 OLED displays might not be the best you can get for long. There's a new technology from Samsung Display who sponsored this video that at least on paper is better in every way. And it's not micro LED, it's OLED, but a new kind of OLED called QD OLED. And Samsung Display is so confident in it that they pulled the unprecedented move of flying us and our testing equipment out for an early preview of their TVs and gaming monitors. And after seeing them side by side with the current best of the best, yeah, I think I better just say it. This is the new top of the line and I want one. Stick around and we're gonna show you guys how you can spot a QD OLED just by the picture quality itself. But first, picture the quality of our sponsor. Wait, this is sponsored by Samsung. I out-segwayed myself. If you've shopped for a premium TV in the last few years, you've probably had to answer the following question. Am I gonna be watching in a dark basement or a sun bathed living room? That's because neither of the current leading technologies look their best in both of these scenarios. No matter how many local dimming zones you add, an LCD is always going to glow a little and the OLED TVs on the market are simply not bright enough to be impressive or in some cases even usable in very bright environments. But with QD OLED, this variable is all but removed from the equation because like a regular OLED, each pixel can be turned off entirely for perfect blacks and we measured 27% greater luminance blasting full screen white compared to an LG G1, which uses LG's EVO panel that is itself 20% brighter than what you would find on most of their lineup, including the C1, which is what most people buy. And in smaller areas, it gets even better. We measured a thousand nits over a 10% patch and 1500 nits over a 3% patch, which is a lot bigger than you might think on a 55 or 65 inch screen. So yeah, while an LCD might actually still be better for the deck of your yacht, these new QD OLEDs are closing the gap substantially. Of course, you could be one of those people who doesn't really get why everyone's so obsessed with brightness these days, but don't click away because it's not just that these displays are brighter, it's what they do with their brightness. The first thing you'll notice are the reds. They're simply put like nothing you've ever seen on an OLED before. And they're in full force in Spider-Man Miles Morales here. From the suit to the fire, the LG C1 looks brownie orange by comparison. And in a game like this, it's not just eye candy, it's immersion. Like in person, this burning building looks hot, while this one looks about as threatening as this quality desk pad from lttstore.com. Then there's the green. During this mall chase, look at these signs. Instead of looking like paper posters, they pop like backlit advertisements should, making them all feel like a vibrant, purposeful setting. On the LG, they're just kind of a generic asset. Now, unfortunately, we had pretty bad internet in the demo room, so we couldn't use our shield as much as we wanted. But if what we've seen is anything to go on, I really wanna see the Shire on one of these. The most magnificent color upgrade though was gold. And there's a really cool color science reason for why. We all know that white is created by mixing R, G, and B, but they're not mixed in equal proportion. There's actually less blue because it's the highest energy wavelength. But if you remove the blue altogether, you're left with just red plus green, which makes yellow. Therefore, yellow is the brightest saturated color possible, and it is just stunning on the QD OLED. Whether you're looking at a bird, a statue, or a landscape, current OLEDs look brown and drab by comparison. And this improvement in saturation means that even if you turn the brightness of a QD OLED way down, say you're in a light-controlled theater room and you don't want it to be eye-searingly bright, it will still appear brighter than the current tech because humans perceive increased saturation as increased brightness. Like it's one thing to describe it, but it's a whole other thing to actually cap our HDR test signal to both TVs at exactly a thousand nits, and yet have our eyes tell us, no, these are different. But it all makes total sense once you understand the hardware inside. These new QD OLEDs use only blue emitters as their light source. Then, since blue is a high-frequency wave, it can be stepped down to green and red. That's done with quantum dots that are inkjet printed directly onto the emitters in an RGB sub-pixel pattern. This blue light to red or green conversion is done super efficiently with only 10% of the light being lost. And then on the blue sub-pixel, there's no color conversion, though the light does pass through a clear scattering material to mimic the quantum dots ability to spread light out evenly in all directions. This improves viewing angles. The end result is that nearly all of the light from the source actually makes it to the front of the display. And it does so with very precise definitions of red, green, and blue. This is in stark contrast to how W-OLEDs, the kind made by LG, who produce virtually every large format OLED panel on the planet, work. Instead of starting with a single color, those have emitter material for each primary color. So R, G, and B. These then combine into white inside the display before then being separated back out by color filters at the sub-pixels. Unlike with quantum dot color conversion, these filters block all of the colors they're not selecting for. And what they do let through has a relatively loose standard for what's considered red or green. Combine all of that with the fact that red and green OLED emitters just aren't as powerful as the blue ones to begin with. And you start to understand the W in W-OLED. It stands for white, because there's an additional clear sub-pixel that lets white light shine through to help make the image brighter. This is why the kind of brightness matters. If you add up the brightness that you're getting from just the red, green, and blue sub-pixels, on the W-OLED, you get a sum that is way less than the display's overall measured brightness in nits. That's because that white pixel is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Now, on a picture of a glacier, you probably won't care or notice, but on a landscape or a golden coin, it's like brightening the image by turning up the gain instead of by doing it properly. QD-OLED though, add up your R, G, and B, and that's the whole enchilada. Armed with that knowledge then, let's take a look at some color charts. This thumbnail shaped area represents every color perceivable by the human eye. The triangle is the BT-2020 color space, which is pretty much the gold standard for modern displays. The points on the triangle are the R, G, B color primaries, and every color within the triangle can be created by mixing those three colors. See how on the G1W-OLED, the primaries don't quite meet the corners? That's why this TV can only create 75% of the colors in the gamut. But on the QD-OLED, the reds and greens push closer to the edges for a result of over 90% coverage of BT-2020. Multiply that 2D cross section over the entire luminance range that these displays can produce, and you've got a color volume that is unprecedented in the consumer space. That's why they look more lifelike, more lively, and often more red to the extent that I think we could probably pick out a QD-OLED out of a lineup just based on their warmer look. But who cares how good it looks if it's just gonna burn in, right? That's a valid concern. But honestly, I'm not too worried. Remember the bit about how much more light efficient these displays are? Well, that means that the emitters don't have to be driven with as much voltage for the same brightness, which should give them a longer lifespan. Unfortunately, Samsung display would not quote a specific image retention expectations, but here's what we do know. Number one, in addition to the prevention techniques that are found on conventional OLEDs, these new panels have real-time image-ticking compensation. So it's basically like the program that I ran on my 48-inch C10, except that it works on a pixel-by-pixel basis in real time, so there's no user intervention required. And since it's continuous, it could extend the lifetime of the display beyond one that relies on a manual process. And number two, they're making gaming monitors, which means that they are clearly damn confident that our start menus aren't gonna be stuck on them after a few months. We got to see a curved 34-inch ultra-wide Alienware display equipped with a Samsung display QD OLED panel that made the local dimming LCD beside it look absolutely stupid. G-Sync Ultimate, OLED's instantaneous pixel response times and a 175 hertz refresh rate come together to create what has a good chance of being the new god of gaming monitors. It even has RGB, or well, all monitors have RGB, on the front. It has it on the back as well. So get subscribed for a full review of that. But do we think everyone should rush out and buy one of these next-gen displays when they launch in early 2022? That depends. And yes, I give these displays high praise for days, but that was in the context of a side-by-side comparison that was obviously curated by Samsung Display since they flew us down here to see it and sponsored this video. And yeah, a QNED mini-LED or a W OLED might look like it's from the Stone Age next to a QD OLED, but the reality of it is, if you were to walk into your friend's living room and see that same QNED mini-LED TV, you'd probably be really impressed with it. I sure was when I first saw one. If I had to quantify it, I'd say that these new units are 15 to 25% better than the W OLEDs that we have today, depending on how you score them. By the way, I didn't even mention they can do 4K 144 hertz on the TVs. Hmm. But the issue is you can count on paying a premium for all that extra shine. Overall, we don't know how much that is, so whether you buy one or not, innovation and competition in the OLED space, the penetration of OLED into the gaming monitor space, and the ability for creators to more articulately communicate their vision to audiences gives me anything but the blues for the future. Oh, I get it, the blues, because it's a purely blue light with quantum dots. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe go check out our QNED TV video. That was the whole thing. They're super impressive though.