QD-OLED STILL TO COME?
The big Australian launch of Samsung TVs for 2022 had no news of the new-technology OLED models we had been expecting. All the models announced continue to use LCD-backlit technology.
OLED screen technology introduced the clear advantages of a front-emissive technology nearly a full decade ago. Samsung Display (Samsung Electronics’ related but separate display development and production company) dropped out of OLED after a few generations, leaving LG.Display to monopolise OLED TV panel production ever since. But Samsung Display has (for so many years now that we’ve lost count) been working on its own front-emissive technology including OLED and Quantum Dots. And it is ready.
It’s potentially a game-changing screen technology, so there was great excitement when just prior to CES 2022 in January, a webpage (above) appeared among CES Innovations award winners, showing a Samsung 65-inch QD-Display TV — ‘QDDisplay’ being the name Samsung was indicating it would use for the new technology, avoiding ‘OLED’ given it’s been campaigning against OLED for so long. Sony and Dell have also managed to license the tech from Samsung Display, and Dell looks to be first out, with its Alienware 34-inch curved QD-OLED gaming monitor already available to order at $2299 (the LED-LCD equivalent is $999). Sony’s QD-OLED TV has been announced, the new Master Series A95K in 65-inch and 55-inch models, with some reviewers able to get hands-on, but as we write, not yet on sale.
Samsung Electronics’ own QD-Display TV, however, wasn’t shown at CES in Vegas where it won the award. The rules for CES Innovations Awards state that products entered must be in the market by April 1st 2022 — which might be why, towards the end of March, the Samsung S95B OLED TV appeared on Samsung’s US website as being available from April, priced at a remarkably reasonable US$2200 for the 55-inch model and US$3000 for the 65-incher. But the S95B is yet to appear on the UK or Australian Samsung sites, though our sister team at What Hi-Fi? UK has been told that pre-orders in the UK will be opening ‘soon’. When we asked Samsung Electronics Australia about the model that won the CES Award, it replied that: “Samsung Display won this award for new technology” [though on the CES Innovations webpage the award is clearly for a TV, not for technology, and is awarded to Samsung Electronics America], and that “Samsung Electronics Australia has no comment on the commercial future for this display in our market.” Also strange, the US website calls the TV simply ‘OLED’, not QD-OLED or QD-Display, hugely underplaying the new technology, lending credence to reports of strong discussions between Samsung Display and Samsung Electronics over the new tech, so that the new-tech TVs may be stuck in commercial limbo.