Nothing says “CES has officially begun” more than Samsung’s First Look event, where it reserves a stylish space on the Sunday before the official CES press on Monday and fills it with the latest TV screens and AV technologies that considered to be the highlights of the upcoming series. This event just took place for 2024, and as usual delivered a busy mix of the big, the bright, the familiar and the new.
For the umpteenth time, the biggest wow factor came from the section of the Samsung First Look event that was given to the brand’s Micro LED displays. Micro LED displays were launched in screen sizes of 140-inch, 114-inch, 101-inch, 89-inch and 76-inch, all looking as bright as ever thanks to the impressive combination of exceptional brightness, unparalleled contrast and colossal color gamut.
Samsung made a big splash at the First Look event launched at CES. Again. And the screens looked amazing. Again. … [+]
The only catch is, we’ve seen this all before. Samsung has been dazzling CES-goers with its Micro LEDs for years now – yet despite repeated promises, these dazzling displays never seem to hit the market at least in significant numbers, and certainly not at any price from anyone who isn’t One multi-millionaire could not undertake.
Samsung is really adamant this time, however, that the entire range of Micro LED displays (which have full TV functions, including built-in audio and smart systems) shown at the First Look event will be available to consumers sometime in 2024. Including the new ‘small’ (by Micro LED’s famously epic standards) 76 inch model, which I have to say would make a really impressive display for any reasonably sized living room.
However, Samsung still admits that while it won’t confirm pricing yet, if they do indeed appear, each Micro LED model will have a “beyond premium” price tag.
With that in mind, while Samsung’s new Micro LED models may have caught my initial attention during the launch event, the brand’s main relatively main focus this year is actually on 8K TVs.
This may seem strange at first glance, given the oft-reported failure of 8K content to achieve significant market penetration despite years of effort. Samsung clearly sees 8K as an area of core competence for its TV division – especially now that fewer and fewer competing brands seem to be putting much effort into developing their own “next-gen” 8K TVs.
You don’t have to look too deeply into the story behind Samsung’s new 2024 8K TVs to see another reason why Samsung keeps stockpiling 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 8K TVs, while the number of neural networks the latest processor can draw on has increased a whopping eightfold, from 64 in 2023 to 512 for 2024.
Samsung’s flagship 2024 S95D QD OLED TVs have one of the most powerful anti-glare filters I have … [+]
The most important thing about this huge processing leap is that it should provide another leap in quality for Samsung’s upgrade to standard definition 4K, HD and even (shudder) content at the native resolution of 8K TVs. I’ve had a chance to see this new upscaler in action with both SD and HD content, and I can confirm that it’s a big improvement over any previous 8K upscaler I’ve ever seen, delivering some truly remarkable results. This is really important, as it makes it easier for Samsung to make the case that 8K TVs don’t need to receive native 8K images to make a difference in picture quality.
In addition to 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 sports and adjust accordingly how motion processing is aimed at fast-moving players , balls etc. less affected by common motion processing distortions.
The new processor will also add detail and a better sense of depth to fast-moving scenes thanks to the Real Depth Enhancer Pro feature that introduces more precise real-time control of the Mini LED lighting systems of 8K TVs. Specifically, this feature will be able to detect the “focus points” of each image and give them a bit more emphasis, the same way your eyes do in the real world.
The latest 8K screens have also benefited from an aesthetic refresh of the ‘Infinity Air Design’, which sees the body of the 8K TVs reduced to a depth of just 12.9mm.
8K TVs also offer some new audio features: 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 speakers, and an Active Voice Amplifier Pro feature that uses AI to separate vocals from the rest of the mix so that the vocal parts are made clearer and louder without affecting the rest of the mix.
Samsung is expanding its OLED lineup (in some regions) with 42- and 48-inch models. They will use these … [+]
In fact, getting a bigger surface area (if not quite as big a projection) than 8K at Samsung’s CES First Look event was an expanded range of OLED displays. Two things caught my eye in this section: The addition of new 42-inch and 48-inch models, and the application to the latest flagship Samsung S95D Quantum Dot OLED TV of a new Anti Glare screen coating (developed by Samsung’s TV division, and not from the supplier of the Samsung Display QD OLED panel) that actually seemed to do a pretty remarkable job of soaking up any glare that Samsung’s display intentionally threw.
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 claims it managed to get up to 20% more brightness than the 2023 S95C. S95Ds remain ‘Pantone Validated’ for accuracy, while the rebranded S90D QD OLED and new S85D WRGB OLED series (not all of these series will be available in every global territory) will get new screen sizes, expanding Samsung’s OLED range from screen sizes of 42 and 48 inches up to 83 inches.
While Samsung also had fun sections at its First Look event dedicated 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 up to 10 %); The Premiere 8K Ultra Short Throw Projector. and the 2nd generation Freestyle projector, the last really new things that really caught my eye were actually a trio of audio devices.
Music Frame is a cool twist on the portable speaker market that embeds drivers invisibly into picture and picture frames. You can use them as standalone wireless speakers or connect them to Samsung TVs and sound bars via Samsung’s Q-Symphony feature.
Samsung’s cool Music Frame integrates a speaker into photo or artwork frames.
Then finally there are two new soundbars. The flagship HW-Q990D offers the same 11.1.4 channel configuration we’ve seen from Samsung’s flagship soundbars for a few generations, but adds improved AI audio optimization and finally support for 4K/120Hz via the HDMI loop-through system.
The HW-S800D offers an ultra-slim (just 1.6 inches deep) design, allowing it to fit into almost any space, while still delivering powerful Dolby Atmos sound performance thanks to the compression of 10 drivers – including dedicated center and overhead speakers – in its elegant form.
—
Related reading
TCL Unveils New 2024 TV Series – Includes a 115-inch 5000 Nit Mini LED
Panasonic unveils new flagship OLED TVs with MLA and proprietary heatsink material
LG Storms CES With Amazing ‘Now It’s Transparent, Now It’s Not’ OLED TV
Sony Unveils Next-Gen TV Technology – And It’s Not OLED
