It has been public knowledge for around two years that Samsung Display is working on a new kind of TV panel. The QD-OLED is meant to combine the best of the OLED panels, which are developed by LG Electronics and used in most high-end TVs, and QLED panels, the type of panel used in Samsung's top TVs.

Samsung officially started mass production of the panels in South Chungcheong Province in late 2021, almost two years after the company announced an $11 billion investment in the technology.

The first-ever QD-OLED panel TV arrived at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, although it was a Sony product that uses a panel from Samsung. Sony’s QD-OLED TV, the Bravia XR A95K, is set to arrive on the market this year.

Meanwhile, before Samsung could officially announce it, the company’s “QD-Display TV” came to light when it received an Innovation Award at CES. The award stated that Samsung’s “QD-Display TV is the world’s first true RGB self-emitting Quantum Dot OLED display—revolutionizing TV by combining the contrast levels of RGB OLED with the color and brightness of quantum dots for ultimate visuals.” The company appears to have decided on “QD Display” as the name for the technology.

Production Update

Now, a report out of Asia has provided an update on the new technology.

According to the Elec, Samsung Display is “unlikely to decide within the first half of this year on whether it will spend more to expand its production capacity of quantum dot (QD)-OLED panels this year.” The report added that Samsung has “insufficient data” on customers’ reactions to the technology to make any major decisions.

The Elec reported that Samsung has the capacity in place to “offer up to nearly 1 million units of QD-OLED panels for TVs and monitors per year with its current capacity,” although doing so would require upping its yield rate. At the same time, LG expects to ship ten million OLED panels this year.

First Impressions

The Verge reported back in January that the third-party certification company SGS found that the Samsung QD-OLED TVs are “capable of hitting a brightness of 1,000 nits, and can display over 90 percent of the BT.2020 color space,” both of which were major improvements on what was offered by previous OLED TVs made with LG panels.

PC Magazine, meanwhile, got a chance to visit Samsung’s offices and see the QD-Display panels prior to CES.

“Samsung’s product began to stand out once we spotted the technology squeezing out more light and richer details across the televised images,” the site said of a test of the new technology. Consumers should be able to get their hands on Samsung’s QD-OLED panel TVs in the near future.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters