Samsung QD-OLED: Can it upset the TV status quo in 2022?

The Koreans are making moves to achieve just that, we may find out sooner rather than later

Quantum Dots were used by Samsung in order to differentiate its LED/LCD TVs from the competition, but what if they were used with a self-emissive screen like an OLED? Now that would be neat, no? (Image: Samsung)

It’s going to be a while before 2021 is out, of course, but people that already have a pretty good idea about what this year offers in the television product category are already looking forward to the announcements made during CES 2022 in January. There are several rumors already making the rounds regarding what Samsung, Sony, LG, Panasonic and others will be showing in Las Vegas during the first week of next year, ranging (as is always the case) from the quite plausible to pure wishful thinking. A few of them are both fact-based and genuinely exciting, though, the most important among those surely being the one rumor discussed rather intently during the summer: is Samsung ready to bring its first QD-OLED TVs to market? If yes, what does that mean for the TV market as a whole?

A quick reminder of what a QD-OLED screen actually is: it’s a hybrid kind of display that uses a self-emissive screen (like OLED), helped by a Quantum Dot layer (unlike OLED), using a triple blue light emitter stack with no liquid crystals, color filters or polarizers between those and the screen glass (unlike traditional LED/LCD). The end result can be the best of what OLED and QLED (Samsung’s…