Samsung S95BA OLED, first impressions: QD-OLED technology is here, we have tried it and it has impressed us

QD-OLED panel technology explained

The most relevant quality that OLED panels have is its ability to emit light without the need to resort to an external lighting source, something that LCD panels must do. This is possible because they use organic diodes, semiconductor electronic components that allow and control the passage of electric current in only one direction.

Unlike conventional diodes, those that use organic material have the ability to react to electrical stimulation by emitting light, hence OLED technology be self-emitting.

So far there is no difference between the OLED panels that LG manufactures and those that Samsung is already producing. However, if we stick to the strategy they use to reproduce the color, the first significant difference between the two technologies appears. The OLED panels manufactured by LG Display they are W-OLED type (White OLED), so the light emitted by each of the panel’s self-emissive cells is white.

The problem is that to compose a , or quantum dots, which is responsible for color reproduction.

According to Samsung, the nanocrystals it uses in its self-emissive panels manage to cover 80% of the BT.2020 color space. If they are really capable of giving us this color coverage, the colorimetry of the televisions that incorporate them should be very solvent.

In theory, the removal of the RGB filter should allow the panel to deliver a superior brightness delivery capacity both when measuring the average value and the peaks. And, in addition, the nanocrystals should be able to reproduce a color space noticeably wider than the RGB color filter.

However, the changes that Samsung proposes in the face of W-OLED technology do not end here. Unlike the OLED panels of LG Display, which use white pixels, those of Samsung use blue pixels, so that the nanocrystals will be responsible for acting on the blue light to generate the other two primary colors (Red and green).

This transformation is possible thanks to a very interesting property of nanocrystals: their structure allows them to change the wavelength of light, hence they manage to manipulate blue light to generate red and green light from it.

Quantum dots are a type of nanocrystal made up of semiconductor materials with very curious properties. And it is that its size is so small that its behavior is described by the laws of quantum mechanicsand could not be explained using classical mechanics.

Its electronic characteristics are defined, on the one hand, by its size, and, on the other, by its shape, which explains why nanocrystals are currently being used for very different applicationssuch as photovoltaic technology, biological labeling, technologies for the elimination of contaminating agents… And, of course, in electronics.

The minimum brightness delivery capability of QD-OLED panels, according to Samsung, is 0.0005 nits (the lower the better). And the maximum amounts to 1000 nits. In addition, its residual brightness is 158 nits, a figure more attractive than the 200 nits in which LED-backlit LCD TVs move.

The challenge during the manufacturing process of quantum dots is to control very precisely the size of the nanocrystals. In this way it is possible to obtain particles that shine in any tone of the visible light spectrum when excited by an electric current, colors among which are, of course, red, green and blue that we need to compose the color to through an RGB panel like those used in televisions.

In any case, it is evident that Samsung knows well the techniques of fabrication of quantum dots because it has used this technology extensively in its latest generations of QLED TVs. For this reason, a background is assumed that will undoubtedly have been valuable during the development of the QD-OLED panels.

Samsung’s first TV with a QD-OLED panel, in combat

The chance to experience Samsung’s new QD-OLED TV first-hand, the S95BA OLED modelwas presented during a very exclusive event held this week by the South Korean company in London, and to which very few European publications had access.

this first touchdown it is not enough to reach definitive conclusions about the performance of this television because we could not intervene in the content that was reproduced or in the environmental conditions in which the test was carried out.

Even so, as you are about to see, the demonstration lasted long enough to allow us to draw several interesting conclusions and intuit what are the benefits that will help televisions with a QD-OLED panel to stand out from the models that bet on a W-OLED matrix manufactured by LG.

This QD-OLED TV was demoed expressly without ambient light to allow us to identify as accurately as possible the panel characteristics that directly contribute to its quality as the best-delivering organic panel TV of brightness that LG currently has in its catalog.

The blacks on this TV are as you would expect: extremely deep. This feature has not impacted me because TVs with an OLED panel from LG already offer us extraordinary blacks, although this Samsung device caught my attention the very low level of residual light that the panel emits.

You can intuit this property by observing the following photograph. It also gave me the feeling that he is capable of handling a luminance scale very wide, although it is something that I will have to check when I can analyze it thoroughly.

On the other hand, the QD-OLED panel resolves color with a very convincing color richness and saturation level. Human skin is especially difficult to restore, and in this section he passed with flying colours. Samsung assures that the colorimetry of this television has been certified by PANTONE, but, beyond this data, what is really important is that it is capable of delivering a very large volume of color that during this first test it did not seem to me that it degraded when reaching high brightness peaks.

The last photograph that we propose reflects quite accurately what the QD-OLED panel of this television is capable of doing when we ask it to resolve the most aggressive frames. And it is that it manages to give us a large number of very bright points scattered throughout the panel while preserving an extremely dark background. In fact, this test corroborates what I mentioned a few paragraphs above: it achieves keep residual light under control even under unfavorable circumstances.

This contact with the first Samsung television equipped with a QD-OLED panel has left a very good taste in my mouth, but we still have to review many other sections before rendering a final verdict.

Some of those that remain in the air are its theoretically high immunity to static image retentionthe evaluation of his ABL (Automatic Brightness Limiter) to check whether or not it is aggressive, the precision of its scaling, its sound quality or its features for games, among other sections. We hope to be able to analyze it in depth very soon to explain our impressions in great detail.