Samsung Puts Micro LED, 8K And More OLEDs Front And Center At CES 2024

Nothing says ‘CES has officially started’ more than Samsung’s First Look event, where it books out a posh venue on the Sunday before the official CES press Monday and fills it with the latest TV screens and AV technologies it considers to be the highlights of its upcoming range. This event has just taken place for 2024, and as usual it delivered a busy mix of the big, the bright, the familiar and the new.

For what felt like the umpteenth time, the biggest wow factor came from the section of the Samsung First Look event given over to the brand’s Micro LED screens. On show were Micro LED screens in 140-inch, 114-inch, 101-inch, 89-inch and 76-inch screen sizes, all looking as resplendent as ever thanks to their spectacular combination of extreme brightness, peerless contrast and colossal color ranges.

The only catch is that we’ve seen this all before. Samsung has been dazzling visitors to the CES with Micro LED goodness for years now – yet despite repeated promises, these dazzling screens just never seem to come to market At least in any meaningful numbers, and certainly not at any sort of price that anyone who isn’t a multimillionaire would be able to take on.

Samsung really is adamant this time, though, that the entire range of Micro LED screens (which feature full TV features including built-in sound and smart systems) on show at its First Look event will be available to consumers at some point in 2024. Including the new ‘small’ (by Micro LED’s famously epic standards) 76-inch model, which I have to say would make a truly spectacular display for any reasonably sized living room.

Samsung does still admit, though, that while it won’t yet confirm pricing, if they really do appear, every Micro LED model will have a ‘beyond premium’ price tag attached to it.

With this in mind, while Samsung’s new Micro LED models might have captured my initial attention during the first look event, the brand’s main relatively mainstream focus this year is actually on its 8K TVs.

This might seem strange at first glance given the oft-reported failure of 8K content to achieve any significant market penetration despite years of trying. Samsung clearly sees 8K as an area of core competency for its TV division, though – particularly now that fewer and fewer rival brands seem to be throwing much effort into developing their own ‘next gen’ 8K TVs.

You don’t have to look too deeply at the story behind Samsung’s new 8K TVs for 2024 to see another reason why Samsung continues to put so much store in them. The big new feature for these new 8K TVs is a new Neo QLED 8 AI Gen3 processor. This inelegantly named system claims to be driven by a neural processing unit that’s twice as fast as the one used in Samsung’s 2023’s 8K TVs, while the number of neural networks the latest processor can draw on has increased an incredible eight-fold, from 64 in 2023 to 512 for 2024.

The single most important thing about this huge processing leap is that it should deliver yet another leap in the quality of Samsung’s upscaling of 4K, HD and even (shudder) standard definition content to the 8K TVs’ native resolution. I’ve had the chance to see this new upscaler running with both SD and HD content, and can confirm that it’s a big improvement over any previous 8K upscaler I’ve ever seen, delivering some genuinely remarkable results. Which really matters, as it makes it easier for Samsung to make the case that 8K TVs don’t need to be receiving native 8K images to make a difference to picture quality.

As well as the new improved 8K upscaler, the latest 8K TV processor will bring AI Motion Enhancer Pro, which will be able to detect different types of sport and adjust accordingly the way motion processing addresses fast-moving players, balls and so on to make them less affected by common motion processing distortions.

The new processor will also add details and a better sense of depth to fast-moving scenes thanks to a Real Depth Enhancer Pro feature that introduces more precise real time control of the 8K TVs’ Mini LED lighting systems. In particular, this feature will be able to detect the ‘focus points’ of every image and give them a little more emphasis, in the same way your eyes do in the real world.

The latest 8K screens have all benefitted from an ‘Infinity Air Design’ aesthetic revamp, too, that sees the 8K TVs’ bodies being reduced to a depth of just 12.9mm.

The 8K TVs offer a couple of new audio features too: a 2024 version of Samsung’s Q Symphony feature that lets you easily add multiple wireless speakers and a sound bar to the TV’s own speakers, and an Active Voice Amplifier Pro feature that uses AI to separate vocals from the rest of a mix so that vocal tracks can be made clearer and louder without affecting the rest of the mix.

Actually getting more floor space (if not quite as much prominence) than 8K at Samsung’s CES First Look event was an expanded range of OLED screens. Two things in particular caught my eye in this section: The addition of new 42-inch and 48-inch models, and the application to Samsung’s latest S95D flagship Quantum Dot OLED TV of a new Anti Glare screen coating (developed by Samsung’s TV division, rather than by the Samsung Display QD OLED panel supplier) that really did seem to do a pretty remarkable job of soaking up every reflection Samsung’s demonstration deliberately threw at it.

The S95D will be available in a 77-inch QD OLED version as well as the more mainstream 55 and 65-inch models for 2024, and Samsung is claiming that it’s managed to find as much as 20% more brightness over 2023’s S95Cs. Colors on the S95Ds remain ‘Pantone Validated’ for accuracy too, while the brand’s step down S90D QD OLED and new S85D WRGB OLED ranges (not all of these ranges will be available in every global territory) will gain new screen sizes, extending Samsung’s OLED range from 42 and 48-inch screen sizes all the way up to 83 inches.

While Samsung also had entertaining sections at its First Look event devoted to its lifestyle products including The Frame TVs (which will now offer 2,500 artworks as part of its Art Store experience and a new low frame rate Art Mode that reduces energy costs by up to 10%); The Premiere 8K Ultra short throw projector; and The 2nd-gen Freestyle projector, the last truly new things that really caught my eye were actually a trio of audio devices.

The Music Frame is a cool twist on the portable speaker market that builds drivers invisibly into photo and painting frames. You can use these as standalone wireless speakers, or pair them with Samsung TVs and soundbars via Samsung’s Q-Symphony feature.

Then, finally, there are two new soundbars. The flagship HW-Q990D delivers the same 11.1.4 channel configuration we’ve seen from Samsung’s flagship soundbars for a couple of generations now, but adds improved AI sound optimization and, finally, support for 4K/120Hz through its HDMI loop through system.

The HW-S800D delivers an ultra-thin (just 1.6-inch deep) design, enabling it to fit into almost any space, while still delivering a powerful Dolby Atmos sound performance thanks to squeezing 10 drivers – including dedicated centre and overhead speakers – into its stylish form.

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