It was elusive, but I finally tracked down Samsung's QD-OLED display and saw it with my own eyes. Here's what it is and why its so amazing.
I was beginning to think it was the tech unicorn of CES 2022.: A quantum dot OLED display that, by specs and science alone, had the potential to revolutionize TV picture quality. Then I saw it up close, and I’m here to tell you it is the best-looking image I’ve ever seen from a screen. And not by an incremental margin, either. I hate the term “game-changer,” but it absolutely applies here. I couldn’t be more excited for this massive leap forward for TVs in 2022.
The OLED panels available on the market today are manufactured by LG Display and used by LG, Sony, Panasonic, and several other brands in OLED TVs. They are WRGB OLEDs, which is to say there is a white OLED subpixel used to boost the brightness of red, green, and blue OLED pixels. It’s a solution that has worked well for several years now — OLED TVs consistently sit at the top of our list of the best TVs you can buy.
In other words, QD-OLED keeps all the advantages of WRGB OLED and mitigates its few drawbacks. On paper, this sounds very exciting. But tech reporters have rightfully remained skeptical, pending in-person viewing. Once I calmed my own excitement a bit, I dug a little deeper and noticed that the white light it produced was of much higher purity than the whites I’m used to seeing from WRGB OLED TVs, which tend to have a green tint. That tint isn’t something you notice when watching an OLED TV on its own, but it is impossible not to see it when it sits next to LED TVs and, in this case, the QD-OLED.
When can you buy QD-OLED? The good news is that the wait for a QD-OLED TV won’t be long. A representative at Sony informed me the company is targeting a late spring 2022 launch for its Bravia A95K QD-OLED TV. The bad news is that I expect that TV to be extremely expensive.