What They Say
After weeks of ‘will they/won’t they’, the news broke at the end of last week that Samsung Electronics in the US had finally released details of its first QD-OLED TVs, the S95B series. The 55″ and 65″ UltraHD sets will be listed at $2200 and $3,000 respectively and are described as having ‘Quantum HDR OLEDs’. That’s a lower price than the equivalent Sony models are expected to be launched at. There has been some speculation that Sony will list the two sizes at $3,000 and $4,000 (based on the number of loyalty points suggested on a web posting).
The specification includes support for 120Hz operation and four HDMI 2.1 ports. There is support for HDR10+ Adaptive and HDR10+ Gaming. There is a 60W 2.2.2 sound system with Dolby Atmos support, an Auto Low Latency Mode and FreeSync Premium.
The sets are expected to be available in April or May, depending on geography.
What We Think
Hmmm – I looked away for a minute and missed this at the end of last week – I’m not sure how! Anyway, the sets are finally announced, at least in the US. The Samsung global website has not covered the launch and even Samsung US put it as the third item in its announcement, after new Frame sets and Neo QLED TVs (miniLED). It also doesn’t particularly hype up the QD-OLED technology, labelling the sets just as ‘OLED’.
I mentioned that I was sceptical that disputes were still enough to stop Samsung Electronics introducing sets a couple of weeks ago. The seasonality of the TV market and retailers meant that the firm risked missing out on a lot of opportunities if it didn’t get sets out. Sony would have been happy about that.
The pricing is very interesting. It’s hard to know exactly what Samsung’s thinking is, but perhaps the TV division is determined to continue to position its miniLED and 8K sets as the top of the range. On the other hand, image quality enthusiasts are inevitably going to want QD-OLED – it should be visibly better than WOLED for TV and see that technology as the top of the range. After years of talking OLED down, it must be hard to switch course for the brand.
There is also the factor that the TV division is likely to be adding significantly more value to the base panel in the case of miniLED sets. Whereas there is likely to be relatively little difference between different brands of QD-OLED, there can be bigger differences in the case of miniLED.
We have a separate article reporting on some issues with performance on the Dell/Alienware monitors because of the pixel structure, but I would not expect this to be an issue for TV viewing. (Triangle Sub-Pixels Causing Concern on Dell QD-OLED Monitors) (BR)
