Samsung 2018 Flagship 4K QLED TV First Impressions
flagship Q9F series to selected media - both at its TV unveiling event on Sunday, and in an invitation-only area of its CES show booth. And I’m happy to report that these early viewings suggest that Samsung has taken on board the criticisms its TVs received in 2017. At least for its most high-end 4K QLED set.
Particularly importantly, the new replacement for the Q9Fs goes back to using a direct lighting system, where the lights sit behind the screen rather than around its edges. Plus, as you would expect of a flagship LCD TV these days, that direct lighting array is driven by a local dimming system.
Photo: John ArcherSamsung's new direct-lit QLED on the left, and a 2017 OLED on the right.
Samsung won’t confirm the exact number of dimming zones, making me wonder if a final decision on this key aspect of its potential performance is still pending. My guess, though, would be that there are a good few hundred.
Why do I think this? Because one of the two samples I’ve seen, one, at least, suffered less with backlight clouding, striping and blooming than any other LCD TV I’ve ever seen. Including Sony’s outstanding Z9D.
In fact, Samsung was so confident about the local accuracy of its backlight controls in the new Q9F replacement that it was prepared to use one of the toughest shots currently to be found on 4K Blu-ray to date to show off what it was capable of.
That shot is the one in La La Land where Sebastian plays the piano illuminated against a near black backdrop by a single bright, bluish spotlight. And pretty incredibly, the demo unit of Samsung’s upcoming QLED 4K flagship managed to deliver this shot while exhibiting practically zero backlight clouding or haloing around the spot-lit area. Even though the intensity and brightness of that area looked actually slightly more extreme than it did on even the OLED TV below.
Yep, that’s right: Samsung’s chutzpah even extended to running this early version of its Q9F replacement against a 2017 OLED TV. And a Sony Z9D. And even a 2017 Q9F. And it was clear to all of us watching the demonstration in the ‘secret’ part of Samsung’s stand that the new QLED model was delivering both the best contrast and best light uniformity of all the screens on show. Which is genuinely remarkable.
Photo: John ArcherThe 2018 direct-lit Samsung QLED in action. The clipping in the brightest bits of the lava is down to my camera, not the TV!
The 2017 Q9F looked comfortably the worst with the La La Land scene, with grey bleaching of the black area running right across the screen, and pretty much from top to bottom. The Z9D only came in third in this hugely difficult scene (though it improved massively with most of the other, brighter footage shown during the demo), with the OLED second. Even the OLED, though, sometimes looked slightly greyer in the blackness around the spot-lit area than Samsung’s new QLED.
So exceptionally well controlled was the new QLED TV’s backlighting in this extreme shot - even when Samsung turned the lights in the demo room off - that it seems clear that we’re not looking at just the results of direct lighting with plenty of dimming zones. Samsung’s new panel structure and processing must also surely be at work.
As discussed in my previous article introducing Samsung’s various new TV technologies for 2018, the new panel structure introduces a ‘black layer’ that essentially places tiny barriers between each liquid crystal to ensure the light from each pixel goes directly forward rather than leaking out into the ‘beams’ of neighboring pixels.
Also Samsung’s latest processing engine, with its ability to finely analyze the lighting in the image and gently fade the light of each lighting zone towards its outer edges when required, also seems to be a pretty remarkable evolution in LCD backlighting. Especially as it seems to work while delivering no evidence of the backlight light ‘blockiness’ witnessed with previous LCD backlight innovations such as Sony’s Slim Backlight Drive and Panasonic’s ‘Honeycomb’ panel structure.
I was seriously impressed, too, by how the exceptionally deep and even black levels the Q9F replacement was capable of reproducing still contained plenty of subtle colour and greyscale details. It’s certainly not the case that the screen is just completely shutting off its backlights in the darkest zones to deliver absolute but hollow blackness.
Photo: John ArcherAnother new QLED vs 2017 OLED shot.
Shifting content tack, Samsung also ran part of the 4K HDR red crab sequence in Planet Earth II. This is a far brighter scene than the La La Land one, and more predictably the new Samsung QLED again looked the best of the four screens on show - by some margin. The colors of the crabs looked more dynamic but also more natural. The streams of sunlight through the trees looked punchier but also more full of subtle light and color detail. The balance of light and shade looked more consistently authentic and ‘right’. Peak details such as sunlight reflecting off the crabs’ bodies looked more dynamic. And also, more unexpectedly, the QLED picture looked more detailed and crisp than that of the other screens - especially the OLED - without that sharpness looking forced or processed.
Another section of the demonstration of Samsung’s latest QLED ‘hero’ included a detailed and again convincing demonstration of how its combination of improved Quantum Dots (Samsung has made the red and green QD’s smaller to deliver a purer, wider color range that now covers 100% of the DCI P3 cinematic color space) and high brightness appear to deliver colors with more accurate volumes than one of 2017’s OLED TVs.
To round the picture demonstration off, we were also shown the HDR10+ dynamic metadata system the latest QLED TVs will support. Clips of a variety of bright, detailed HDR shots of mostly nature scenes, full of rocks, trees and clouds, clearly revealed more refinement in the image’s colors; a generally more dynamic, three-dimensional look to the picture; and finally, clearly more detail in the very brightest parts of the image.
We’re not done with the good stuff yet, though. It also became clear during the demonstration of the new QLED 4K flagship’s black level abilities that the latest screen seems to be delivering on a key undelivered promise of 2017’s QLED models by supporting a much wider viewing angle than you usually get with LCD TVs. I’d say I could get to as much as 60 degrees off axis before I started to notice a substantial contrast or color reduction.
Photo: SamsungThe Samsung QE65Q9F from 2017 used edge LED lighting, which didn't do its black level performance any favors.
If this holds true with the finished, launched TVs, it would class as a superb result - presumably delivered by the new near-surface prismatic lens layer the latest QLED screens use to disperse the emerging images over a wider area (to compensate for having previously channeled the light with more focus via the new light-channeling barriers).
Finally on the picture front, it was extremely clear - especially versus the Sony ZD9 and OLED models - that the new improved anti-reflection filter in the upcoming Q9F replacement is doing an even better job than last year’s QLEDS of boosting contrast and black level by limiting onscreen reflections. And that’s really saying something.
One last intriguing feature of the new QLED Samsung was keen to show off to journalists is its new Smart Sound feature. This equalizes sound between shows and different inputs, but also analyzes the nature of all incoming sound so that it can determine the sound algorithms and effects that are best suited to it. So, for instance, if it detects that you’re watching a sport event, it can expand the soundstage and ambient effects to deliver a sense of crowd noise and a stadium location. Or if it detects a film, it can push the surround effects and bass while foregrounding dialogue.
This worked effectively enough using the handful of quite extreme demo sequences we were shown, though I’ll need to try it a lot more extensively under normal living room conditions to properly be able to comment on its quality.
There are qualifications to cover before wrapping this first impressions article up. First, the OLED TV used for the head to heads was a 2017 model, not a 2018 model. Next, the demo screen used at the Samsung unveiling event on Sunday night suffered blooming around the La La Land spot-lit shot that wasn’t visible on the sample on show behind the scenes of Samsung’s CES booth. Since this blooming was also full of noise, though, I’m pretty confident that that Sunday night prototype wasn’t working correctly. Certainly Samsung’s engineers assured me (of course!) that the far superior screen on show in its private booth area represented the true capabilities of its upcoming Q9F replacement.
There’s also no indication yet as to whether any other TV series in Samsung’s 2018 TV range will support direct LED lighting, or whether everything else will switch to a likely far less inspiring edge LED set-up.
It's also the case, of course, that all the head to heads and other demonstrations we were shown were established by Samsung. So although Samsung says it was running everything completely fairly, we weren't able to have any influence on any of the screens ourselves.
Finally, Samsung has a bit of history of late of not bringing to market the exact specifications that it showed off even in quite late prototypes. And here we’re talking about a product that’s not yet appearing in a finalized chassis design, or even has a confirmed product name. Though having said that, Samsung has said it’s intending to launch full details of its 2018 range by the end of March, which doesn’t leave all that much more time for Samsung to tinker about with any of the really big stuff.
The one thing I can say with confidence, though, is that if the screen Samsung was showing behind the scenes of CES turns out to be pretty close to the final TV it launches in the coming months, it should see Samsung getting very much back into a high-end TV game that I’d started to think was going to belong exclusively to OLED (for the next couple of years, at least). Provided, of course, that that the Q9F doesn’t come attached to too insane a price tag!
NOTE - Sadly we weren’t allowed to take photos of any of the head to head demonstrations with other brands, or any of the demos featuring La La Land. Except, oddly, for one head to head with an OLED during Samsung's launch event on Sunday evening, which is where a couple of the images in this article come from.
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">If you just wandered around the public areas of Samsung’s current CES booth, you’d be forgiven for thinking the brand’s TV division had decided to skip 2018. At least where anything remotely mainstream or affordable was concerned.
However, while Samsung may not have felt ready yet to open up its core 2018 TV range to wide scrutiny, it has shown off an early version of its 2018 replacement for 2017’s flagship Q9F series to selected media - both at its TV unveiling event on Sunday, and in an invitation-only area of its CES show booth. And I’m happy to report that these early viewings suggest that Samsung has taken on board the criticisms its TVs received in 2017. At least for its most high-end 4K QLED set.
Particularly importantly, the new replacement for the Q9Fs goes back to using a direct lighting system, where the lights sit behind the screen rather than around its edges. Plus, as you would expect of a flagship LCD TV these days, that direct lighting array is driven by a local dimming system.
Photo: John ArcherSamsung's new direct-lit QLED on the left, and a 2017 OLED on the right.
Samsung won’t confirm the exact number of dimming zones, making me wonder if a final decision on this key aspect of its potential performance is still pending. My guess, though, would be that there are a good few hundred.
Why do I think this? Because one of the two samples I’ve seen, one, at least, suffered less with backlight clouding, striping and blooming than any other LCD TV I’ve ever seen. Including Sony’s outstanding Z9D.
In fact, Samsung was so confident about the local accuracy of its backlight controls in the new Q9F replacement that it was prepared to use one of the toughest shots currently to be found on 4K Blu-ray to date to show off what it was capable of.
That shot is the one in La La Land where Sebastian plays the piano illuminated against a near black backdrop by a single bright, bluish spotlight. And pretty incredibly, the demo unit of Samsung’s upcoming QLED 4K flagship managed to deliver this shot while exhibiting practically zero backlight clouding or haloing around the spot-lit area. Even though the intensity and brightness of that area looked actually slightly more extreme than it did on even the OLED TV below.
Yep, that’s right: Samsung’s chutzpah even extended to running this early version of its Q9F replacement against a 2017 OLED TV. And a Sony Z9D. And even a 2017 Q9F. And it was clear to all of us watching the demonstration in the ‘secret’ part of Samsung’s stand that the new QLED model was delivering both the best contrast and best light uniformity of all the screens on show. Which is genuinely remarkable.
Photo: John ArcherThe 2018 direct-lit Samsung QLED in action. The clipping in the brightest bits of the lava is down to my camera, not the TV!
The 2017 Q9F looked comfortably the worst with the La La Land scene, with grey bleaching of the black area running right across the screen, and pretty much from top to bottom. The Z9D only came in third in this hugely difficult scene (though it improved massively with most of the other, brighter footage shown during the demo), with the OLED second. Even the OLED, though, sometimes looked slightly greyer in the blackness around the spot-lit area than Samsung’s new QLED.
So exceptionally well controlled was the new QLED TV’s backlighting in this extreme shot - even when Samsung turned the lights in the demo room off - that it seems clear that we’re not looking at just the results of direct lighting with plenty of dimming zones. Samsung’s new panel structure and processing must also surely be at work.
As discussed in my previous article introducing Samsung’s various new TV technologies for 2018, the new panel structure introduces a ‘black layer’ that essentially places tiny barriers between each liquid crystal to ensure the light from each pixel goes directly forward rather than leaking out into the ‘beams’ of neighboring pixels.
Also Samsung’s latest processing engine, with its ability to finely analyze the lighting in the image and gently fade the light of each lighting zone towards its outer edges when required, also seems to be a pretty remarkable evolution in LCD backlighting. Especially as it seems to work while delivering no evidence of the backlight light ‘blockiness’ witnessed with previous LCD backlight innovations such as Sony’s Slim Backlight Drive and Panasonic’s ‘Honeycomb’ panel structure.
I was seriously impressed, too, by how the exceptionally deep and even black levels the Q9F replacement was capable of reproducing still contained plenty of subtle colour and greyscale details. It’s certainly not the case that the screen is just completely shutting off its backlights in the darkest zones to deliver absolute but hollow blackness.
Photo: John ArcherAnother new QLED vs 2017 OLED shot.
Shifting content tack, Samsung also ran part of the 4K HDR red crab sequence in Planet Earth II. This is a far brighter scene than the La La Land one, and more predictably the new Samsung QLED again looked the best of the four screens on show - by some margin. The colors of the crabs looked more dynamic but also more natural. The streams of sunlight through the trees looked punchier but also more full of subtle light and color detail. The balance of light and shade looked more consistently authentic and ‘right’. Peak details such as sunlight reflecting off the crabs’ bodies looked more dynamic. And also, more unexpectedly, the QLED picture looked more detailed and crisp than that of the other screens - especially the OLED - without that sharpness looking forced or processed.
Another section of the demonstration of Samsung’s latest QLED ‘hero’ included a detailed and again convincing demonstration of how its combination of improved Quantum Dots (Samsung has made the red and green QD’s smaller to deliver a purer, wider color range that now covers 100% of the DCI P3 cinematic color space) and high brightness appear to deliver colors with more accurate volumes than one of 2017’s OLED TVs.
To round the picture demonstration off, we were also shown the HDR10+ dynamic metadata system the latest QLED TVs will support. Clips of a variety of bright, detailed HDR shots of mostly nature scenes, full of rocks, trees and clouds, clearly revealed more refinement in the image’s colors; a generally more dynamic, three-dimensional look to the picture; and finally, clearly more detail in the very brightest parts of the image.
We’re not done with the good stuff yet, though. It also became clear during the demonstration of the new QLED 4K flagship’s black level abilities that the latest screen seems to be delivering on a key undelivered promise of 2017’s QLED models by supporting a much wider viewing angle than you usually get with LCD TVs. I’d say I could get to as much as 60 degrees off axis before I started to notice a substantial contrast or color reduction.
Photo: SamsungThe Samsung QE65Q9F from 2017 used edge LED lighting, which didn't do its black level performance any favors.
If this holds true with the finished, launched TVs, it would class as a superb result - presumably delivered by the new near-surface prismatic lens layer the latest QLED screens use to disperse the emerging images over a wider area (to compensate for having previously channeled the light with more focus via the new light-channeling barriers).
Finally on the picture front, it was extremely clear - especially versus the Sony ZD9 and OLED models - that the new improved anti-reflection filter in the upcoming Q9F replacement is doing an even better job than last year’s QLEDS of boosting contrast and black level by limiting onscreen reflections. And that’s really saying something.
One last intriguing feature of the new QLED Samsung was keen to show off to journalists is its new Smart Sound feature. This equalizes sound between shows and different inputs, but also analyzes the nature of all incoming sound so that it can determine the sound algorithms and effects that are best suited to it. So, for instance, if it detects that you’re watching a sport event, it can expand the soundstage and ambient effects to deliver a sense of crowd noise and a stadium location. Or if it detects a film, it can push the surround effects and bass while foregrounding dialogue.
This worked effectively enough using the handful of quite extreme demo sequences we were shown, though I’ll need to try it a lot more extensively under normal living room conditions to properly be able to comment on its quality.
There are qualifications to cover before wrapping this first impressions article up. First, the OLED TV used for the head to heads was a 2017 model, not a 2018 model. Next, the demo screen used at the Samsung unveiling event on Sunday night suffered blooming around the La La Land spot-lit shot that wasn’t visible on the sample on show behind the scenes of Samsung’s CES booth. Since this blooming was also full of noise, though, I’m pretty confident that that Sunday night prototype wasn’t working correctly. Certainly Samsung’s engineers assured me (of course!) that the far superior screen on show in its private booth area represented the true capabilities of its upcoming Q9F replacement.
There’s also no indication yet as to whether any other TV series in Samsung’s 2018 TV range will support direct LED lighting, or whether everything else will switch to a likely far less inspiring edge LED set-up.
It's also the case, of course, that all the head to heads and other demonstrations we were shown were established by Samsung. So although Samsung says it was running everything completely fairly, we weren't able to have any influence on any of the screens ourselves.
Finally, Samsung has a bit of history of late of not bringing to market the exact specifications that it showed off even in quite late prototypes. And here we’re talking about a product that’s not yet appearing in a finalized chassis design, or even has a confirmed product name. Though having said that, Samsung has said it’s intending to launch full details of its 2018 range by the end of March, which doesn’t leave all that much more time for Samsung to tinker about with any of the really big stuff.
The one thing I can say with confidence, though, is that if the screen Samsung was showing behind the scenes of CES turns out to be pretty close to the final TV it launches in the coming months, it should see Samsung getting very much back into a high-end TV game that I’d started to think was going to belong exclusively to OLED (for the next couple of years, at least). Provided, of course, that that the Q9F doesn’t come attached to too insane a price tag!
NOTE - Sadly we weren’t allowed to take photos of any of the head to head demonstrations with other brands, or any of the demos featuring La La Land. Except, oddly, for one head to head with an OLED during Samsung's launch event on Sunday evening, which is where a couple of the images in this article come from.
--
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like these:
Samsung 8K Micro Dimming TV First Impressions
Samsung Unveils 'Holy Trinity' Of TVs - Including a 146-inch Self-Emissive LCD
LG 2018 OLED TV First Impressions
Sony Unveils New OLED And LCD TVs, Plus A New 4K Blu-ray Player - All With Dolby Vision
Panasonic Unveils Two New Hollywood-Tuned OLED TV Ranges
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