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A Samsung Micro LED TV in suitably ostentatious environments.
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Here is a rendered product of the aforementioned Micro LED TV.
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Here is a product rendering of the flagship 8K.
It is that time of year when many TV manufacturers start announcing prices and sending out annual product updates. We took a look at Sony’s OLED line yesterday, and today we are turning our attention to Samsung, which has just announced imminent availability (most models will start shipping this month) for its Micro LED and Mini LED line. high tech.
We will be arriving at Micro LED in a minute, but we will start with the high-end mainstream, which comprises Mini LED TVs. Samsung is giving them a proprietary “Neo QLED” label.
The high-end QN900A is the most complicated 8K option, with options of 65 inches ($ 5,000), 75 inches ($ 7,000) and 85 inches ($ 9,000). One step down while keeping the 8K banner flying is the QN800A, offered in the same sizes, but for $ 3,500, $ 4,700 and $ 6,500, respectively.
Since there is almost no 8K content to enjoy, most people who don’t just look for bragging rights will want to opt for 4K models. The flagship is the 55-inch ($ 1,800), 65-inch ($ 2,600), 75-inch ($ 3,500) and 85-inch ($ 5,000) QN90A.
One step down takes you to the QN85A, which comes in the same sizes as the QN90A for $ 1,600, $ 2,200, $ 3,000 and $ 4,500.
In all the new TVs offered, we are looking at the usual specifications for high-end TVs in 2021, regardless of the manufacturer, including HDMI 2.1 with all the features you expect to come with, such as VRR, 4K120, ALLM and eARC. There is also Filmmaker Mode and a full pop-up menu to access HDMI 2.1 and game-related features like VRR. (LG introduced something similar on its 2,021 TVs.)
And as usual, Samsung is not playing with Dolby, so there is no support for Dolby Vision HDR (or Atmos in that case). Instead, you will have to rely on the HDR-10 standard as good in most cases, but inferior in some situations, as on the HDR-10 +, which remains a little light on the content.
And, of course, like any other large 2021 TV, the new Mini LED sets will feature an enhanced AI processor that does video and audio processing to maximize the impact factor.
The other great news with the 2021 TVs is that Samsung is (sort of) backing off on a widely criticized change it made to its programming in 2020. That’s when the company really reduced the number of dimming zones and some other features on its TVs. 4K compared to its 2019 predecessors, in favor of going further in its 8K portfolio.
8K TVs still have more darkening zones, but we are not predicting a big drop year on year like the last time. That’s because Samsung’s new 4K models will also feature Mini LED technology, as well as 8K TVs – which was not a foregone conclusion, given what happened last year.
Explaining Micro LED and Samsung’s OLED Elimination Strategy
Samsung says its cheapest TVs will be launched later this year and has not provided any information that we did not already see at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
While much of the hype in the TV world is currently focused on OLED, Samsung LCD TVs remain the best-selling TVs in many regions, and in-depth technical analysts like Rtings consistently point to Samsung devices as the best non-OLED TVs in terms of image quality, although not always cost-effective. Samsung does not even manufacture OLED TVs, although it does produce OLED panels for other products.
And to fight OLED in the long term, Samsung is relying on Micro LED technology, which has individually emitted pixels, just like OLED. This means that Micro LED corresponds to the main advantage of OLED, which is that the maximum brightness pixels appear next to the completely black pixels. But Samsung says that the burning risk associated with OLED is not a factor in the same way with Micro LED.
In addition, OLED TVs have been criticized for failing to match the peak HDR brightness of the best traditional LED TVs. It is said that the micro LED combines the best of both worlds: perfect blacks with very high peak brightness and all the granularity you would expect between them.
Micro will be huge
Micro LED TVs have been touted as the TV technology of the future for years, and have been commercially available in very limited contexts before, but this year marks Samsung’s almost conventional attempt to sell a lot of them.
They still won’t be for everyone, however. They are sure to be colossally expensive to start, but they will also come in 110 and 99 inch sizes to start with. Later, we will have sizes of 88 and 76 inches, but even those are larger than most living rooms can accommodate.
Therefore, for its more conventional flagship TVs, Samsung is relying on the Mini LED, which is not the same one that has the same name as Micro LED. Mini LED TVs are still fundamentally the same technology as any other LCD TV the company has sold for years, but with a new approach that allows for much more granular backlighting to reduce flowering around shiny objects and other problems associated with TVs LCD, while offering a strong peak brightness.
Expect to see the term Mini LED coming up a lot in the very near future, while the Micro LED is likely to be out of the market for a while yet. Other companies, like Apple, are optimistic about the Mini LED and are about to launch it in all types of products, such as laptops and tablets, in the coming months.
As if the mix of terms like “OLED”, “LED”, “LCD”, “Mini LED” and “Micro LED” were not confusing enough, Samsung chose to mark its sets of Mini LED TVs “Neo QLED”, which essentially means nothing, except that Samsung wants to claim that it is the only company that makes “Neo QLED” TVs.
The company called its previous high-tech LED TVs “QLED” because of an optimization called quantum dot technology, which was the big previous push to make LCD TVs more competitive with OLED before Mini LED came along. “QLED” will remain the label for the company’s medium-sized LCD devices.
Samsung list image