Cutting-edge Samsung Neo QLED televisions display that wow factor on steroids
Samsung has announced its Australian TV range for 2021 and it includes technology designed to drive down prices.
Samsung has announced its Australian TV range for 2021 and it includes backlighting technology designed to drive down the prices of high quality vision.
Consumers generally have paid high prices for premium OLED or organic LED TV that delivers the deepest blacks and purest whites on screen.
OLED screens contain an organic substance that glows when exposed to an electric current and have been regarded as the best quality screens. Yet while OLED is breathtaking, OLED TV screens have been difficult to manufacture and more expensive.
LG, Sony, Hisense and German brand Loewe are among those offering OLED TVs in the Australian market.
Samsung is taking a different approach to offering this wow factor with its new “Neo QLED” TVs. Instead of using LED lights about the size of a button across the display panel, as LED screens generally do, Samsung is using big arrays of tiny “quantum mini LEDs” about 1/40th the thickness.
At its Australian TV launch this week, Samsung displayed a small wafer a few centimetres across containing about 10,000 of these mini LEDs. You needed a microscope to see the LEDs individually.
The company said the result was more precise light control over smaller areas of the screen. The results at the launch were impressive with well defined, purer black and white colour regions.
Other manufacturers are pursuing this style of backlighting with microscopic LEDs using their own approach. LG has foreshadowed NanoCell technology in new sets to come to market.
Premium OLED TVs were more than $10,000 when they came to market but nowadays 4K OLED sets are more moderately priced. Samsung is seeking to take the price further south.
Samsung’s premium “Neo QLED” 85-inch 8K smart TV sets you back $13,999, but if you don’t need 8K, you can pick-up top-of-range 75-inch, 65-inch, 55-inch and 50-inch Neo QLED 4K sets for a recommended $6399, $4899, $3849 and $2849 respectively. A second category of Samsung 65-inch and 55-inch Neo QLED sets are $4439 and $3379 respectively.
“We know Australians are buying bigger TVs and that picture quality is the No 1 consideration for many customers when upgrading,” said Samsung Australia head of audio visual, Hass Mahdi.
“Neo QLED will offer incredible contrast, colour and brightness to deliver an unparalleled viewing experience.”
Samsung’s Neo QLED models have an almost bezel free (borderless) screen and the company has redesigned its One Connect Box to be slimmer. There are only two cables to connect on wall-mounted TVs – a power cord, and a connector cable from the TV to the box.
You plug in your games consoles and media players into that box.
The TV supports widescreen games and you can move the gaming image vertically up and down the display to optimise your comfort.
Samsung also released 2021 pricing of its more boutique ranges. The Frame – a wall mounted TV that looks like a painting and displays artworks when not operating, costs from $919 for a 32-inch set to $4079 for a 75-inch version. There is a wide choice of artworks to display and they automatically rotate over time.
There’s also The Terrace, a water resistant TV for outdoor use on your deck, The Premier, a TV that throws the action to a wall-mounted screen from an ultra short throw projector, The Serif, an arty style TV that site on an easel, and the Sero, which can rotate from landscape to portrait to display contents on your smartphone.
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