Ahead of the official start of CES this week, Samsung unveiled its new QLED 4K product line, which is being touted as having a “remarkable picture, the deepest black levels, and most of all, pure and rich colors, thanks to our new Quantum Dot technology,” according to Samsung’s President of the Visual Display Business, Hyun Suk Kim. The Q9-, Q8-, and Q7-series seem poised to challenge the OLED offerings of the competition directly, with higher brightness and full-color volume at any brightness level; until now, color accuracy would decline as the brightness level would increase.
The QLED TVs pack a peak brightness ranging between 1500 and 2000 nits (compared to 2016’s SUHD 1000-nit models), helping to provide the luminance for which HDR content is so hungry. The purported wider range of color is credited to the new metal-alloy Quantum Dot material. Samsung is claiming that its QLED displays can reproduce 99% of the DCI-P3 color space, further enhancing HDR video.
Samsung is also offering a couple of design changes in an effort to make its TVs look less like the technological marvels that they are and more like artwork. The new “Studio Stand” is designed to elevate the TV off the floor to viewing height and makes the TV look like a painting on an easel. The “Gravity Stand” is meant to hold the TV on an A/V stand and has the look of a modern sculpture.
Another design change is meant to attack the dreaded cable clutter, which nobody wants in their living room. All of the QLED models attach to a breakout box via an “Invisible Connection” fiber optic cable; this breakout box will connect to all of your source devices, simplifying connectivity and device swapping.
The final design change is to the wall-mount design. Samsung has created a “no-gap wall mount” for the QLEDs. It is purported to have the hardware embedded into the rear of the TV and offer tilting and automatic leveling. While this still must be mounted to wall studs, it will likely silence the critics claiming that flat wall mounts aren’t “flat enough.”
7 Comments
++ Beware ++ This is not an OLED TV. Very good - but not the color & B/W briallance of OLED.
This or LG's OLED TV? Im sticking with LG.
I agree. Looks like a cheap gimick to me since they can't compete with LG's amazing OLED technology.
Funny how Samsung uses all these 'buzz' words to make it sound like these 'new' QLED' TVs are all that and more but don't fall for the hype. These are still LCD TVs that are now backlit by a sheet of Quantum Dots instead of backlit by LEDs or as they were originally by CCFL. The Quantum Dots are simply tuned to white and that's not high tech at all. Quantum dots have been around for awhile but nobody bothered because there's no gain over LEDs and it just costs more. Curved screens are just another gimmick and oddly LG is the only other company even bothering to do it. The Japanese so far have not even bothered so ask yourself why? The Japanese (Sharp) did actually make a true LED TV (not OLED) but a true LED TV where each pixel was an LED but the cost was out of this world and so they abandoned it. Right around that time the Koreans started selling LCD TVs calling them LED TVs to try and compete with the Japanese. Buzz words used in this way to fool and confuse customers is quite sad and it speaks volumes for Samsung and LG.
I will look forward to further imput from you in the future as these new models/gimmicks are produced.
Good stuff!
Thank you, Sean for you revelations, as the buzz words sure had me fooled for one. So may I ask you, today which is considered the Lexus of the viewing experience that is commercially available, ? the OLED'S from ? Samsung.
Would be really nice to see Samsung bring some of these higher spec attributes to the less than 55" category. I would love something better than I currently have, a UN40JU7100, but adding 15 inches to the set would be unworkable for it's location and content curently available.
Paul
This looks like a positive move from Samsung to elevate the entire experience of the TV. When will we be able to buy these new sets?