The rumors were true: the Samsung’s 55” Curved OLED TV has become available today at select locations on the U.S retail market, for the price of $9000. Named, Samsung KN55S9C, this TV is already available in Korea and uses the same “floating” design language introduced for the first time at CES for a non-curved display. The concept remains the same: the fame around the TV is designed to make the content seemingly “float” in the middle.
Obviously, OLED is the star of the show, and if it is anything like other OLED TVs that we have seen from Samsung, the contrast has to be unbelievable. OLED TVs typically have neat, perfect levels of black since each pixel emits its own light – it simply doesn’t get much better than that. The colors are vibrant and well saturated because this technology does not need any color filters, which is typically how most other display technologies work.
Typically the brightness is very strong too, but I have to admit that I did not try one of these at home on a sunny day, so you will have to wait for the full review before hearing my take on this.
The Display has a slight curvature, which means that if you are sitting right in the middle, pixels on the extreme left and right should be at the same distance to your eyes than pixels located in the middle. I love the idea, although I think that users will perceive the curvature more like a design element than an image improvement.
Finally, the Samsung KN55S9C is 3D-enabled and features a multi-view mode in which two people can watch different 2D shows in the same screen, at the same time. This works be leveraging the left/right image separation put in place for 3D viewing and each user needs to wear 3D glasses for this to work. Conceptually, this could work with videogames as well in which each player can see his/her own game, at the same time.
Where the rumors got it completely wrong is that a $15000 price was predicted for this TV, but we heard that the price had been dropped it’s a nice surprise to see the official MSRP at $9000, which is close to the $8000 of the LG flat OLED TV. Prices for OLED TVs have been cut by nearly half since they were introduced, and we like this trend.