LED. OLED. They sound so much alike—just one letter divides them!—but where large-screen, big-ticket TVs are concerned, they’re very, very different. A new report from the display gurus at DisplayMate breaks down just how large the gap has gotten.

Before we dive in, a quick word on what’s technically different about OLED (organic light-emitting diode) and LED (light-emitting diode) TV displays. The most important thing to note? Despite what countless Best Buy circulars have shouted at you, there’s actually no such thing as an LED TV. At least, not in the way they would have you believe.

“So-called LED TVs are just LCD TVs that have a backlight that is made of white LED lights,” explains DisplayMate president Dr. Raymond Soneira. “The LEDs are not the display, just the backlight, nothing more.” No matter how fancy the backlight source, it still needs to be blocked to produce the inky blacks that are one hallmark of a quality viewing experience. That’s impossible to perfect, even for fancy local-dimming systems, and thus all LEDs suffer some degree of greying. Maybe not enough to bother you, or even to be particularly noticeable, but it’s there.

With only one company producing OLED televisions, it's fair to question whether the tech has a future at all, or if it'll go the way of plasma.

OLEDs, by contrast, don’t rely on backlight at all. The display comprises individual pixels that are little self-contained units of colored light. Black really is total black. The absence of backlight also equals the absence of weight; OLEDs are significantly thinner and lighter than their LCD contemporaries.

The main drawback of OLED, in fact, has little do with the technology behind it. Instead, it’s constrained by price and variety. Currently, LG is the only manufacturer who produces OLED televisions, and the flagship model used in DisplayMate’s tests has an MSRP of $7,000 for a 65-inch model. And with only one company producing OLED televisions, it’s fair to question whether the tech has a future at all, or if it’ll go the way of plasma.

Still, while $7,000 sounds like a lot of money, it’s not a different stratosphere from the Samsung flagship LED model, which comes in at a thousand dollars less. Both sets are slightly curved, both offer 4K and 3D functionality. They’d be easy enough to confuse in a storefront. If you want the very best, though, there’s only one option.

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It’s not that the top-end LCD isn’t great. It’s just not as great as the LG OLED. Then again, it’s hard to imagine a set that ever could be. “In terms of picture quality the LG OLED TV is visually indistinguishable from perfect,” explains Soneira. “Even in terms of the exacting and precise lab measurements, it is close to ideal.”

OLED is so good, in fact, says Soneira, that it compares favorably even to a $50,000 Sony professional-grade studio monitor. In that light, $7,000 doesn’t seem quite so crazy after all. And assuming LG continues to stand behind the technology, it’s possible that number won’t be so astronomical for long. “Putting this into perspective, early high-end plasma TVs cost considerably more than $10,000 (and that’s not counting inflation), so OLED prices will undoubtedly come down soon,” says Soneira. “In fact, earlier generation 55-inch LG OLED Full HD TVs are now available for $2,000. Finally, because OLEDs are solid state devices, it is quite possible that their production cost will some day be lower than LCDs.”

There’s one category in which the Samsung LCD TV actually did best the OLED, albeit a very narrow one: Brightness when displaying “smart TV” and other content that occasionally shows text on white screen backgrounds. Otherwise, the OLED won every single face-off.

Again, that doesn’t mean you should dismiss Samsung’s flagship LCD—at least as long as you’re facing it straight-on. “The Samsung LCD TV performed exceptionally well for an LCD display,” says Soneira, “but that applies only when it is being viewed straight ahead from directly in front of the center of the screen, which is called the sweet spot. From other viewing positions and viewing angles the display performance and picture quality decrease noticeably.”

Those issues, according to DisplayMate, stem from Samsung’s decision to use a patterned vertical alignment (PVA) LCD panel, which accommodated wide viewing angles less well than the IPS, FFS, or PLS displays that you’ve likely encountered in a smartphone or desktop computer monitor.

And even generally speaking, LCD TVs have certain advantages, even over OLED. “LCD’s strengths include being able to produce very high image brightness by using powerful backlights, very wide color gamuts, very large size screens,” explains Soneira, “and at much lower cost compared to other competing technologies.”

That last part remains the kicker. OLED’s a better viewing experience in nearly every possibly way. But until you can get a very good OLED set for a thousand bucks or less, LCD’s going to look mighty attractive, even if a little grey.