While 4K is finally becoming mainstream enough that it’s affordable for the masses, 8K is on the horizon. Today at CES 2019, Samsung announced its latest QLED 8K TVs with sizes ranging from 65-inches to 85-inches.
Samsung’s latest 8K TVs features Quantum Processors, Quantum HDR 32x, and 8K AI Upscaling. This means that no matter what you send to your TV, it’s going to be upscaled as best possible for the highest-quality experience Samsung can provide.
Samsung launches pre-orders for its QLED 8K TVs
8K is kinda hard to comprehend. 4K is 4x the resolution of 1080p (meaning that you could fit 4x the pixels of 1080p in a single 4K display). 8K ups the game again, by giving 16x more pixels than 1080p, and 4x more than normal 4K. For comparison, 1080p offers 2,000,000 total pixels while 8K offers 33,000,000 pixels.
What does this mean for you? Well, right now, not a ton. 8K is immensely hard to stream, and most services are just starting to launch 4K content for streaming natively. But, for the future, 8K will offer a much higher-quality picture than 4K could ever dream of.
Last year at CES 2018, I had the opportunity to demo a prototype 8K TV, and it was stunning. For me, the difference between 1080p and 4K was always “nice”, but never as big as everyone talked about. When I was looking at the 8K TV last year, it looked like I was viewing a window into the real world. And no, that’s not me dramatizing it. It really was that high quality to my eyes.
With 8K, however, comes new technology. 4K introduced things like HDR10, HLG HDR, and even Dolby Vision. You’ll now have “Direct Full Array” backlighting, which from what we can tell is just a better version of full array dimming. The official resolution is 7,680×4,320 and Samsung offers 240Hz as the motion refresh rate. It supports 10-bit color and has different HDR standards depending on the size you choose.
Built into this TV, however, Samsung offers 60W of sound output with a woofer and 4.2-channel setup. That’s quite impressive for a TV’s built-in audio, but for the price tag these fetch, it’s a welcomed addition.
Pricing and availability
Samsung’s QLED 8K TVs start at $4,999.99 for a 65-inch and should begin shipping the week of February 24th, 2019. The pricing goes up to $14,999.999 for an 85-inch, and these TVs are sure to be the talk among your friends if you pick one up.
It took 4K several years to fully catch on, and right now there is barely any content even being shot and rendered out in native 8K. Hopefully, this new technology will pick up and become mainstream faster than 4K did, but only time will tell.
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