CES is always a showcase of some crazy-looking TVs. I think everyone knows by now that OLEDs are definitely one of the hottest topics around and they’re definitely the future of TV.
This year, two OLED TVs really stuck out to me. The first one is LG’s new radically thin OLED in their W7 series. W7 is their flagship OLED TV in their signature range. It comes in two sizes, a 65- and a 77-inch. And as you can tell, it’s mind-blisteringly thin at 2.57mm. It stands less than .3 inches off the wall, thanks to a very unique magnetic mounting system. Obviously, this TV is OLED and it sure looks like it. Other features include high dynamic range and Dolby Atmos sound coming from the bar below where you have all your connections to your TV. The drivers pop up from the bar and deliver audio directly to you. The entire bar is connected to the panel via one cable while the bar has HDMI, USB, Optical In and power.
Overall, this TV is straight fire but it’s going to cost you a pretty penny at around $8000 but it was very incredible to see in person.
The other TV that blew me away at the show is Sony’s A1 OLED TV. While it’s their second TV in the OLED range, it’s their first real step in making OLED affordable in people’s homes. And while the panel may be sourced from LG themselves, there’s something about the image that just looks amazing. First of all, the Sony A1 series has a Sony X1 image processor and it’s only job is to make sure the panel is displaying what it needs to. It makes colors, saturation and detail look plain better.
The next thing you’ll notice is the lack of any bezels. The Sony logo is put on the lower left corner even, that makes the whole experience of viewing this TV that much better. Then you may ask, what about the speakers? Are they backward facing? Does it even have speakers? It actually does but they aren’t your typical speakers. They’re actually called (don’t laugh when I say this) audio exciters. It’s a pair of little motors that sit behind the panel and vibrate the panel and curate frequencies through the glass surface so the entire panel is used as a surface to project audio to you. This also means the direction of audio is almost limitless and can follow video on the panel. So say a bird that flies in from one side of the TV and the audio will follow that path. This, in itself, is wild and crazy and I absolutely love it. While the TV may not be as thin as the LG panel, it certainly looks just as good or even better and with the added thickness comes the stand, which looks a little weird at first but it’s where all your connections go to plus the mounting point for the wall, it’s all build into that stand.
Both LG and Sony are definitely making one big splash in the world of OLED TVs and I honestly can’t wait to get one of these or even both of these in for a review.
