Samsung’s new 2020 TV lineup is coming to Australia and the local is led by their flagship 8K QLED, the monster 85″ Q950TS.
Samsung says they’re continuing to see strong sales growth in larger displays and expects that to continue during 2020. While 2019 65″ displays reached a fairly affordable price point, we’re some customers are eyeing off 75″ or even larger displays.
Of course, we can’t talk about 8K displays without talking content. This year was supposed to be the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Games, which was going to be filmed in 8K and was in many ways going to be the coming out party for 8K.
With the Olympics postponed for a year, the other 8K content challenge is the dramatic increase in bandwidth being consumed by more of us working from home, holding Teams and Zoom meetings, or just watching Netflix, or playing Xbox. We’ve already seen video providers respond to Government requests around the world to tone down the bitrate or default resolutions to help.
In many ways, what was supposed to be the best year for 8K is stacking up to be the most challenging. Thankfully Samsung have invested in their 8K AI Upscaling technology. After seeing the first generation of this last year, it really does make 4K content look amazing with a clear, visible difference.
Samsung continues to invest in deep learning and Neural Networks and are now able to leverage image optimisation not just at the frame-by-frame level, by pixel by pixel. This means understanding and optimising a staggering 33million pixels. This requires some serious horsepower, which is why the brains of these TVs feature a new Quantum 8K Processor.
In terms of picture quality, the TV’s can now dynamically switch between optimisation algorithms on the fly, encompassing fine-detail, noise reduction, texture creation and edge restoration.
Samsung’s 8K TV’s flagship has a friend this year, with the company adding a second 8K display, the Q800T.
Both of these displays are ridiculously thin, no thicker than a 5cm piece (not that we use coins anymore). The slim profile is now complete, the entire length of the display, so gone is the bulge at the base of the display. This means hanging it on the wall is an absolute dream.
The displays now connect using the single all-in-one clear cable down to the One Connect Box that houses all your HDMI inputs.
The design of these premium displays gets a serious boost with an incredible 99% screen to body ratio, representing a big leap forward over the incremental improvements in the past.
After taking feedback from customers, Samsung are getting more serious about sound this year. A new technology called Object Tracking Sound (OTS) actually understands the content and enhances it, and can present it in a virtual surround sound.
One of the biggest advancements is Samgsung’s admission that Bixby isn’t everything to everyone. This admission comes in the form of support for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant (as well as Bixby) and during setup, the owner will be asked which they want to use.
This means the voice assistant in your TV, can match what you already have in your house, allowing you to use familiar commands.
One of the big new ideas is Mobile View. This feature allows you to easily share content from your mobile to your TV and get a side-by-side view of content from your TV and from your phone. One neat trick is the ability to send the audio coming from your mobile out to one audio device (say Bluetooth soundbar, while the TV content can be outputted through another audio output (say optical out).
If you’re a gamer, then you’ll probably be familiar with Samsung’s Game Enhancer+ which is back again in 2020, as is the support for AMD’s FreeSync technology. Input lag is well under 7ms an improvement of 35% over last year’s model and the TV can even detect content.
What this means is that Samsung don’t just detect a HDMI input from a games console and assume you’re playing games. They understand game consoles could be used for watching streaming video like Netflix. When you do fire up the gaming experience, the TV understands that, and gives you the fastest, best possible experience.
Price and Availability
Samsung’s new range will be available through various retail outlets nationally with the following recommended retail prices.
QLED 8K
Q950T
- 85-inch $TBC
- 75-inch $TBC
- 65-inch $TBC
Q800T
- 82-inch $TBC
- 75-inch $TBC
- 65-inch $TBC
- 55-inch $TBC
QLED 4K
Q95T
- 75-inch $6,999
- 65-inch $4,649
- 55-inch $3,499
Q80T
- 85-inch $7,549
- 75-inch $5,249
- 65-inch $3,499
- 55-inch $2,549
Q70T
- 85-inch $6,399
- 75-inch $4,049
- 65-inch $2,699
- 55-inch $2,099
Q60T
- 75-inch $3,349
- 65-inch $2,199
- 55-inch $1,729
Lifestyle
The Frame
- 75-inch $4,649
- 65-inch $3,149
- 55-inch $2,299
- 50-inch $1,949
- 43-inch $1,599
- 32-inch $919
The Serif
- 55-inch $2,099
- 43-inch $1,499
Crystal UHD
TU800
- 82-inch $3,939
- 75-inch $2,589
- 65-inch $1,699
- 55-inch $1,369
- 50-inch $1,129
- 43-inch $1,019
