TVs get talked up from Samsung, LG, and Hisense, and you’ll hear what’s happening in sound, too. It’s TV change-over time at The Wrap.
Transcript
It’s near the end of April and you’re tuned into The Wrap, Australia’s fastest technology roundup, and it’s about this time that something starts happening at electronics stores across the country.
You may not notice it at first, but the April to May period is when TV manufacturers regularly change stock, with new products arriving.
That means two things:
One. Old stock will be reduced in price, which is good news for your wallet.
And two. New stock is here, so if you like the idea of something newer and better than what last year offered, listen up, because that’s what’s being touted by most of the players.
Last week, we mentioned what Panasonic was offering, and this week it was joined by the likes of Samsung, Hisense, and LG, basically a triple whammy of competition, so let’s start with Samsung.
Over in Samsung’s world, you’ll see QLED TVs, which are basically LED backlit TVs honed with little crystals called quantum dots. These crystals focus the colour for vibrancy, while the screens pumps up the brightness to a level that makes the images pop, almost like they’re 3D.
3D is something you won’t find on the TVs, and you won’t find curves either. Rather, Samsung’s assortment of QLED TVs are all flat this year, running from 55 inches to 75 inches depending on how bright you want it and what sort of stand you want.
The most interesting feature we think isn’t for when you watch Samsung’s QLED TVs, but rather for when you don’t. New to the TVs is an ambient mode which, when paired with a Samsung app, can match the wallpaper of your home and allow the TV to blend into your environment. Better, it takes a page from the future and displays information in an off state, almost like your wall had become a central repository of stuff happening in your world. News, weather, that sort of thing.
Samsung’s Ambient Mode, as it’s called, will only be available to its QLED series TVs for this year, and they start rolling out next week.
And they’re not alone, with Hisense right behind it.
A name that has been making waves, Hisense’s offerings this year are another version of LED-backlit, something Hisense called ULED. Some of these use Quantum Dot and others don’t, but “ULED” essentially means Hisense processing on an LED-backlit TV. It’s not a special technology per se, but Hisense hopes to impress with lots of brightness, wide colour gamuts, and prices that try not to break the bank, with the 75 inch variant hitting under seven grand, lower than the $10K price of Samsung’s.
There is one think that neither Samsung nor Hisense have yet, and that’s an OLED TV. For Hisense, it’s coming, but it’s a ways off.
LG, however, made sure to include OLED TVs in its announcement this week, and it is arguably the biggest supplier of OLEDs in the country, and possibly the world.
Now this is a different technology, because while LED-backlit TVs are LCD panels with LEDs lighting up the pixels from behind, OLED TVs are made from a single panel of organic LEDs,