Samsung's new display technology "Neo QLED" will enrich the top LCD TVs of 2021 for consumers. The televisions rely on mini-LED backlighting, which should improve the picture quality. Amazingly, they are 12-bit TVs – so far there have only been TVs with 10-bit colors.

The upcoming Neo QLED TVs are LCD televisions with small mini LEDs for backlighting. The so-called "Neo QLED" consists of the LED lamps called "Quantum Mini LED", the lamp controller "Quantum Matrix Technology" and the image processor "Neo Quantum Processor". The information that the TVs should offer 12-bit colors with 4,096 levels of brightness comes as a surprise. With the exception of a dual-cell TV from Hisense, there are only a maximum of 10-bit TVs on the market.

12 bit – but what for?

Unfortunately, HDR10 and HDR10 + cannot use the 12 bit, only Dolby Vision can do that among the common HDR formats. And Samsung TVs are still not compatible with Dolby Vision. Presumably the "Neo Quantum Processor" offers a kind of upscaling to make something out of the 12 bits. In any case, the controller is used to control the lighting zones of the full-array local dimming televisions. The many lights are supposed to avoid "blooming", the overlapping of bright parts of the picture to others that should actually be dark.

Thin design, object-based sound

Samsung calls the TV design "Infinity One Design", which means an almost frameless display and a thin housing. With the 8K TVs, the cables are housed in a new "Slim One Connect Box" separate from the TV and "Object Tracking Sound Pro" is supposed to enable a more spatial, object-based sound than previous Samsung TVs. "Object-based" means that the sound seems to come from where the objects can be seen on the TV. "SpaceFit Sound" analyzes the surroundings of the TV and adjusts the sound accordingly.

Neo QLED will be installed in 4K TVs from the QN90A series and in 8K TVs from the QN900A series. There is still no information about the price and release date, Samsung may submit it at CES.