Samsung's QD OLED technology has been winning awards left and right including here on our own channel
where we gushed over it so hard when we first saw it that we put this in the title as a joke and
Then gushed about it some more. My name is Plouffe and I have an AW3423DW at home the Alienware QD OLED
I have the AW3423DW, but then a few months ago disaster struck
Ratings image retention testing found that despite Samsung's claims to the contrary
Not only did QD OLED suffer burn-in it was worse than conventional OLED technologies
Which is a super weird thing to point out 30 seconds into a video that is
Sponsored by Samsung display this time
That is unless it turned out that everything was actually fine and Samsung's confidence in the technology has been entirely
Warranted they are confident
Not only did they not bother to send over pretty much any sponsored talking points
They gave us carte blanche to run any tests we wanted on the new generation QD OLED displays
under this sheet
So we did and these things are wild
Brandon our display expert from the lab described them as
Basically perfect in every way. I am talking near reference monitor levels of color accuracy
Unbeatable viewing angles and for all you gamers out there. Here's a spoiler
This is a pursuit camera shot showing motion blur on the 1440p
360 Hertz panel the motion blur. I know right what motion blur?
Oh, yeah
And did I mention for all the ultra wide haters out there that the new ones are available in a 16 by 9 aspect ratio?
I freaking can't wait to game on these things. Plouffe already told me he's buying one
Yeah.
Got him. It's true. Keep an eye out on Facebook marketplace for his old alienware
We're gonna kick things off with the 31 and a half inch 4K display this one only runs at
240 Hertz, but between the motion clarity and just the overall image sharpness is 4K eSports gaming coming, you guys?
I mean with a powerful enough GPU. We've got this running on a 4090. We are getting
380 frames per second at 4K with anti-aliasing cranked. I don't think I've ever seen this game
look this sharp not even close. Look at these power lines
No matter what angle I look at them from I don't see any stair-stepping, okay if I get this close
Now speaking of being this close. I'm sure some of you are looking at this going, yeah, I'm not into the whole
curve thing, but according to Samsung the panel technology is flexible both meanings intended
So it's up to the display integrator to decide if they want it to be flat or if they want it to be curved
As good as CS2 looked it is nothing compared to how Halo Infinite looks with HDR support here
But you're gonna notice immediately that we're no longer able to push
300 plus FPS we're at more like a hundred and fifty even on an RTX 4090
However, just because your graphics card today can't take full advantage of a monitor like this doesn't necessarily
mean that you should avoid it.
I mean, it's not quite an Apple's pro display XDR territory for pixel density. At this size a hundred and forty pixels per inch.
Looks freaking awesome
not to mention that 240 Hertz just feels good no matter what it is that you're doing it makes the whole computer feel more responsive and
even if you don't have the budget for the GPU today
there are options to at least get you close to your target frame rate.
You can lower the in-game resolution turn down your graphics settings. You can take advantage of technologies like DLSS FSR and XCSS or
Or you can just wait for AMD and NVIDIA to ship something better
Even if that last option is kind of a bummer
Speaking of bummers, one downside of QD OLED is color fringing on high contrast lines and text
Keeping with the theme of this video Samsung display is meeting this feedback head-on and was like
new ones are awesome. Go ahead and take pictures. We've got nothing to hide. So we did it's still not perfect
But at a hundred twenty-five percent scaling in Windows to match the size on the previous gen
AW3423DW it is markedly improved. Then if we move up to a hundred and fifty percent scaling
Which is what you're looking at right now and pretty normal for Windows on a 4K display of this size
It's pretty hard to spot
I mean I can see it but only because I'm looking for it. It doesn't bother me
So the question now is how have they improved clarity so much both with the fringing and just overall?
pixel density. It all has to do with their new Pico inkjet quantum dot printing process.
Remember QD OLED technology works by using a blue
self-emitting OLED layer that then shines through quantum dots to create bright and precise colors.
And to achieve such a high PPI on a screen this size
they have had to make some serious changes on both the hardware and software level.
Not only did they need to work with the manufacturers to retool the heads and
nozzles for their printing but the quantum dot formula itself had to change as well.
For the right flow the viscosity needs to be perfect
If it's too thick or too low pressure when you're spraying it
You can end up with issues like nozzle blockages if it's too thin you get suboptimal splattering
And what I mean by that is that when the droplet hits the screen layer you want it to spread out a little bit
But not too much or it's not gonna stay within the subpixel area
It also has to maintain a specific thickness once it's landed for the light to pass through it correctly. Good lord
that's a lot of variables.
And we're only talking about the panels today
So if you want more details on the various QD OLED monitors that are gonna come out from Samsung displays partners
You're gonna have to stay tuned to our ShortCircuit channel for coverage of those
But if they all perform anywhere near as well as these do
Wow
this
1440p 360 Hertz model has some of the best HDR color accuracy that we have ever seen
outside of reference monitors that typically cost tens of
thousands of dollars
speaking of
Samsung also revealed a 55 inch QD OLED reference display the XMP 550 earlier this year and at
only 20 grand it should be way less than the previous OLED competition as
For our 4K panel out of the box set to creator mode
Our SDR accuracy was a Delta E average of 0.8
With a maximum of 2 in HDR set to peak 1000 mode with luminance error
We measured an average Delta E of 3.8 and a maximum of 15.7. That is wild
these are also the first OLED panels to be Pantone and Pantone skin tone validated and
The monitors are reaching 80% coverage of BT 2020 while Samsung display is claiming though
We haven't measured this yet that the TVs will do an otherworldly
90% likely thanks to their increased peak brightness of
3000 nits one of the keys to this performance is their quantum enhancer or as they refer to it the soul of QD OLED
We don't have a ton of specifics about it
but they've used machine learning to improve the neural logic that drives the pixels and this is a
staple across all of the new panels giving us this new level of performance all while drawing the same amount of power and
while improving longevity
Their new compensation algorithm is supposed to be one and a half times better than before in the monitors and two times better in the TVs
and even the old one was pretty good it turns out at least when it worked and
That ended up being a big part of what RTINGS was running into when they were testing burn-in and image retention a lot of the
panels simply weren't running their proper compensation cycles and panel refreshes while the competition was
So after some firmware updates and manual cycling the issues with the previous gen 2 panels
significantly improved. Now we haven't done a major burn-in test under worst possible conditions
But several people here at LMG including some who will never freaking shut up about it
Have been daily driving QD OLED panels either as their TV or their monitor for the last year or two
Actually that includes me and so far the previous generation seems completely fine in normal use and if this latest
2024 generation really is that much stronger
I think it might finally be time to just start enjoying this golden age of premium tier monitors
I've said it before but I'll say it again
this is truly the new god-king of display technology and
What's really cool is if you want to save a buck and buy the last generation
That's really good, too. We're gonna have some of the previous QD OLED monitors linked down below. For now,
I get to check out the 1440p 360 Hertz panel that you unfortunately can't buy just yet
Sorry.
The image clarity isn't quite on par because we're running at 1440p
But at this kind of frame rate at this kind of size
1440p is such a sweet spot for running even modern triple-A games at
very smooth frame rates like I'm getting anywhere from
220 to 250 frames per second and it's just oh the motion clarity is just
Un-freaking-lievable don't take my word for it though guys. We took some motion blur shots of smooth frog so you can see for yourself
That is not a picture of a still image
And if you look closely you can see a teeny tiny bit of blur in the text above the frogs
But that is basically it
Absolutely
Incredible now, let's talk about latency the 4K panel
We looked at earlier measured 2.7 milliseconds of latency at 240 Hertz
and this guy is 2.1 when you consider that the theoretical perfect latency at
240 and 360 Hertz is 2.1 and 1.4 respectively
That means each of these displays is adding about 0.6 and 0.7 milliseconds of processing time
Show me a human who can perceive that and I will show you a big fat faker
one thing to consider if you're thinking about the
1440p panel over the 4K is that text clarity is improved over the previous gen
But not by as much here the new and improved sub pixel layout does help
But it has the same pixel density as before so color fringing may be noticeable if you're sensitive to it
With that said this panel measured even better color accuracy in SDR and HDR in SDR
We measured an average of 0.5 Delta E and a max of 0.9 and in HDR
It averaged 5.2 and hit a max of 12.5 with luminance errors. That is absolutely stunning
Now one of the challenges that Samsung display has faced in figuring out how to market these things is that while the performance is
Obvious to the eye, it's difficult to explain
Why it's so good unless the listener happens to be familiar with the Helmholtz
Kohlrausch effect which is an explanation of how color saturation
Makes something appear brighter on one display compared to another one
Even if they are both at the same level of luminance.
Here, let me show you. These two images are the same luminance
But the colorful one obviously pops more and while this effect has been known for a long time
it's been very difficult to measure but Samsung display is claiming that now it can be measured with their new XCR or
experienced color range testing methodology
Explaining XCR and other color appearance models like see CAM16
Beyond the scope of this video
But we're hoping to have a Techquickie out later after speaking further with Samsung displays experts and getting some other inputs
Obviously Samsung display is building this out to market their own TVs and monitors so you can stay tuned for that
But for now, all you guys need to know is that QD OLED can deliver a brighter appearing image even at the same luminance
sauce
my eyes.
And that's the bottom line.
But Samsung wanted us to throw one last little bit in here. Shout out the Nobel Prize winners who helped get us here
Doctors Moungi Bawendi
Alexei Ekimov and Louis Brus great job everyone
Thank you so much for helping us witness some of the most amazing display technology that I've ever seen and thanks again
Samsung display for making this video possible not only by sponsoring it but even just like getting us access to this stuff ahead of time
This is the kind of thing I love to do
If you guys enjoyed this video make sure to check out our review of the 34 inch QD
OLED version of this from a couple of years ago. It was already that good and this is
even better