Samsung will be announcing its first-ever 8K television for commercial release, the Q900R, at IFA 2018 this week, according to a press release. It’s a QLED device that comes in four big screen sizes (65”, 75”, 82” and 85”).
Samsung wrote that the Q900R has a very impressive 4,000 nit peak brightness and supports a real 8K resolution as well as the HDR10+ standard. Since there’s virtually no 8K content on the market worth watching right now, the primary selling point of the TV appears to be upscaling 4K content—which Samsung said relies on tech involving artificial intelligence and dedicated processors. As the Verge noted, Samsung’s promise of how good this upscaling will be “sounds somewhat optimistic,” but the quality difference may well be hard to perceive for any but the most discerning.
Unless you’re sitting very close to a very large TV, more pixels does not necessarily translate to better image quality, especially given that pesky lack of native content. That said, the 8K resolution should allow for even more vibrant HDR.
This is a clear sign that the age of the 8K TV is upon us, even if in the short term they’re mostly fascinating set pieces for those rich enough to afford them. Samsung didn’t say in its press release how much the Q900R will run consumers when it debuts in late September, but its primary demographic will likely be people who don’t bat an eyebrow on dropping top dollar for everything.
