Samsung smart home tech fails to materialise
Samsung has gone all guns blazing for 8K TVs, with its new QLED 8K TVs. The company is launching the tech into 65, 75, 82 and 85-inch, and is releasing the first set, the Q900R, at the end of September.
Offering 16 times the resolution of standard HD, the 8K QLED features the company’s quantum dot technology for better colour handling. It matches the 4000 nit brightness, which Samsung claims is favoured by Hollywood studios, and boasts HDR10+, which adapts colour handling on a scene-by-scene basis.
Essential reading: The best smart TVs to buy today
While 8K screens have been demoed frequently over the past few year, the likes of Samsung and LG reckon it’s time to start selling them to the public. Of course, this is serious early adopter technology and not for the serious mass market for a while.
Just like 4K, the technology will be met with questions about where 8K content can actually be viewed. That means it’s the quality of upscaling which will be a true marker of these TVs for the foreseeable future. Samsung’s QLED 8K range aims to do this via a dedicated Quantum Processor 8K, which the company claims will use AI to bring lesser content to a “level compatible with 8K regardless of the original source quality or format.”
Samsung explained that in 2013 just 3% of TVs bought were 4K, but today that’s up to 70% – and 97% in the large screen market. Back then it seemed that UHD content would never arrive, but both Netflix 4K and the likes of Sky Q are growing fast.
Samsung also announced a 49-inch version of The Frame TV, and a host of new wallpapers for its statement TV.
Smart home MIA
Samsung often uses IFA to showcase smart home technology, but disappointingly there was precious little new on display. The company talked a lot about Bixby and its aims to introduce AI into the home – but in terms of new product we were left wanting.
The new Dual Cook Flex smart oven, unveiled back in June got a fair amount of the limelight, with its flexible door, which enables you to use it as two or one single oven.
The smart stuff comes with Cooking Guide – AI driven smarts for adapting cooking controls to the ingredients you’re using. This is similar to the LG ThinQ products unveiled at CES, and similarly wooly on the benefits.
We’re at IFA checking out all the latest smart home innovations, so keep it locked to The Ambient over the next 48 hours.
