A flagship 8K TV with serious processing power
Just how smart can a TV get? Well, if you believe what several major brands were saying at CES 2024, flatscreen IQs are set to go up a level this year thanks to – yep, you guessed it – AI processing.
Nobody has made this message clearer than Samsung, which unveiled the QN900D, its new flagship 8K Neo QLED, as part of its 2024 TV lineup at CES. The top-tier TV uses a new processing chip designed to deliver a wide range of AI enhancements to take “picture and sound quality to a whole new level”.
We headed over to the company’s Las Vegas exhibition space to see all this new processing in action for ourselves. Read on for our first impressions (not powered by AI).
Design
While the emphasis was mainly on the capabilities of the QN900D’s brand-new processor, there are a couple of key design highlights worth mentioning in regard to Samsung’s flagship 8K TV. First, the new model showcases what Samsung calls its Infinity Air Design. The QN900D sits on top of a stand which has been designed with a mirror effect to make it appear as if the TV is floating. The stand is also smaller than in previous years to make it easier to put the TV up against a wall.
It’s a relatively compact design too. Samsung claims the 65in version is the world’s thinnest 8K TV screen, with a depth of 12.9mm. Speaking of sizes, the QN900D is available in 65, 75 and 85 inches, with a new 98in model also in the pipeline. Our time at the show was predominantly spent with the 75in and 85in sets.
Features
The engine powering the QN900D is called the NQ8 AI Gen 3 processor, which Samsung claims is the most powerful video resolution processor ever designed for a TV. The headline specifications here are that it boasts a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) twice as fast as that found on last year’s 8K model and with eight times more neural networks on hand to help with all the heavy lifting.
The TV offers a range of features designed to improve picture quality, such as ‘8K AI Upscaling Pro’, which pretty much does what it says on the tin – upscale content to 8K… like a pro. Indeed, given the dearth of consumer-friendly 8K material out there, Samsung realises the 8K TV has to be up to the job of bringing lower-quality content up to its screen’s resolution.
But it isn’t just the TV’s 8K upscaling getting a major boost in 2024. We are particularly
