If there's anything you come to CES for, it's the televisions. And if there's anyone's TVs you come to CES for, it's Samsung. And the Korean manufacturer has brought it in 2020.
The name of the game this year — again — is 8K resolution. While you're probably still trying to watch as much 4K content as you can — and that's still a bigger struggle than we'd like it to be — the industry has been moving on for a few years now with the next-generation resolution, because that's what it does.
And Samsung isn't just focused on the resolution itself. That's just math, after all. It's also making it look even better on screen, as well as improving the overall design so that you've got more than just a flat panel in your home.
Bezels are doing their best to disappear this year, too. Or at least they're about as minimal as they can be at this point, and it's pretty incredible to see.
So let's dive into what Samsung's brought us at CES 2020.
Samsung 2020 QLED 8K TV and MicroLED
An 8K TV in and of itself isn't really new. But they're getting ridiculously cool. The new QLED line from Samsung in 2020 is headed up by the Q950. It's Tizen-based, of course, which is the semi-open-source operating system the company has been using for years. (That's in contrast to things like webOS from LG, or Android TV, or Roku TV.)
There's also plenty of AI baked in — because what doesn't have AI baked in at this point. And that'll do things like automatically adjust brightness and contrast based on the ambient light in the room. It'll also do its own thing to compress the video so that you're not sucking as much bandwidth as you might otherwise. (And Samsung says it's working directly with Amazon on this to scale up standard-definition content in Prime Video to 4K.)
But what you'll absolutely notice is the near lack of a bezel. Samsung says there's a nearly 99 percent screen-to-body ratio, which essentially makes the bezel disappear. And the TV itself is 15mm thick and has a completely flat back, so it'll fit flush against a wall.
And somehow Samsung has managed to cram killer audio into the Q950 as well. It's got speakers on each side of the display, and woofers in the back for virtual 5.1 audio. Will that be better than external speakers? Perhaps not. But it's still an incredible feat in a device that's less than 2 centimeters thick.
And 2020's 8K TVs are making use of MicroLED panels across the board, from the 75-inch size all the way up to a monstrous 150 inches. That's allowing for the thinness and minuscule bezels. And it just looks good .
The Sero goes vertical
But what's CES without some ridiculous product that you'll never actually buy yourself? This year for Samsung that's The Sero. It's already been released in South Korea and is going global in 2020.
The gist? It goes vertical in conjunction with your smartphone. So whether you're watching video in the usual landscape orientation, or someone's vertical vlog, the TV will adapt to that presentation. It's a crazy idea, and even crazier to actually see implemented.
Crazy good? Crazy bad? Crazy expensive? All three, most likely.
