panel to reproduce a fast moving picture without blurring the image, resulting in a clear display. As of now, Plasma has a slight edge over most LCD TVs in this aspect.
=> Image Processing: This is an attribute that is designed by flat panel HDTVs to improve on some of the other attributes above for high clarity and high definition displays. Neither Plasma nor LCD has any advantage in this aspect, but if you’re looking for good image processing for your TV, it is highly recommended that you stick to the list of top brands we recommend as they have impressive softwares that can ace the job.
As of now, Plasma TVs do have an edge over LCD TVs in terms of picture quality under normal to low room lighting conditions, although the margin between the two is really closely measuring up. However, if you’re more of a night-time viewer of televisions, do take note that Plasma TVs would triumph over LCD displays.
Now that we’re done with the discussion on picture quality, let’s move on to the other two areas of consideration before making your purchase.
Power Consumption:
This is one area worth taking note of because power consumption of your television adds up to your energy bills every month. For Plasma vs LCD TVs, LCD TVs require substantially less power to operate. This is because the backlight system used by LCD TVs make the power consumption constant. Plasma panels on the other hand produce brightness by pumping more energy into each pixel or cell that requires brightening. For most content that people watch on their HDTVs, Plasma TVs do consume more power, and thus resulting in higher energy costs.
Price:
Indeed, nothing changes faster in HDTV than the price. LCD is fast becoming the display of choice for screen sizes of 52 inches and below. Since that was actually Plasma’s territory, Plasma prices came plunging down, and we do not expect them to go back up. Plasma companies are doing their best to give LCD extremely stiff competition on price, given that Plasma TVs are more competitive in terms of lower prices. Yet, LCDs are becoming more and more popular amongst television buyers as they provide the best balance between features and price.
Conclusion:
On a last note, while Plasma does provide a great picture with fantastic color and contrast, we feel that its higher power consumption and lower resolution makes plasma HDTVs less desirable than the latest generation of LCDs.
Also, below is a list of brands recommended for each type of display you have decided to get.
For LCD TVs, we recommend Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Toshiba, Hitachi, Philips, and JVC. For Plasma TVs, we recommend Hitachi, Panasonic, Pioneer, and Samsung. Some LED TV brands that may be considered are LG, Panasonic, Sony and Samsung.
If you’re still unsure of which display or brand to purchase, you may see the list of bestsellers and actual user reviews here.
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