The year’s biggest electronics expo, CES 2022, is underway this week and for the first time in years there is some serious competition in the arena of home televisions.
The TV tech landscape has been pretty stable in recent years with the battle being between two technologies – OLED and QLED – and their respective major backers LG and Samsung.
LG is the biggest manufacturer of TV-sized OLED panels which they use not only in their own TVs but also sell them on to Sony, Panasonic and others who use them in their OLED TVs.
Samsung on the other hand has been promoting QLED, which is essentially a custom branding for regular LCD/LED TVs that use a ‘quantum dot’ (QD) filter over backlighting.
Samsung is now shaking things up with the announcement of the first consumer QD-OLED panels which they are manufacturing. QD-OLEDs combine the quantum dot filter, with an all-blue OLED display.
From the sales pitch, what it does is deliver OLED TVs that can get considerably brighter using slightly less energy. It also offers slightly improved viewing angles, and a wider representation of about 10% more of the color spectrum – resulting in richer and more vivid colors – especially in terms of reds, greens and golds.
Oddly while Samsung didn’t use CES to announce any models in its own range that are using the tech. Instead, Sony was the first to announce a high-end set (the Sony A95K) to be made with the new panels which will reach a maximum of 65 inches in this first generation. Potential larger sets from any manufacturer aren’t expected to arrive until 2023.
The news comes as LG is moving forward with their own OLEDs with the brighter EVO panel now standard across their range and displays that use a heatsink and new processing algorithms which results in a further increase in brightness. In addition, they’re expanding their popular C2 range to go as low as 42 inches through to as big as a massive 97-inch display.
The heating up of competition suggests OLED prices, which have generally been at a premium, may fall in coming months though a lot will depend on the cost of the QD-OLED displays which are expected to be very expensive – at least at first.
