It must be OLED day. LG’s being coy about pricing for its curved OLED, but not Samsung. Its 55 inch Curved OLED KN55S9C will be available from today for a wallet busting $10,999.
If you’re keen (and obviously rather fat in the wallet), it’s going to be available “with limited stock on sale at select retail stores”, but then I doubt Samsung figures they’ll sell heaping loads of curved OLED tellies in any case. It’ll go on sale from lunchtime at Samsung’s experience stores today if you’re especially rabid about OLED.
The KN55S9C features multiview capability with stereo sound, so that two viewers with active shutter glasses can watch different programs at the same time; two pairs are provided with each TV.
Predictably, it’s also got the Smart TV features that Samsung offers across its flatter TV brethren, including the “evolutionary” TV ability to upgrade its Smart TV features each year. Samsung claims that Australia’s only the fourth country to get OLED TV availability worldwide.
I’m at Samsung’s launch and will update with impressions once I get some hands-on time with the KN55S9C.
Update: Multiview works quite well; if you’re not wearing the glasses it appears as a ghosting effect, but once the glasses slip on it’s easy to flick between each program (albiet at half the resolution), and the stereo is acceptable. I still find I don’t get on well with active shutter glasses to speak of, but your experience may vary.
The physical design is a bit of an oddity. There’s no doubting that the panel itself is curved (if you like that sort of thing), but the square frame it sits in has a lesser curve and gives it a more traditional TV appearance. An aesthetic call, but one that does mark it out as quite different from LG’s much curvier OLED.
Samsung also announced 55 inch and 65 inch UHDTV models today, at $4,999/$6,999 respectively. They’ll be available from early September.