While almost all of the buzz in TV land in 2022 was related to the launch of the first-ever QD-OLED TVs from Sony and Samsung, it looks like 2023 will be the year that some folks begin seriously considering a TV based on microLED tech. At least, that’s Samsung’s clear hope now that the company has debuted the world’s first 76-inch model, the Micro LED CX. The company announced the new model at CES 2023 and said it will be its smallest and most affordable microLED TV to date.
The 76-inch model isn’t the only microLED in Samsung’s lineup. The company says it will offer these TVs in 50-, 63-, 89-, 101-, 114- and 140-inch versions in 2023.
MicroLED is a self-emissive display, much like OLED and QD-OLED, except that each tiny pixel is an LED light, which gives microLED screens a big advantage when it comes to brightness. Samsung says that it has fashioned these LED pixels from sapphires, which sounds exotic (not to mention expensive), but it’s quickly becoming the most reliable way to make these tiny lights.
We don’t know the native resolution of the various microLED TV in Samsung’s lineup, but since Samsung says the 76-inch model joins its existing 110-inch microLED — which is a 4K model — it’s likely the CX is also a 4K panel, as some observers had previously predicted. The 110-inch model features top-mounted speakers for Dolby Atmos audio, so it’s a good bet that the CX will have something similar, though Samsung is being tight-lipped here, too.
The specs that the company is willing to share (beyond the screen size) are the TV’s refresh rate (240Hz), the response time (an impressive 2 nanoseconds), and its black-level depth — a claimed 20-bits. To be honest, we’ve never seen a TV promote its black-level detail before, but it could become an important number to keep an eye on for folks who find that OLED’s inky blacks don’t transition very smoothly back into lighter shades.
Samsung is also touting the Micro LED CX’s 99.9% screen-to-body ratio, which means that this TV has a virtually zero-width bezel — it will look like your movies and TV shows are simply floating in space.
There’s no word yet on how much the 76-inch Micro LED CX will cost, or when you’ll be able to buy it, but Samsung tells us that when that day comes, you won’t need an installer, unlike its larger microLED TVs.
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