Sony XEL-1 OLED TV
OLED TVs are plentiful and relatively affordable today, but back in 2008, when Sony released the first OLED TV to consumers, that wasn’t the case. The XEL-1 scored Sony lots of publicity for ushering in the era of OLED TVs, but at $2,500 it was incredibly expensive for a TV with an 11-inch screen, and one that wasn’t especially great.
The 3mm thick screen showed off the incredible potential of OLED display technology, but it left no room for electronics and ports, requiring the XEL-1 to be permanently tethered by an offset arm to a base where you’d find HDMI ports and other TV necessities like speakers and buttons. And while the screen featured an excellent contrast ratio with deep blacks, its color reproduction wasn’t as stellar, and it was limited to a resolution of just 960 x 540 pixels, a quarter of the resolution of 1080p.
