Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “I Hate That This is Sponsored – Samsung QD-OLED Gen 3”.
Samsung’S QD OLED technology has been winning awards, left and right, including here on our own channel, where we gushed over it so hard when we first saw it that we put this in the title as a joke and Then gushed about it, some more., My name, is Plouffe and I have an AW3423DW at home – the Alienware QD OLED – I have the AW3423DW, but then a few months ago, disaster struck Ratings image retention, testing found that despite Samsung’s claims to the contrary, Not only did QD OLED suffer burn-in. It was worse than conventional OLED technologies, Which is a super weird thing to point out 30 seconds into a video that is Sponsored by Samsung display this time. That is, unless it turned out that everything was actually fine and Samsung’s. Confidence in the technology has been entirely Warranted.
They are confident. Not only did they not bother to send over pretty much any sponsored talking points, They gave us carte blanche to run any tests. We wanted on the new generation. Qd OLED displays under this sheet, So we did and these things are wild Brandon. Our display expert from the lab described them as Basically perfect in every way..
I am talking near reference, monitor levels of color accuracy, Unbeatable viewing angles and for all you gamers out there.. Here’S a spoiler: This is a pursuit camera shot, showing motion blur on the 1440p 360 Hertz panel, the motion blur.. I know right what motion blur Oh yeah And did I mention for all the ultra wide haters out there that the new ones are available in a 16 by 9 aspect ratio. I freaking can’t wait to game on these things.
Plouffe already told me he’s buying one Yeah. Got him.. It’S true. Keep an eye out on Facebook marketplace for his old alienware. We’Re gon na kick things off with the 31 and a half inch 4K display this one. Only runs at 240 Hertz, but between the motion, clarity and just the overall image sharpness is 4K eSports gaming.
Coming you guys, I mean with a powerful enough. Gpu. We’ve got this running on a 4090.. We are getting 380 frames per second at 4K, with anti-aliasing cranked.. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this game. Look! This sharp, not even close., Look at these power lines, No matter what angle I look at them from, I don’t see any stair-stepping.
Okay. If I get this close Now, speaking of being this close., I’m sure some of you are looking at this going yeah, I’m not into the whole curve thing, but according to Samsung, the panel technology is flexible. Both meanings intended. So it’s up to the display integrator to decide if they want it to be flat or if they want it to be curved As good as CS2 looked. It is nothing compared to how Halo Infinite looks with HDR support here, But you’re gon na notice immediately that we’re no longer able to push 300 plus FPS we’re at more like a hundred and fifty even on an RTX 4090. However, just because your graphics card today can’t take full advantage of a monitor like this doesn’t necessarily mean that you should avoid it..
I mean it’s not quite an Apple’s pro display XDR territory for pixel density. At this size. A hundred and forty pixels per inch. Looks freaking awesome, not to mention that 240 Hertz just feels good, no matter what it is that you’re doing it makes the whole computer feel more responsive, and even if you don’t have the budget for the GPU today, there are Options to at least get you close to your target frame rate. You can lower the in-game resolution, turn down your graphics settings.. You can take advantage of technologies like DLSS, FSR and XCSS or Or you can just wait for AMD and NVIDIA to ship something better. Even if that last option is kind of a bummer Speaking of bummers, one downside of QD OLED is color fringing on high contrast lines and text. Keeping with the theme of this video Samsung display is meeting this feedback head-on and was like new ones. Are awesome.? Go ahead and take pictures., We’ve got nothing to hide., So we did it’s still not perfect, But at a hundred twenty-five percent scaling in Windows to match the size on the previous gen AW3423DW.
It is markedly improved., Then, if we move up to a hundred and fifty percent scaling, Which is what you’re looking at right now and pretty normal for Windows on a 4K display of this size, It’s pretty hard to spot. I mean I can see it, but only because I’m looking for it., It doesn’t bother me So. The question now is: how have they improved clarity so much both with the fringing and just overall pixel density.? It all has to do with their new Pico inkjet quantum dot, printing process.
Remember: QD OLED technology works by using a blue self-emitting OLED layer. That then shines through quantum dots to create bright and precise colors. And to achieve such a high PPI on a screen this size, they have had to make some serious changes on both the hardware and software level.. Not only did they need to work with the manufacturers to retool the heads and nozzles for their printing, but the quantum dot formula itself had to change as well. For the right flow. The viscosity needs to be perfect If it’s too thick or too low pressure when you’re spraying it.
You can end up with issues like nozzle blockages if it’s too thin, you get suboptimal splattering And what I mean by that is that when the droplet hits the screen layer, you want it to spread out a little bit, But not too much or it’s not gon Na stay within the subpixel area, It also has to maintain a specific thickness once it’s landed for the light to pass through it correctly. Good. Lord, that’s a lot of variables. And we’re only talking about the panels today. So if you want more details on the various QD OLED monitors that are gon na come out from Samsung displays partners, You’re gon na have to stay tuned to our ShortCircuit channel for coverage of those, But if they all perform anywhere near as well as these do Wow this 1440p 360 Hertz model has some of the best HDR color accuracy that we have ever seen outside of reference monitors that typically cost tens of thousands of dollars. Speaking of Samsung also revealed a 55 inch QD OLED reference display the XMP 550 earlier this year and at only 20 grand it should be way less than the previous OLED competition. As For our 4K panel out of the box set to creator mode, Our SDR accuracy was a Delta E average of 0.8, With a maximum of 2 in HDR, set to peak 1000 mode with luminance error, We measured an average Delta E of 3.8 and a maximum Of 15.7. That is wild.
These are also the first OLED panels to be Pantone and Pantone skin tone validated, and The monitors are reaching 80 % coverage of BT 2020, while Samsung display is claiming, though We haven’t measured this, yet that the TVs will do an otherworldly, 90 % likely thanks to Their increased peak brightness of 3000 nits, one of the keys to this performance is their quantum enhancer or, as they refer to it, the soul of QD OLED. We don’t have a ton of specifics about it, but they’ve used machine learning to improve the neural logic that drives the pixels, and this is a staple across all of the new panels. Giving us this new level of performance all while drawing the same amount of power and while improving longevity, Their new compensation algorithm, is supposed to be one and a half times better than before in the monitors and two times better in the TVs and even the old One was pretty good, it turns out, at least when it worked, and That ended up being a big part of what RTINGS was running into when they were testing burn-in and image retention. A lot of the panels simply weren’t running their proper compensation cycles and panel refreshes, while the competition was So after some firmware updates and manual cycling.
The issues with the previous gen 2 panels significantly improved.. Now we haven’t done a major burn-in test under worst possible conditions, But several people here at LMG, including some who will never freaking shut up about it, Have been daily driving, QD OLED panels, either as their TV or their monitor for the last year or two. Actually, that includes me and so far the previous generation seems completely fine in normal use and if this latest 2024 generation really is that much stronger 2024 generation really is that much stronger? I think it might finally be time to just start enjoying this golden age of premium tier monitors.
I’Ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. This is truly the new god-king of display technology, and, What’s really cool is if you want to save a buck and buy the last generation? That’S really good. Too. We’re gon na have some of the previous QD OLED monitors linked down below.. For now I get to check out the 1440p 360 Hertz panel that you unfortunately can’t buy just yet Sorry. The image. Clarity isn’t quite on par because we’re running at 1440p, But at this kind of frame rate at this kind of size 1440p, is such a sweet spot for running even modern triple-A games at very smooth frame rates like I’m getting anywhere from 220 to 250 frames per. Second, and it’s just oh, the motion, clarity is just Un-freaking-lievable. Don’T take my word for it, though guys. We took some motion blur shots of smooth frog, so you can see for yourself That is not a picture of a still image And if you look closely, you can see a teeny tiny bit of blur in the text. Above the frogs, But that is basically it Absolutely Incredible. Now, let’s talk about latency the 4K panel, We looked at earlier, measured 2.7 milliseconds of latency at 240 Hertz, and this guy is 2.1.
When you consider that the theoretical, perfect latency at 240 and 360 Hertz is 2.1 and 1.4 respectively, That means each of these displays is adding about 0.6 and 0.7 milliseconds of processing. Time Show me a human who can perceive that, and I will show you a big fat faker. One thing to consider if you’re thinking about the 1440p panel over the 4K is that text clarity is improved over the previous gen, But not by as much here. The new and improved sub pixel layout does help, But it has the same pixel density as before, so color fringing may be noticeable if you’re sensitive to it. With that said, this panel measured even better color accuracy in SDR and HDR.
In SDR We measured an average of 0.5 Delta E and a max of 0.9 and in HDR It averaged 5.2 and hit a max of 12.5 with luminance errors.. That is absolutely stunning. Now, one of the challenges that Samsung display has faced in figuring out how to market these things is that, while the performance is Obvious to the eye, it’s difficult to explain Why it’s so good, unless the listener happens to be familiar with the Helmholtz Kohlrausch effect, which Is an explanation of how color saturation Makes something appear brighter on one display compared to another one, Even if they are both at the same level of luminance.? Here, let me show you.. These two images are the same luminance, But the colorful one, obviously pops more, and while this effect has been known for a long time, it’s been very difficult to measure, but Samsung display is claiming that now it can be measured with their new XCR or experienced color Range testing methodology Explaining XCR and other color appearance models like see CAM16 Beyond the scope of this video, But we’re hoping to have a Techquickie out later after speaking, further with Samsung displays experts and getting some other inputs.
Obviously, Samsung display is building this out to market their own TVs and monitors, so you can stay tuned for that. But for now all you guys need to know is that QD OLED can deliver a brighter appearing image even at the same luminance sauce, my eyes. And that’s the bottom line., But Samsung wanted us to throw one.
Last little bit in here. Shout out the Nobel Prize winners who helped get us here: Doctors, Moungi, Bawendi, Alexei, Ekimov and Louis Brus, great job, everyone. Thank you so much for helping us witness some of the most amazing display technology that I’ve ever seen and thanks again Samsung display for making this video possible not only by sponsoring it, but even just like getting us access to this stuff ahead of time.
This is the kind of thing I love to do If you guys enjoyed this video, make sure to check out our review of the 34 inch QD OLED version of this from a couple of years ago.. It was already that good – and this is even better .