Samsung OLED TV Arrives to Challenge LG and Sony, Starts at $2,200

It took a while, but Samsung’s OLED TV is officially official. The Korean electronics giant, which has been No. 1 in TV market share worldwide for more than a decade, has given its new OLED-based TV a name, a price and a release date. The S95B series will come in a 55-inch size for $2,200 and a 65-inch size for $3,000, and available for preorder now to ship in April.

The elusive high-end television first made a stealth appearance at CES 2022, but Samsung didn’t confirm any details until now. It uses an all-new QD-OLED panel, which promises improved color, brightness and viewing angles compared with standard OLED TVs, which currently deliver the best picture quality available.

The new panel technology could mean a new king of TV picture quality, but as always in the TV world, competition is stiff. First off, Sony has already beat Samsung to the punch with its own QD-OLED TV, the A95K, which looks pretty impressive. Then there’s LG, which has been selling OLED TVs for the last few years and has new models of its own, using standard OLED panels and promising better brightness than ever.

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I haven’t reviewed any of these TVs yet but from what I’ve seen so far from Sony and LG, Samsung’s S95B has its work cut out for it. Current OLED TV image quality is already so good that it might be difficult to convince high-end buyers to pay extra for QD’s special sauce. LG and Sony also have yet to announce pricing, but I’d be surprised if LG didn’t undercut the price of the S95B by a couple hundred dollars with its new C2 and G2 models — which are also available in a much wider variety of sizes than QD-OLED TVs, starting at 42 and going up to 97 inches. 

And then there’s the question of naming. In announcing the QD-OLED tech at CES, sister company Samsung Display called it a “QD Display,” but the official name is simpler. “Since the term OLED is already widely accepted and understood, Samsung decided to go with the nomenclature ‘Samsung OLED TV’ to avoid confusion among consumers,” a Samsung representative said.

I’m all for simplicity, but Samsung also makes a dizzying variety of non-OLED TVs under its QLED brand, and they’re very different from OLED. It will be fascinating to see how TV shoppers respond to all the new choices, and I’m looking forward to checking out the new TVs soon.

Update, March 18: Samsung’s representative tells CNET that preorder pricing on the S95B has been “corrected.” The 55-inch costs $2,200 ($200 less than Samsung indicated on Thursday) and the 65-inch costs $3,000 ($500 less). This story has been updated accordingly.