(bright music)
- We've talked a lot about Samsung phones lately,
but it's April, which means we're in new TV season.
So today I wanna cover two
of Samsung's most exciting TVs for 2022.
Samsung is the number one TV maker
in the world by market share.
And the reason for that success
is that Samsung sticks closely to its smartphone strategy.
There are TVs at every price point,
whether you want a giant 8K TV,
there's still no reason to buy one of those,
or a budget 4K set that's far more sensible in price.
Last year Samsung hopped on the big trend of many LED TVs
which offer better brightness and contrast than past models
by shrinking down the local dimming zone LEDs
and cramming way more of them inside.
There are new versions
of those TVs coming out this year, too,
but I'm way more excited about two firsts.
The one we've gotta talk about right off the bat
is the new Samsung OLED.
Yes, joining the rest of Samsung's 2022 TV lineup
is a new OLED TV that comes in 65 and 55 in sizes.
Now, Samsung dabbled in OLED TVs like a decade ago,
but ever since then, the dominant player has been LG.
And in particular, LG Display.
That's the company that produces the OLED panels
for LG Electronics, Sony, Visio,
and many other brands.
You might be thinking, "But wait,
Samsung is a major supplier of OLED screens
for phones and tablets and laptops.
So why would it seed the OLED market to LG?"
Well, there are a couple reasons and one I'll cover later.
The main issue is that these two companies
are fierce competitors,
and Samsung wasn't about to stick
an LG OLED inside one of its own TVs.
It's also trying to look beyond OLED
with futuristic concepts like The Wall and the microLED.
Okay. So what's changed now?
Well, Samsung Display,
the sister company of Samsung Electronics,
has come up with its own TV-sized OLED panel,
and it's more advanced than the LG panels
that already offer phenomenal picture quality
and get such rave reviews year after year.
(light music)
Samsung is using what's called QD-OLED,
and that QD stands for quantum dot.
And that gives away how this tech is different
from LG's WOLED, also known as WRGB OLED.
The differences here can get pretty technical,
but as a short overview,
all OLED screens are self-emissive,
meaning each pixel can make its own light
without the back light systems that LCD TVs need.
They can also shut off individually,
which is how you get those perfect blacks
that OLED is known for.
At the base level, LG Display's OLED panels
mixed blue and yellow to make white subpixels
that then go through a color filter
to create red, green and blue.
But that color filter absorbs some of the brightness.
So LG adds a white subpixel to help make up for that.
Even so, one weakness of OLED
has always been that it can't reach the same peak brightness
or HDR highlights as the very best LCD TVs.
A lot of people don't care,
but if your TV is going in a very sunny room, you might.
QD-OLED doesn't really offer any brightness breakthroughs.
So how is it different?
Well, Samsung Display starts with blue pixels
and runs those through a printed sheet of quantum dots
to create red and green, with those original
pure blue subpixels also passing through.
It's way more efficient than the color filter method,
and so there's no need for a white subpixel
to help bring brightness back up.
That might sound like a subtle change in approach,
but it makes all the difference.
That's because one of the big advantages of QD-OLED
is improved color brightness and saturation.
So colors still look vivid even during very bright scenes,
and reds, greens and blues come off the screen
as deeper and just more pure.
But I'm not talking about some massive difference here.
This is the kind of thing that's really only noticeable
in side-by-side comparisons,
and Sony, which is also using these new QD-OLED panels
in one of its high end 2022 TVs,
let me do just that.
Granted, this was a very controlled demo,
but the QD-OLED TV did hit saturation levels
of red and green that Sony's older TV,
with an LG Display OLED, couldn't quite match.
Sony tells me that while it's not seeing
substantial brightness upgrades in terms of nits,
our eyes perceive the QD-OLED screen as brighter
because of the superior color brightness.
Off-angle viewing, which is already fantastic on OLED TVs,
is another thing that's ever so slightly better on QD-OLED.
So by all these early accounts,
QD-OLED could further refine
what are already the best TVs you can get.
But the strange part about all of this
is that Samsung Electronics
isn't really hyping the OLED much.
It's not putting any special attention
on the QD-OLED panel in its marketing.
It's just calling this the Samsung OLED TV.
Technically, it's not even the flagship TV for 2022.
Now I think this low-key introduction
is partly because Samsung spent years ragging on OLED
as not the right fit for TVs.
It made a whole website about the risks of burn-in,
and probably said that its TVs were unaffected by it.
So it's a little awkward for Samsung
to now do an about face and bring an OLED TV to market.
Samsung Display claims that QD-OLED screens
should have even better resistance
to burn-in than other panels.
It's technically still possible,
but unlikely on most OLED TVs nowadays.
As for the price, I'm actually surprised.
The 65-inch model costs $3,000,
while the 55-inch size runs $2,200.
That's expense, yes, but comparable to what LG charges
for its own flagship G2 OLED this year.
So despite having a first generation panel inside,
Samsung isn't demanding some huge premium.
Sony's TV with the QD-OLED screen
is definitely gonna cost more,
but I expect that TV to have better image processing
and it supports Dolby Vision,
which Samsung continues to ignore
because it's hellbent on making HDR10+ happen.
(light music)
Long story short, if your goal is to find a TV
that has the best possible picture quality,
OLED is still the answer.
And I don't just mean this year's stuff.
There's nothing wrong with older models
if you can find a good deal on them.
But not everybody cares about having
the best tech specs or the fanciest TV.
Turns out there are a lot of people
who hate having a traditional TV,
this ugly, black rectangle
messing with the vibe and decor of their living room.
And that brings us to the second part of this video,
because those are the people
who've turned Samsung's The Frame TV into such a big hit.
I've got family members and coworkers
who have all bought The Frame in the last year
because of how well it disguises itself
as a piece of art when it's not being used.
But some of those folks might soon wish
they'd waited a bit longer to buy one.
See, because for 2022, Samsung's switching
to a matte display that cuts way back on glare
and makes the artwork shown on the frame
almost look like canvas.
I recently got a chance to check out the matte frame
and compare it directly head to head
against last year's model.
Frankly, the difference is amazing.
It's to the point where I questioned
whether I was looking at an actual TV,
and had to go up close to hunt for pixels.
This new frame still has the same customizable bezels
and now comes in more sizes,
but that matte screen is the star of the show.
Samsung's Art Store has thousands
of pieces to pick between,
and that artwork now looks more real
and convincing than ever before.
They're gonna sell a ton of these things.
That said, I am curious about
whether a more matte finish
will affect the TV's clarity and sharpness.
But maybe the target market
for The Frame just doesn't mind much.
This is not the most impressive TV on paper.
There's no local dimming, which is a bummer,
but it does support 4K gaming at 120 hertz.
So, could be worse.
The Frame is fundamentally a good enough TV
that looks way classier than its competition.
My LG OLED has an art mode on it,
but no one's mistaking it for a framed print.
Samsung's 2022 version of The Frame runs
between $1,000 for a 43-inch model
and $3,000 for a giant 75-inch display.
But I don't know who wants an art frame that big.
The sizes in between seem like the sweet spot to me,
and those costs under $2,000.
Both the OLED and new matte frame
are up for pre-order now and start shipping soon.
I can't wait to review both of them,
but for very different reasons.
One's a showcase of the latest TV tech,
the other of style and trying to shake up
the very concept of what a TV can be.
Hey everybody, thanks so much for watching.
I recently reviewed Samsung's
new $900 portable projector, The Freestyle.
You can read all about the good and the bad on theverge.com.