Earlier this year at CES, Samsung wowed attendees with a 146-inch MicroLED monster it dubbed “The Wall.” The TV was easily one of the most impressive at the show, but we didn’t expect to see it in living rooms any time soon. It turns out, though, that Samsung appears much further along than we thought will begin mass-producing MicroLED displays in September and plans to begin selling MicroLED TVs as early as next year, the Korea Herald reports.
It’s still too early to know exactly what sizes of MicroLED TVs Samsung will be selling, but it plans to aim for the home luxury market, so while for practicality’s sake the TVs may not be 146-inch behemoths, they likely won’t compete with Samsung’s QLED TVs either. We do know that Samsung’s current MicroLED strategy uses small tablet-sized panels in a modular fashion to make The Wall. If the company is still using that approach, then the size of the panels will have to be made smaller to make suitable screen sizes for home use.
There is no word on what the pricing might be, either, but considering Samsung’s use of the term “luxury,” the new displays won’t be cheap. That said, the president of Samsung’s visual display business Han Jong-hee said that “the price will not be as high as people think.”
As the name implies, MicroLED is a type of light-emitting diode (LED) that is much smaller, similar to organic LEDs (OLED). Both are small enough to make up individual pixels, but Samsung claims that it has an advantage over OLED as it doesn’t use organic materials, which it says makes its MicroLEDs longer-lasting and less susceptible to burn-in.
Samsung is in a position to know, as it has used OLED displays for its smartphones, though it decided to use its own QLED technology for TVs. While those TVs are great, we still tend to prefer OLED displays for their deep blacks and incredible contrast. As for MicroLED, we’ll have to see. Samsung’s “The Wall” was truly impressive at a distance when we saw it at CES, but when we got closer, the individual panels making up the gigantic display were easy to see, especially when the brightness was lower. Samsung will likely address this issue in its consumer TVs, but the jury is still out for now.
If you’re looking for a TV upgrade, it’s probably not worth holding out for MicroLED. Instead, take a look at our list of the best TVs available right now. If you want to know more about this promising new technology, take a look at our comparison of MicroLED and OLED.
