Samsung teases blockbuster new event that will reveal all-new QLED TVs

Samsung will hold its latest Unbox and Discover event later today, focused on its all-new Neo QLED 8K TVs. These top-of-the-line models promise some of the best picture quality available from the South Korean firm’s lineup. Samsung offered a first glimpse of these new TVs during its keynote presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas back in January, but with pre-orders set to begin on May, the company will hold a dedicated event to showcase the best features.

The Unbox and Discover event will begin at 3pm BST (11pm Korea Standard Time, 10am Eastern Daylight Time) and will be streamed on Samsung.com. Ahead of the keynote, Samsung has shared a teaser trailer which shows a number of popular viewing experiences, including following along with fitness classes, playing video games and enjoying movies on a Smart TV. It suggests that Samsung will have new software or hardware features to announce that will improve these everyday use cases.

For those who don’t know, Neo QLED stands for Neo (or new) Quantum Light-Emitting Diode. QLED is a variation of the popular LED panels, which use backlights to illuminate the pixels on-screen, this is a completely different approach to OLED, which sees the pixels illuminate themselves.

If there’s only a small number of backlights in the LED panel, the surrounding pixels will be illuminated – leading to the trademark grey shades, compared to the cavernous blacks found on OLEDs. With QLED, Samsung ditches thousands of tiny LED lights to light the pixels on-screen and replaces them with smaller, finer, and granular sand-like LED particles.

According to Samsung, this means viewers will benefit from “an even wider range of brightness, up to a billion colours, better contrast ratio – altogether precision in colour and light control.”

The latest range of QLEDs will be available with both 4K and 8K resolutions, Samsung says. Although there’s still a relatively small amount of content available in 8K, the South Korean firm is able to upscale existing 4K and 1080p films and boxsets to take advantage of the higher pixel count. The Artificial Intelligent system that boosts the pixel count in your favourite shows in real-time is found in Samsung’s Neural Quantum Processor.

Both 4K and 8K versions of the new tellies offer refresh rates of up to 144Hz, which is higher than is currently supported on the latest generation of games consoles, including the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, which both top-out 120Hz. Top-channel speakers are integrated with Object Tracking Sound, so the sound will seemingly emanate from where the object is located on-screen. These top-channels speakers will be used when you connect a Samsung with the aim of making whatever you’re watching feel more immersive

During the CES tradeshow earlier this year, Samsung confirmed that its Neo QLED range would be available in 65-, 75-, and 85-inch models for the 8K panels. Express.co.uk will be in the (virtual) crowd during the Unbox and Discover event today, so stay tuned for the latest announcements about the new QLED range from Samsung.