We were sure that CES 2024 would bring us the unveiling of the Samsung S90D, the successor to the QD-OLED Samsung S90C, which was our TV of the Year in 2023. That made it our most anticipated TV announcement of the show, and it's true that Samsung has announced new OLEDs with a promised 20% brightness improvement.
We expected this to be the case, but what we didn't expect were two new sizes of the TV, because we had already heard that there would be no new sizes of QD-OLED TV screens in 2023. .
But Samsung showed us 42-inch and 48-inch versions of the TV, and these aren't QD-OLED – they're regular OLED (aka W-OLED), and they mean the S90D's size is now totally chaotic , in a way that's tedious to explain, and that means any recommendation from them will have to come with major caveats.
Some background for those who don't know: W-OLED screens are what every of the best OLED TVs used in the recent past, and they are all made by LG, even when used by the likes of Sony or Panasonic. Samsung then developed QD-OLED, a very different way of making OLED panels, promising stronger brightness and a wider color range than W-OLED.
The first QD-OLED screens were a bit of a false start, but last year's were a triumph and Samsung's S90C was able to offer richer images than the LG C3 OLED TV for the same price.
However, QD-OLED screens are only available in 55-inch, 65-inch and 77-inch sizes – so in its quest to offer larger TVs, Samsung actually started using LG's W-OLED panels to provide a 83-inch version of the . S90C. The problem? That panel performs differently! Different colors, different brightness – we had to clarify that our glowing recommendation of the Samsung S90C did not apply to the 83-inch size.
And so now we have a new situation where the Samsung S90D adds two more W-OLED screens to that already confusing situation. This is what the line-up looks like:
| Mate | Panel type |
|---|---|
| 42-in | W-OLED |
| 48-in | W-OLED |
| 55-in | QD OLED 2nd generation |
| 65-in | QD OLED 2nd generation |
| 77-in | QD OLED 2nd generation |
| 83-in | W-OLED |
Remember, this is not an academic difference; Last year, the QD-OLED S90C models were more than 30% brighter than the equivalent W-OLED LG C3 models. And now Samsung has increased the brightness of the S90D by another 20%!
We don't know if Samsung has done anything to boost the brightness of the W-OLED models compared to last year – LG has done so in the C4 this year and the results are very impressive – but it means there's a huge performance surge in the S90D, depending on which model you buy.
Personally, I'm obviously not a fan of this because it makes my job harder, but in general I don't like anything that makes the already confusing world of TVs even stranger.
I assume the reason Samsung is doing this is to make the S90D an even stronger competitor to the LG C4 than last year's model – this means Samsung has matched all the same sizes as LG's TV.
But I really think they should have been called something else. Samsung comes with a model called the S85D, a W-OLED screen of the same size as the QD-OLED screens; why don't we make the 42, 48 and 83-inch models part of this range?
It appears the availability of these new S90D sizes may vary by country (only the 48-inch has been confirmed for the UK, for example), and there's no word yet on pricing or an exact release date, though I'd wager they will be released around March or April, based on Samsung's release schedule in previous years.
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