Understanding Samsung’s Quantum Dot Display

Samsung recently invited us to Singapore for a seminar about the technology behind their latest SUHD TVs – the Quantum dot display. Here’s what we learned.

The Quantum dot display is Samsung’s latest technology featured in their newest lineup of SUHD 4K TVs. It’s basically an LED technology but with more complex features to achieve better colors. Better color reproduction is what most TV brands are claiming nowadays with their TVs but how Samsung achieves that with Quantum dot is the interesting bit.

It’s still RGB

Like with most TVs, Samsung’s SUHD TVs use the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) color system and use all three colors to produce white light as medium. The challenge with that system though is how to produce the purest white possible to achieve more accurate and vibrant RGB shades.

Conventional TVs try to achieve this by using blue LEDs then coat it with yellow phosphor, but the result is a display with cooler tones which is not purely white.

Enter Quantum dot

For Samsung’s SUHD TVs, they use Quantum dots instead of yellow phosphor. Quantum dots are nano-cyrstals measuring 3 to 7 nanometers. These tiny crystals emit their own color (Red or Green) when subjected to blue light.

Quantum dot nanocrystals in liquid suspension. They produce green or red colors when subjected to blue light. (Photo by Michael Josh Villanueva)

The SUHD TV will then use this as its source for white light, and as mentioned earlier, a pure white light helps produce the most vibrant colors.

To harness the potential of the Quantum dot, Samsung’s SUHD TVs use 10-bit panels capable of supporting over 1 billion shades of color. In comparison, conventional TVs have 8-bit panels supporting up to only 16.7 million shades.

HDR 1000 + Ultra Black

HDR or High Dynamic Range is a technique used in photography and videography. Its aim is to produce content with great dynamic range of luminosity close to what the human eye can see. In essence, it makes your lights lighter and darks darker, but in order to achieve that, the display must be capable of producing high levels of brightness. In the case of Samsung’s SUHD TV, it can produce up to 1000 nits, making the bright parts much brighter. Samsung calls this feature the HDR 1000.

To further enhance viewing quality, Samsung also added a technology called Ultra Black which is a display surface with a Moth eye structure. What it does is help absorb the light hitting the display which then prevents reflection of your surroundings appearing on the screen.

To conclude…

What Samsung did in a nutshell is pack their latest and available technology and features in their SUHD TV lineup for 2016 – True 4K resolution (3840 x 2860) curved display, more accurate and vibrant colors with Quantum dot nanotechnology plus 10-bit panels, high luminance of up to 1000 nits for better HDR, and Ultra Black. All of that enclosed in slim bodies with thin bezels and sleek design. On the downside, these new SUHD TVs don’t come cheap, and might start north of Php60K. But if you have the cash and want the one of the best possible TVs out there, then Samsung’s latest SUHD TVs should be on your list.