Samsung launches QLED TV range at CES 2017

CES has three things that are guaranteed each year: the booths will be big, the crowds will be huge and there’ll be another confusingly named technology you need to know about.

Samsung’s press conference didn’t disappoint on the latter, thanks to a new QLED TV range. The Q is for Quantum Dots, a technology that Samsung (and others) have been using for ages now and LED tells you that it’s just another backlit TV.

But it’s not just a fancy name for an old technology. Samsung has enhanced the quantum dot tech, upping the brightness by nearly double when compared to last years SUHD range. There’s an improved colour range and better viewing angles as well. In fact, Samsung are making the fairly bold claim that it’s better than OLED which will need to be tested before we can agree. The QLED TV on display certainly did look impressive, but at a major global press conference, you’d hope they’d bring the best out.

The other TV innovations were some major tweaks to the interface for better discovery of the content you want to watch and an enhance remote control app to do away with the usual TV remote. I’ve never been a big fan of apps for controlling TV — it’s just never been as convenient as a remote — so I’m keen to see what Samsung have managed to do here.

Samsung also hyped the design changes. The new panel is better at avoiding reflections and there’s now a single cable to connect your TV to all other devices. Which means there’s a single cable to a box and you still have to plug everything into that, but it will make the lounge room look neater at least.

Samsung the first in Australia to have a 4K UHD Blu-ray player and it’s done well for them. So well they’re refreshing the model and adding a new feature to stream 4K Blu-ray content to a mobile device. I might be going crazy, but I’m not sure I understand why you’d want 4K movies taken away from your beautiful 4K screen but CES is teaching me that I can be a little old fashioned.

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