Samsung turns the smart TV on its head at CES 2020

It’s CES – the first of a new decade – and that can mean only one thing: Samsung wants to show you all of the weird and wonderful TVs it’s been working on.

Samsung has historically used Vegas to update its design-focused TV line, featuring things like Frame, a TV-art-installation hybrid television set (and Ambient award winner).

Read this: The best smart home devices of CES 2020

This year the headline act was Sero, a 4K smart TV that can rotate on its axis into a vertical position for viewing smartphone content like Instagram and Snapchat. Yes, this may be the first TV that comes TIkTok-ready out of the box. There’s AirPlay 2 as well, so iPhone owners can easily transmit content to it.

when Golden Girls comes on and you gotta respect that 4:3 aspect ratio #CES2020pic.twitter.com/OpifLeBX1g

— Hugh Langley (@HughLangley) January 6, 2020

But if it sounds familiar, that’s because Samsung actually announced the Sero early last year, but until now it’s only been available in Korea. The reception has apparently been good enough to warrant a launch in the West.

To be honest, we were skeptical about Sero when it was announced last April: the idea of a TV that could swivel into portrait mode seemed gimmicky, but we were willing to be proven wrong.

Turns out, we might be. However, we still don’t have a price, and that could be the sticking point.

Vertical vision not your bag? Samsung had plenty more to show off, including an eye-juicing 8K TV called the Q950, which comes in three sizes (65, 75 and 85 inches) and supposedly has a screen-to-body ratio of nearly 99%. Basically, Samsung is fat-shaming the rest of the TV market and we’re fine with it.

Samsung’s also pulling off some neat AI tricks to upscale existing HD and 4K content up to 8K – but that’s mostly because there’s just not much 8K content around right now.

As for smarts, Samsung also says all future “premium” smart TVs will come with both Amazon Alexa and the Google Assistant inside, alongside the lesser-loved Bixby.

Finally, we had new sizes and colors for Samsung’s Frame and Serif TVs. The Serif (shown at the top of the article) will come in 43-, 49- and 55-inch models for 2020, and still mixing midcentury looks with modern smarts.

Meanwhile Frame will come in six sizes, starting at 32 inches and stretching to 75 inches, also using Samsung’s fancy dual LED feature for more accurate colors.

And if none of that does it for you, there will still be plenty of gorgeous 4K smart TVs to pick from in 2020.