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I’ve reviewed a lot of products and focus the channel on high quality high value audio, technology and wellbeing which, in a nutshell, is bang for buck, so the entirely new level of performance the QD OLED technology of the Samsung S95B promises looks really exciting BUT you need to know there are some uncomfortable truths that almost none of the reviewers are talking about.

Now I love the almost 3d look of OLED and the Samsung S95B quantum dot or QD oled is the latest evolution of OLED technology and looks to offer the most realistic picture yet, combining the impactful brightness of LED with the black levels, depth and gaming response times of OLED.

If you’ve been through the hours of reviews from Digital Trends, HDTVTest, Stop the FOMO, Quantum TV, Tech with KG and others and managed to stay awake you’ll have heard all the excitement about what this new technology, currently only available in the Sony A95K and Samsung S95B, delivers. In a nutshell:

1) Impactful brightness conveying energy due to use of light producing quantum dots rather than regular OLED’s light absorbing coloured filters

2) High Colour volume making the picture pop due to absence of the white sub pixel in traditional WRGB OLEDs that brightens but also washes colours out

3) Perfect blacks with high contrast and depth making the picture look almost 3 dimensional and life like

4) Convincing upscaling of less than pristine content and blur free motion processing.

Digital Trends 922k

HDTVTest 422k

Stop the FOMO 117k

Quantum TV 65k

Whisper Status 74 19k

Tech With KG 15k

Keep It Classy Tech 11k

Some reviewers have gotten very excited and I’d encourage you to check them out.

But we need to get into the technology of these quantum dots. Now bear with me on the science lesson because this will become relevant to the dark truths we’ll get to in a minute, that  few reviewers have hinted at.

QD-OLED vs OLED vs QLED vs Mini LED TVs: What’s the difference?

Colour conversion in QD-OLED displays is done by quantum dots that are placed or patterned at a sub-pixel level over Blue OLEDs.

So, we have a blue OLED emissive layer in the backplane where all pixels are blue. And then green and red quantum dot materials are printed on pixels that need to be green or red.

Just like in regular OLED however, in QD OLED organic materials are the source of the light and these materials wears out. The Blue OLED lights get dimmer with time and over the lifetime of your TV, its display will get less bright.

But this is a new tech right? Well yes its new in that no white sub pixel is employed to increase brightness at the expense of colour purity and there’s no colour filter to reduces brightness, but rather quantum dots which emit photons HOWEVER the underlying light production is still organic and will degrade over time. And there’s the rub.

Now Avforums, a respected av enthusiast website, has over 20 pages of posts on problems due to OLEDs wearing out with sets purchased as recently as Summer 2018, under 4 years ago, and furthermore warranty claims being rejected.

https://www.avforums.com/threads/help-green-spot-in-middle-of-lg-oled.2154188/

There’s even a whole video on how you can wear your TV out just by watching normal content and I don’t mean screen burn or image retention by having static images frequently on screen. Many people, including me, relate to the problem and there are several comments against this video describing their experiences 

Now while the panel will get dimmer over time, that of itself is no big deal since especially with QD oled it was much brighter than traditional OLED panels to begin with, BUT if some areas of the screen typically use certain colours more than others like pink faces in the middle of the screen from news and chat show programs then those areas are going to have pixels that are more worn out potentially causing a colour shift in those areas.

Ah but there’s compensation nowadays I hear you say with pixel shifter and pixel refreshers and screen savers. Well yes, but if you have a patch of red say and shift one red pixel with the red pixel next to it you’ll still have a red pixel being shown and then the only way to compensate is to burn out all the other leds to the same extent making the whole display dimmer each time.

And different rates of wear by different colours, for example with human pink faces typically centre screen can cause those portions of the screen to show a colour cast which is an unpleasant green tinge exactly where faces, which as humans we’re very sensitive to, typically appear. I’ve got another video on how to mitigate the problem, one I experienced myself on a 3 year old Panasonic OLED (tx55hz980b), to make the picture more watchable but it’s a workaround and introduces a wholesale colour shift of the picture so is far from ideal.

And did I mention the price.

Now clearly the QD OLED picture more or less successfully combines the impactful brightness of lcds with the blacks, depth and almost 3d realism of oleds. But the price is double that of competing mini LED, Full Array Local Dimming and OLED TVs so unless you buy into the 100% better view there’s no way it can reasonably be considered worth double the cost of some other still great looking televisions, especially when you consider things like the user experience of the TV operating system, sound quality and picture processing.

So to summarise the S95B may well be a fantastic looking set but bear in mind that 

1. Depending on the content you watch and for how long, because of the technology used and nature of typical TV content, the screen may wear out in such a way that the picture becomes noticeably degraded with jarring patchy colour casts within 4 years so make sure you get a warranty against this – or are rich enough to consider your expensive tv disposable
2. At double the price of some lesser but still great looking alternatives there may be a new king in QD OLED but for now at least value isn’t its strong suit.

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I’ve written the most helpful Amazon UK reviews for some of the latest and most premium Bluetooth earphones including Apple AirPods 3, Sony WF-1000XM4 and Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro but as a recognised Amazon vine reviewer Sennheiser hasn’t offered me their most highly anticipated wireless earphones in years, the Momentum True Wireless 3 for review. Now why? 

Well I focus the channel on high quality high value audio, technology and wellbeing which in a nutshell is bang for buck or sound per pound in the case of audio and the TW3 is retailing at well over £200.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love my Sennheiser cx400bt and its very natural sound. I rotate it with my ipx4 rated Sony wf-xb700 which has a more artificial V-shaped but exciting and spacious sound with deep bass and forward female vocals and between them I have everything I personally need for sound quality and practicality in Bluetooth wireless earphones.

Let’s do a quick review of the specs of the new Sennheiser momentum.

In a nutshell it offers a fancy high res codec, longer battery life, more secure fit, improved ANC and better call quality in noisy environments.

Now I suspect the codec will make no to little noticeable difference to sound quality and much less of a difference than basics like tuning and amplifier components.

The longer battery life is great since there have been times when I’ve wanted more than the 4 hours my cx400bt offers however if that means they’ve gone for weaker magnets and a lower current amplifier that doesn’t push and pull the driver so strongly then we’ll lose that wonderfully realistic sound of the cx400 and it will be a sound quality downgrade.

Now fit is one area where the TW3 may be a step up on the TW2, especially if you wear them while exercising however fit alone is not enough since the IP rating would also have to improve to make them practical to deal with sweat and rain. And sealing sound producing components typically adversely affects sound quality so is that a trade off a hifi audio manufacturer would want to make?

And of course we’ll expect the ANC to be world class, both the noise cancelling and transparency but none of the clever triggering features of the Samsung or Sony are mentioned where transparency starts if you or someone else starts talking for example.

And while the microphone quality may improve in noisy environments the previous generation wasn’t exactly poor.

Now I don’t use earphone ANC and unless there’s some very significant difference from the cx400 I can’t imagine the TW3 being worth over twice the price – even if you have no other wireless buds and the full package of capabilities just happens to marry up with your particular use case.

Now one area where, perhaps with the change of owner to Sonova, Sennheiser has been a bit slow is pre release to the influencers and sponsored deals, something that brands like Anker are world class at. If that means more of the purchase price goes into the product then I’m all for that though it’s a balancing act and if they don’t sell enough units consumers won’t benefit from economies of scale. The reputation of Sennheiser may be enough to carry them this time.

Well, whatever the case, mine is ordered with my own money and arriving later this month so subscribe if you want to see whether any of these predictions prove true when I post my recording of how they sound.

Thanks as always for reading!