STACK #199 May 2021

LIFE TECH FEATURE

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SAMSUNG NEO TINY LEDS , BIG RESULTS

Words Anthony Horan

A s a long-time innovator in LCD screen technology, Samsung has always pushed the limits of what’s possible with the most widely used display tech on the planet. Since the late 1990s, when they were well on the way to selling 100 million TVs worldwide, the company has invested huge effort in refining LCD displays and pushing quality to ever-higher levels. The pinnacle of those years of experience has been QLED, Samsung’s quantum-dot display technology that vastly improved brightness and colour quality which, when combined with vastly increased resolution, led to some jaw-droppingly lovely TVs to sit in front of for 4K movies, sport, or just everyday viewing. With 2021’s range of TVs, Samsung’s pushing the limits of technology even further with what they’ve named the Neo QLED display. Neo combines the very latest version of Samsung’s QLED display panels with a new LED backlighting system that’s a massive upgrade to everything that’s come before. While Samsung’s full-array LEDTVs have long been reliably brilliant, the Neo tech ups the ante in a big way. The secret sauce behind it is MiniLED. In a regular QLEDTV with full-array backlighting, there would be hundreds of individual LEDs illuminating the screen from behind, controlled by the TV’s smarts to change

(1/40th the size of regular backlight LEDs) split into hundreds of individual zones across the screen. Combined with the high resolution of the quantum dot panel itself, that means that all four Neo QLEDTVs can deliver deeper blacks and a much higher overall dynamic range, meaning spectacular results with HDR content – from streaming to 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray to video games. And the two top Neo models take this tech even further with Quantum Matrix Technology Pro, doubling the amount of individual dimmable zones lighting the screen – with spectacular results. The four Neo QLED models for 2021 all include features to make the content you’re watching sing, no matter what it may be. Motion Rate 200 ensures that fast-moving content such as sports is displayed with pin- point sharpness and motion, with no blurring or “ghosting.” Advanced Game Mode will be warmly welcomed by everyone with the new generation of game consoles – as well as PCs – with its support for 120Hz gaming at 4K, Variable Refresh Rate, Auto Low-Latency Mode, and the legendary Samsung fast response time

Thousands of tiny LEDs combined with the quantum dot panel means deeper blacks and much higher dynamic range

brightness in dozens of separate “zones” to make sure that darker areas of the screen didn’t have that “washed out” look that you get with low-end TVs (where the black background to the opening credits of a movie looks a washed-out grey, for example). Neo QLED takes that concept to a new level of precision control with what Samsung’s calling Quantum Matrix Technology. This cutting-edge cleverness involves the use of thousands of tiny LEDs

Quantum Dot? Far from just being another buzz-term used in advertising, quantum dot displays are a very real technology which greatly improves the colour accuracy of LCD displays lit by LEDs. Samsung continues to lead the way in pushing this tech to new levels.

22 MAY 2021

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