WOLED White OLED (WRGB OLED) with color filters

What WOLED is

WOLED stands for white OLED, also written WRGB OLED. TFTCentral explains the structure on LG's panels: LG does not use true red, green and blue emitters. Each subpixel emits white light, usually a blue and yellow combination, through a passive red, green or blue color filter, and because filters block light and reduce brightness, LG adds an extra white subpixel to compensate. PC Monitors says WOLED typically uses four subpixels, three filtered and one unfiltered white, and that the white one provides brightness and is dominant in high-brightness situations. A 4K panel therefore has 8,294,400 pixels and 33,177,600 subpixels. The extra subpixel makes the pixel structure larger, which TFTCentral notes adds to the challenge of raising pixel density. The advantage is manufacturing and wear-leveling at large sizes: TFTCentral says the white approach has many advantages for large panel manufacturing and for overcoming color shift.

Who makes it

OLED-Info says LG Display supplies WOLED TV panels from 42 inches to 97 inches to many companies, including Panasonic, LG Electronics, Sony, Philips, Loewe, JVC, Hisense and Konka, and calls LG Display the world's leading OLED TV and monitor panel producer based on its WOLED architecture. The same page reports LG Display has sold over 50 million large-area OLED panels for TVs and monitors, 13 years after it started selling OLED TV panels. PC Monitors identifies Samsung Display as the maker of the competing QD-OLED. See QD-OLED.

Generations: from three stacks to Primary RGB Tandem

LG Display's January 2025 release explains the jump. Its earlier panel used a three-stack light source, with two layers of blue emitters alongside red, green and yellow emitters in a single layer. The fourth-generation panel uses a Primary RGB Tandem structure with four stacks, adding two blue layers and independent red and green layers. LG Display rates it at up to 4,000 nits maximum brightness, 33% above the previous generation, and 2,100 nits of color brightness, a 40% gain over the previous 1,500 nits, with about 20% better energy efficiency on a 65-inch panel. FlatpanelsHD, which still calls the panel a fourth-generation WOLED, adds that the microlens array (MLA) layer was removed entirely, that the 4,000 nit figure is a 3% flash measurement, and that the panel went into the LG G5 and Panasonic Z95B. LG Display's release describes independent red, green and blue stacks, and the pages I loaded do not say whether color filters and the white subpixel remain in that design.

A panel rating is not a TV measurement. TechRadar measured the LG G5 at 2,268 nits on a 10% HDR window in Filmmaker Mode and the LG G6, which uses a new-generation Primary Tandem RGB OLED 2.0 panel, at 2,471 nits. On a 100% window the G6 reached 455 nits against the G5's 331 nits. Tom's Guide measured the mid-range LG C6 at 1,355 nits on 10% and 236 nits on 100%, with a 99.68% UHDA-P3 and 76.26% Rec. 2020 gamut result. See HDR brightness windows for why those numbers differ.

Two ratios make the spec sheet readable. LG Display's 2,100 nits of color brightness is 52.5% of its 4,000 nits of white (2,100 ÷ 4,000). Backing out the stated 33% gain puts the previous generation's white near 3,000 nits, so its 1,500 nits of color was about 50%, which means the new design raised color output slightly faster than white, though white is still almost twice as bright as any saturated color. And between the TVs, the G6's 2,471 nits is 1.8 times the C6's 1,355 nits on a 10% window, while its 455 nits on a 100% window is a similar 1.9 times the C6's 236 nits, so the generation gap shows up at every window size, with the caveat that TechRadar and Tom's Guide used different labs and modes.

WOLED vs QD-OLED

QD-OLED uses a blue OLED source for each pixel with layered red and green quantum dots, per PC Monitors, instead of filtered white light. The practical difference shows in lit rooms. TFTCentral's monitor tests found that at 0 lux every OLED reaches the same true black, but as room light rises to 500 lux, matte WOLED panels measured about twice as good as second-generation QD-OLED at perceived black depth and about 2.7 times better than first-generation QD-OLED. The entries color filter vs color conversion, WOLED saturated color deficit and WRGB subpixel structure go deeper, and the QD-OLED vs WOLED guide covers the buying decision.

Known trade-offs

The white subpixel and the subpixel layout produce two side effects. First, text fringing: PC Monitors found that both WOLED and QD-OLED have their own subpixel layouts with associated edge-clarity issues, which matter most on monitors with small pixels and less on a TV viewed from across the room. Second, wear: TFTCentral reports RTINGS found brighter screens showed more severe burn-in, and the routines LG, Sony and Samsung run to even out wear are covered in Pixel Refresher and image retention vs burn-in. Per-pixel black is the upside; see subpixel dimming.

Which TVs use it

LG Display's fourth-generation panel went into the LG G5 and Panasonic Z95B per FlatpanelsHD, and TechRadar says the 2026 LG G6 uses a newer Primary Tandem RGB OLED 2.0 panel. I did not find a source stating the panel type of the C6, though LG Display supplies LG Electronics, and I did not confirm which of OLED-Info's other supplier names currently ship WOLED, so check the spec sheet before assuming. The LG G6 vs Samsung S95H vs Sony BRAVIA 9 II comparison and the panel types guide show where WOLED fits next to QD-OLED and mini-LED.