Samsung Q950TS Preview – Super flat TV with super narrow bezels

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We’ve seen televisions get thinner and thinner for years, and the bezels around the screen got smaller and smaller. In recent years, these trends have stagnated somewhat, but at this CES the battle between the manufacturers flares up again. LG presented the new GX OLED televisions, which, including electronics, are only 20mm thick. Samsung’s new top model, the Q950TS, is another 5mm flatter and also has the narrowest bezels we’ve ever seen on a TV.

A clear trend can be observed in telephones whereby the screens are getting bigger without the housings doing so. As a result, we have seen the screen to body ratio continue to increase. Because the bezels on the Q950TS are only 2.5 millimeters wide, the screen now covers 99 percent of the front of the TV. According to Samsung, the edges are even so thin that they become invisible at a viewing distance of between 3 and 4.5 meters.

The bezels are only so small at the top and on the sides. After all, the LCD panel must be able to be connected. The connections of the LCD are at the bottom, making the bezel a bit wider there. The whole looks very sleek and the finish of the Q950TS is also of a high level. Samsung’s competitors, who use OLED panels, cannot simply imitate this design, because although OLED televisions have very narrow bezels, the active image only starts a centimeter from the edge.

Samsung says it has made the necessary improvements to the Quantum Processor 8K. This should compensate for the almost total lack of 8k content by upscaling images with a lower resolution. In an enclosed room, where photography was not allowed, we were shown a comparison of last year’s upscaling with that of 2020. We were told that deep learning algorithms that use neural networks were implemented this year. These would run on the processor in the TV itself, eliminating the need for an internet connection for learning. In addition, the upscaling would get better and better over time as it continues to learn.

To us, this story was anything but convincing and even if this explanation were correct, the result was not fantastic. With all the images shown, we had a clear preference for last year’s TV. The 2020 TV had far too much sharpening applied, which made the images look very unnatural and harsh. Incidentally, we have never seen a demo of real-time upscaling where the image actually improved. For photos, there are very good algorithms to upscale, but this requires a lot of computing power. As a result, even today’s most powerful computers take a long time to calculate a single image. So we should not expect miracles from real-time upscaling for the coming years. The computing power available in televisions is simply far too limited for this.

Samsung has equipped the Q950TS with two-way speakers at the bottom. In addition, there are speakers in the edges on the sides of the screen. These are both at the top and in the middle. This should make it seem like the sound is coming from the screen itself. The marketing department has dubbed this feature Object Tracking Sound + . We don’t feel like objects are actually tracked on screen, but during the demo we heard, in a perfectly symmetrical space, it sounded very spacious. Sometimes the sound even seemed to come from behind. The bass speakers are on the back of the TV, preventing it from being hung tight against the wall; the stand showed that a small space was left between the TV and the wall.

A new feature that we unfortunately did not get to hear is the Active Voice Amplifier, which should ensure that voices remain clearly audible with a lot of ambient noise. For example, a television program must remain clearly intelligible if someone passes by with a vacuum cleaner. The internal speakers can also be combined with a Samsung soundbar. This must be one from this year’s Q series.

Samsung told us that the control of the full array local dimming has been improved this year. By not only applying pulse width modulation to the LEDs, but also controlling the current to the individual zones, the whole would work more efficiently. This would have increased peak brightness and reduced consumption. This was demonstrated using an energy meter setup. When displaying a completely black image, these still indicated a consumption of around one hundred watts, which makes you wonder whether the local dimming really works that efficiently. We asked about the reason for the high consumption with a completely black image, but we did not get a clear answer to our question.

This year there is the possibility to have the image better adapted to the ambient light by means of the Adaptive Picture feature. The image is not simply made lighter and darker, but according to Samsung, analyzes are also done of the footage that is viewed at that moment. This was demonstrated on the stand and initial impressions were positive; the dark areas of the image were neatly adjusted to the new conditions some time after changing the ambient light.

In terms of service, there are no major changes compared to last year. The operating system is still Tizen and the remote control also looks exactly the same. We do not find this a pleasant remote control due to the low number of buttons. Even for simple things like choosing an external input, you already have to rely on the menu. When the Q950TS will be available with us, we do not know yet and no prices have been announced yet.

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