Samsung announces QD-OLED – with a major flaw?

There’s one thing television enthusiasts agree on: 2022 could be a great year for TVs. Samsung is planning its OLED comeback. Said comeback is called QD-OLED.

This new technology promises to eliminate OLED’s two greatest weaknesses. QD-OLED is supposed to:

1. Provide a brighter image
2. Reduce the risk of burn-in

Samsung throws in the more vibrant and vivid colours as a nice bonus. LG, the OLED monopolist to date, is likely on edge. For the first time in years, QD-OLED could be what QLED or Mini LED promised to be but never quite became – namely, serious competition.

But now, Heise Online, a German tech news portal, claims to have discovered a glaring weakness in Samsung’s QD-OLED.

A major flaw: is there anything to it?

The shortcoming was noticed in a review of Alienware’s new gaming monitor, the AW3423DW. Its QD-OLED panels are manufactured by Samsung Display, a Samsung subsidiary. The scathing verdict:

In its review, Heise Online criticises the fact that high-contrast edges come with disturbing colour gradients. According to the magazine, the issue starts with the font, continues with «Windows» windows and ends with «Cyberpunk 2077», for example, when looking at signs or skyscrapers against the backdrop of the sky.

The culprit behind this is the pixel arrangement. Let’s recap: every TV consists of millions of pixels arranged in a grid. Each individual pixel contains a row of three tiny subpixels made up of:

1. A red subpixel
2. A blue subpixel
3. A green subpixel

Instead of putting these subpixels in rows, Samsung has opted to arrange them in triangles.

This is what causes the colourful edges. According to Heise Online, the horizontal lines of light elements against a dark background are green at the top and purple-red at the bottom. For dark elements against a light background, the opposite is true. Heise Online has ruled out colour undersampling as the cause.

Are QD-OLED TVs also affected?

The question is, «Can the results from the monitor be applied to TVs?» Yes. Heise Online has already received a presale model of a QD-OLED TV from Samsung for testing. It reported the exact same problems with high-contrast edges on the TV as on the Alienware gaming monitor. Author Ulrike Kuhlmann therefore concludes that TV panels use the same pixel structure as gaming monitor panels.

Samsung Deutschland (Germany) confirmed to Kuhlmann that the pixel structure in the presale model corresponds to that in the final model.

QD-OLED: to wait or not to wait?

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to say at the moment. Samsung has scheduled the launch of the S95B in May. The South Korean company has also bid farewell to original name «QD-OLED»; instead opting to simply refer to its TVs as «OLED». Sony is also aiming for a May release for its QD-OLED TV, the A95K.

But if the past few months are anything to go by, delays are to be expected. It’s quite possible that the TVs won’t be launched until June, or later. Conversely, this means that Samsung and Sony (who will (most likely) purchase its QD-OLED panel from Samsung) still have time to fix the problem with a software update – assuming that’s even possible.

Or necessary.

Who else has noticed the problem?

So far, only Heise Online has mentioned the coloured edges. Numerous other industry experts, including Luke Larsen from Digital Trends, can’t stop raving about the Alienware gaming monitor in their reviews.

Interestingly, Larsen even shows clips with skyscrapers from «Cyberpunk 2077» in his video, which is one of the glaring negative examples in the Heise article. Larson doesn’t mention anything about coloured edges, though. This is not so say that Heise Online is wrong; the pictures provided are proof enough. What it could mean is that the coloured edges are barely noticeable, if at all, in the moving image, or that they’re only noticeable if you look very closely at them, which is more likely to happen with a monitor than with a TV.

Either way, teething problems in new display technologies are normal and to be expected. Whether you want to deal with them as an early adopter is your decision. Personally, I always advise waiting at least a year or two before investing in new technologies. There tends to be a lot of room for improvement, especially at the beginning. It’s quite possible that QD-OLED will be better and cheaper next year – and more finished.