Samsung's new QLED TVs offer top-notch display quality and outstanding user experience
Samsung's new QLED TVs offer top-notch display quality and outstanding user experience
Recently, several HardwareZone.com readers attended the Samsung Fiesta to get a first-hand experience of the company’s latest innovations in the smart home and IoT space. Highlight products include the Family Hub 2.0 refrigerator that accepts voice commands, the very agile POWERbot VR7000 robot vacuum cleaner, the FlexWash 3-in-1 washer-dryer combo, the energy-saving AR9500M Wind-Free wall-mounted air conditioner, and the CH711 curved gaming monitor with quantum dot display.
Then there’s the real star of the show: Samsung’s 2017 QLED TV range. Set to arrive in stores in Q2 2017, Samsung’s latest flagship 4K UHD TVs come in three series - the flat screen Q7 and Q9, and the curved Q8.
QLED quality - Samsung’s best picture quality to date
The use of a metal alloy quantum dot material is what enables Samsung’s newest QLED TVs to achieve vastly improved picture quality compared to other conventional TVs. These QLED TVs are not only capable of displaying the DCI-P3 colour space accurately, but also capable of reproducing 100% colour volume regardless of brightness level.
With a peak luminance between 1,500 and 2,000 nits, the QLED TVs will make HDR (High Dynamic Range) content come to life as well. With more HDR content - be it streaming titles or UHD Blu-ray titles - coming this year, these HDR10-capable QLED TVs will be able to express all the subtleties the directors and colourists intended.
The high brightness also has a practical benefit: to allow you to enjoy the deep blacks and rich details whether you’re watching the content in a well-lit or dark room. Along with the TVs’ wide viewing angles, every seat is the best seat in the house.
One of the attendees, Ho Tian Shun, is impressed with how the QLED TVs are able to deliver “almost identical colours that match what you see in real life.” Another attendee, Christopher, who is currently shopping for a TV for his new place, finds the Q9 offers “superior brightness” compared to other TVs out there.
No more cable clutter and thick wall mounts
Cable clutter or TV console clutter is a problem that many of us faced. No matter how nice the TV looks, it’s still an eyesore if there are tangled cords and wires going into other equipment around it. The same applies to wall mounts that stick off the wall. Not only are they difficult to fix, the unnecessarily thick gap between the wall and TV often poses as a visual distraction.
To address cable clutter, the QLED TVs come with a single, transparent “Invisible Connection” cable that carries all the content signals from your peripheral devices to the TV. Because it’s so thin and transparent, you will hardly notice it.
If you like to wall-mount your TVs, the QLED TVs also support a “No Gap Wall-Mount”. This wall mount is easy to fix and the end result is a TV that sits flush against the wall. You can also choose to display the QLED TVs on two new and stylish stands; the “Samsung Studio Stand” resembles an easel with a painting, or the sleek “Samsung Gravity Stand”, when attached to the TV, resembles a contemporary sculpture.
Samsung’s attention to details and design didn’t go unnoticed. Galvin, another Samsung Fiesta attendee, is happy to see the Invisible Connection solution. “Cable clutter will now be a thing of the past,” he notes. He is also impressed by the thoughtfulness that went into the design of the stands. “The Gravity Stand is very innovative: it allows you to swivel the TV, which is something many other TV stands cannot do,” he says. To quote another attendee, Pang Yee, the premium design makes each of the QLED TVs “looks like an art piece”.
Still the best smart TV experience
The 2017 QLED TVs continue to improve upon Samsung’s much-lauded smart TV capabilities. The Smart Hub user interface provides a simple, unified user experience for you to quickly access your favourite content and info all in one place with the enhanced Samsung One Remote. As attendee Ho Tian Shun succinctly puts it, “Gone were the days you need multiple remote controls on your couch.”
The Smart Hub interface has also been extended to smartphones through an improved Smart View app. In the Smart View mobile app, you can now see content that’s available for the TV, complete with a row of icons on top of the app that mimics the TV’s launcher bar for added familiarity during navigation. And with one click, you can select and start your favourite live TV programs and video-on-demand services on the TV through the Smart View mobile app.
The new Samsung Q9, Q8, and Q7 QLED TVs will be available in Q2 2017 and we've got the pricing and launch promotions.