Samsung 2018 TV and Audio Launch
Every year around April Samsung breathe some fresh new TV’s and sound bars into the Australian market. AVA Distribution checked out their latest models on display at the annual showcase.
Firstly, a quick FYI to watch this space as Samsung acquired Harman last year and with it poached a bunch of leading audio engineers and previous employees from some well known high end audio brands. Samsung has invested heavily into an audio lab in California for their engineers to operate freely. So with the dollars and bigwigs Samsung has injected into audio we can only assume some great products are in the pipe line.
So onto the new products, firstly TV’s with Samsung’s flagship QLED the Q9.
Samsung Q9F
Available in 65” & 75” the Q9 boasts the most vivid colours of any Samsung TV to date, full array back lighting, exquisite design with clutter-free cabling and their newest feature “Ambient mode” which enables your TV to blend in to your own living room wall. There are many decorative options included in the QLEDs this year. 
Samsung’s philosophy states “keep distractions hidden so you see only what you want to see”. Samsung have taken a no clutter ethos with their “Invisible connection” cable, which is one cable that carries power and signal from a rather large “One Connect Box” you store in the bottom of the TV entertainment unit. The One Connect Box houses the antenna, HDMI connections and power supply with the Q9F & Q7F series having a purpose made “No Gap Wall Mount” to top off the package of designer decor television.
Samsung Q7F
The Q7F available in 55”, 65” & 75” follows the same aesthetic design and decorative implementation as the Q9F in changing the way we look at our TV. Instead of a black blank canvas creating a void in our home, Samsung have embraced our love for the big screen and enabled many standby functions for a seamless blend into your home decor. Elevate your living room by applying content that blends beautifully with the space around the TV enabling a complete disappearing act “Ambient Mode”.
Put useful information such as weather outdoor temperature and major news headlines up on the big screen. Relive your personal memories and transform your living room into a personal gallery direct from your mobile device or the Samsung cloud; this all while the TV is in standby.
The Technical Stuff vs Designer Stuff
As per technology, Samsung have placed themselves heavily in the QLED department of TV technology. Not much has changed from the 2017 models technically speaking but the design and ethos around the product has. A TV is not just for watching; a TV has now become a useful designer tool that moulds beautifully into your home.
This year there is only 1x series 6 model, and that’s a QLED. A budget QLED in 55”, 65” 75” allows the price sensitive consumer to enjoy the colours, contrast and brightness the QLED technology offers. However this model does not have the true deep blacks that you would expect from the Q7F & Q9F panels due to the differences in the LED back lighting array. The Q9F for example has control of the blacks on a pixel level whereas as you move through the Q7F, Q6F and into the NU8000 range, your LED backlight sections become larger and larger and therefore has less control over the blacks. Finally the run-rate models have all stepped up from last year’s series 6 into the 2018 entry level bracket which is now the series 7 NU7100 and series 8 NU8000. No “One Connect Box” with these models as you’ll find all input and output connections on the back of the unit.
The NU7100 is the only model that comes with a standard remote. All the others come with the “OneRemote”
and with it no more juggling remotes to find what you’re looking for or to control all your components. The “OneRemote” automatically detects, identifies and controls your connected devices* and content. Please see link for compatible devices. – http://www.samsung.com/au/tv-av/one-remote/
Samsung Sound Bars and Acoustic Beam Technology
This year Samsung continue their run of sound bars with their optional surround sound satellites and sub woofers to create 5.1 in the lounge room. There are no complete surround sound packages again this year with focus on “filling your room with sound, not speakers”. They focus on a single unit, aka the “Sound Bar” coupled with a wireless sub at the front of the room is designed to bounce sound off walls and trick your brain into thinking you have speakers beside you. 
Thanks to the researchers at the California sound labs, Samsung have made some notable changes to the design of their units and this is no more evident in the new HW-N650. This unit packs a lot of punch at an affordable price. This is the stand out sound bar in my opinion because of the nifty way Samsung have added 2x extra tweeters that point out each end of the sound bar to direct the higher frequencies all around the room.
The call it“Acoustic Beam Technology” which is essentially directing an extra pair of tweeters down 2 narrow cylinders each having 28 angled holes that allow the HF to pass through and spread all around the room. All you have to do is select Game Mode and the sound coming out is now directed and reflected creating a massive sound stage. I was impressed when hearing this at the launch. The extra high frequency energy in the room can be heard and it does make it sound bigger. It’s a cool feature and lots of fun when gaming without headphones.
The Audio Technical Stuff
Samsung has also designed a proprietary algorithmic technology called “Distortion Cancelling Technology”. This technology tackles the age of problem of speaker distortion which is an unavoidable physical characteristic of speaker design. Samsung created an algorithm that looks at the waveform, “can intelligently predict a woofer’s movement, control it, and play more solid and stable sound at low pitch” and fill the chopped off waveform the speaker naturally creates with a synthetic touch-up. This is a software solution to a hardware problem.
Samsung have also updated the size of their mid-range drivers and tweeters to accommodate this new technology. By widening the crossover point in each mid range and high frequency component the sound bar can efficiently reproduce more of the critical sounds we enjoy. Samsung designed their speakers to have greater cone excursion and bigger magnets so the mid range drivers reproduce the larger lower end waves widening the bottom end response just above the frequencies of the sub. As well as the tweeters given more sonic space to punch out strong bodied sibilance. This adds punchiness to the bass and clarity to the vocal making this an all around great sounding sound bar.
Conclusion
As previously mentioned, Samsung is continually branching into connected home, video, audio and the Internet of things. With the acquisition of many brands under Harmon, Samsung are pushing the boundaries to simplify life’s technology into a seamless architecture. The QLED technology and the investments in the Californian sound lab + Harmon brands are evidence Samsung will continue to offer amazing picture in their TV’s, big sound audio in their Sound Bars and designer aesthetics perfectly matched for consumer reality.
For more information on the new Samsung TV’s & Sound Bars or any other products we distribute, please contact us below.
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