Samsung electronics is set to stir up the AV market with a slew of next generation TVs to take over your entertainment space and even your wall. Days before these TVs are planned to be shown off in all their glory at CES 2022, Samsung released a brief a look at the new features these televisions will be packing.
Starting from their flagship series, the Micro LED TVs coming with improved picture quality, to their new Smart Hub software that is aimed to satisfy every group of people. But I’m personally more curious to find out if their new sound bars can actually “break sonic barriers” like they boldly claim. Let’s go through their hardware and software announcements in more detail together.
Samsung 2022 Micro LED TV
The bread and butter of Samsung’s display technology, the 2022 Samsung Micro LED TV will be receiving some key improvements to enhance the picture quality and to further showcase the marvel of Micro LED technology. Essentially Micro LEDs are significantly smaller than Mini LEDs thus providing a far more granular control over the colours and brightness.
How much control? Last year’s Samsung’s Neo QLED Mini LED TVs have 4,096 steps of brightness control. The 2022 Micro LED TV on the other hand has an astounding 1 million steps of brightness control thanks to its 20-bit greyscale depth. Further adding to those impressive numbers is its ability to display 100% of the DCI and Adobe RGB colour gamut.
Turning to audio, Samsung has packed this TV with the best the audio world has to offer. Featuring top, side and bottom firing speakers, the TV is capable of producing immersive Dolby Atmos audio. For software, the TV can be used to display an art gallery or a photo album.
Samsung also took the effort to mention that the 2022 Micro LED TV comes with 2 exclusive artwork from the artist and designer, Refik Anadol. Another feature that will be present is Multi View which allows you to view up to 4 different sources simultaneously. To be able to display 4 sources simultaneously while still remaining legible, the screen needs to be huge and huge it is.
The Micro LED TV comes in 110 inch, 101 inch and 89 inch sizes, with the 110 inch variant containing 25 million Micro LEDs. Sasmsung did not explicitly mention this, but it’s safe the assume the largest TV containes the most LEDs. But you will be glad to know that all three versions come with an amazing 99.99% screen-to-body ratio, which means there is barely any bezels around the screen. Now, whether all 4 HDMI ports here support 4K at 120 fps still remains to be seen as this is more of a processor limitation than a display limitation.
Now you might be asking “Hey, what kind of processing power is mated to this beast?”, and we are asking the same question as well, however Samsung has not revealed that just yet.
Samsung 2022 Neo QLED TV
Last year’s Samsung Neo QLED TV was a game changer by using Mini LED technology, they were able to provided a picture quality that was closer to an OLED TV than a standard LED TV. Even with some blooming around bright objects, it was still a better viewing experience. For 2022, Samsung is upgrading their 2022 Samsung Neo QLED TVs to push it closer to an OLED TV. For starters, the Neo Quantum Processor has been upgraded to handle some new software features.
Firstly, there is a new advanced contrast mapping in conjunction with back-light unit (BLU), the brightness level has been pushed up from 12 to 14-bit gradation. What this means is that the Mini LEDs is now able to control 16,384 steps of brightness compared to just 4,096 of its predecessor.
Secondly, the new Shape Adaptive Light technology identifies the lines, shapes and surfaces to control the light shape being emitted by the Mini LEDs.
Finally, the Real Depth Enhancer, which is an algorithm that helps to create a sense of realism and depth by comparing and processing the foreground object with the background scene.
All these 3 new features combine together to produce images that Samsung calls “the most pristine images possible”.
Moving on, Samsung has also included an EyeComfort mode, which works in a similar fashion to Apple’s True Tone display. The TV is able to analyse the brightness and tone of the room using its built in light sensor and together with the sunset and sunrise data, it is able to adjust the brightness output and blue light levels accordingly. This will provide for a more comfortable viewing at night. Rounding things up are a new set of up firing speakers that are built into the top of the TV. This allowed Samsung to upgrade the Object Tracking Sound (OTS) to OTS Pro and enabled Dolby Atmos audio as well.
However, the big question is that, which variants of the 2022 Neo QLED TVs will get these features?
Samsung 2022 The Frame, The Serif & The Sero
If you’re all about fashion and style, then you’ve probably have read about these TVs on our previous post. But allow me to break it down for you.
2022 The Frame – A TV that, well as the name suggests, is designed to like an art frame. The idea is that when you’re not watching content, it can display art or pictures. Samsung claims their displays can produce true to life images that the image displayed is indistinguishable from the real and physical image. So an image of a painting will look like the real thing. For 2022, The Frame gets an embossed matte display that prevents fingerprints and smudges, and provides an anti-glare and low-reflection viewing experience. It’s said to come in sizes between 32 inch to 85 inch and also has an option to expand the bezels to give a more “frame like” appearance to meet everyone’s needs. If you are interested in this concept, you can learn more about the current 2021 models here.
2022 The Serif – The highlight feature of this TV is the stand, which can prop the TV up several inches of the floor. This gives it a furniture kind of vibe. For 2022, The Serif gets a new 65 inch option, with the range starting from 43 inch. All sizes come with a matte body finish to match the matte display.
2022 The Sero – A TV aimed at the social media crowd, it is able to rotate electrically and automatically, between landscape and portrait orientation to match the content that is being played on the screen. If it’s a YouTube video, the Sero will orient itself horizontally and if it’s a video on IGTV, the Sero will orient itself vertically. For 2022, besides having a matte display like it’s cousins, it now supports Multi View in its vertical orientation. This means you will be able to run 2 apps simultaneously like how you can on a Samsung tablet or smartphones.
All 3 models also come with Underwriter Laboratories (UL) display certifications for being reflection glare free, discomfort glare free, and disability glare free, if these kinds of things tickle your fancy.
Before we move on to the software side, I would like to tell those that want the Sero experience but don’t want the Sero display that Samsung will be offering a motorised wall mount and stand. It will allow for a 2022 The Frame and a Neo QLED models up to 65 inch to rotate automatically or at a push of a button on the remove control.
NFT Gallery via New Smart Hub
All 2022 Samsung TVs will come loaded with the brand new Smart Hub software which is home to some new apps and features. Some highlights are:
The gaming hub provides gamers access to games via game streaming through Samsung’ partnership with key players like NVIDIA GeForce Now, Stadia and Utomik with more partners to be revealed in the future. What this means is that, these apps will be natively available to download in the Smart TV app store and will be optimised to run on the TVs hardware.
Next, we have a feature that was recently introduced by Apple, which is Watch Together. It does exactly what the name implies and allows people to watch a movie or video together while being on a video call with friends and family. If we use Apple’s Share Play as a reference, we can expect features like synced play, pause and seek to be offered by Samsung.
Moving on, Samsung is providing a platform for NFT enthusiasts to discover, purchase and trade their NFT artwork. As of writing this, it seems that this feature is not available on the Serif and the Sero.
Finally, Samsung is providing a Smart Calibration function. Samsung says that users can calibrated the screen in 30 seconds under Basic mode while for those that seek the ultimate experience, they spend and extra 9 and a half minutes calibrating the screen under Professional mode. However what Samsung did not say is whether there is an automatic option, perhaps by using a Galaxy smartphone, similar to how Apple uses an iPhone and it’s camera to automatically calibrate the Apple TV, albeit it only calibrated the Apple TV’s output and not your TV’s display.
All these features can be quickly accessed using the Smart Hub’s side bar and switch between them seamlessly.
2022 Samsung Soundbars
Since the new TVs now incorporates Dolby Atmos capable speaker system, Samsung has updated their Q Symphony software to synchronise the Dolby Atmos audio from the TV and Soundbar to provide a more immersive experience than what was previously capable. Furthermore, you can connect a 2022 Samsung soundbar to a compatible 2022 Samsung QLED TV wireless and it now supports wireless Dolby Atmos connectivity. If you’re like me and you’re wondering what about support for the more expensive Micro LED TVs, unfortunately it doesn’t seem like it will for now.
Finally, there will be a new compact soundbar that Samsung claims will “redefine the compact soundbar category” and will “pack powerful sound”. I would take these claims with a pinch of salt until we get to hear the soundbar in action.
I’m not going to lie, Samsung has created some pretty cool tech and I’m very excited to experience all the things they promised. I am also curious to find out if Samsung uses HDMI 2.1a, which adds support for Source-Based Tone Mapping (SBTM) for HDR content, for any of their TVs. I guess it’s not too long of a wait now since all will be revealed at CES 2022 happening from the 5th to 7th January in Las Vegas, USA.
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