A few years ago Samsung unveiled The Wall, a huge display that was more billboard than home entertainment. Now the company is bringing the technology behind it, MicroLED, to consumer-ready TVs – although we’d imagine it’s still too much for most consumers to handle.
Currently available LED TVs are somewhat of a misnomer – they use LED backlights but the displays themselves are liquid crystal (LCD). MicroLED displays are a bit truer to the name, built using an array of tiny LED lights to represent each individual pixel, similar to a stadium scoreboard. These pixels can produce their own light and color, allowing for more realistic color representation and more accurate brightness and contrast.
Samsung debuted its MicroLED tech at CES 2018 with The Wall, a 146-in modular display that allows multiple segments to be connected to create all kinds of shapes and sizes. The following year, that size ballooned to 219 in and then a mammoth 292 in, with resolutions up to 8K. None of these are intended for general consumers though – they’re more suited to advertising and public displays.
Samsung has previously experimented with modular MicroLED TVs for home use, but really, does anyone need a screen they can shuffle around like Lego bricks? Perhaps realizing that, the company has now unveiled its first MicroLED TV that’s just a regular old 16:9 rectangle.
