LG Electronics is getting down and dirty in their fight with new OLED TV player arch rival Samsung and their new OLED panel offering. Also in their firing line is Sony, because they have chosen a Samsung OLED panel over LG’s OEM offering.
Last week at LG Electronics UK headquarters, a select group of Journalists were bombarded by LG engineers and marketing staff as they desperately tried to take down Samsung’s new OLED TV offering, along with the Sony 2023 TV offering.
There was the side-by-side shootout between the hot new Samsung S95B QD OLED TV and LG’s own G2 OLED TV. Also thrown into the mix was the Sony A95K QD OLED TV.
And of course, you’ve already guessed the outcome. The G3 soundly thrashed its rivals during LG’s demonstrations.
Ironically, LG refused to let journalists get a close-up look at the G3, which raises questions as to whether this was a run of the mill production model or a hand-built model, for the sole purposes of demonstrating features to journalists.
What we have noticed of late is that “engineering” versions of smartphones from the likes of Samsung are being sent to journalists for review Vs actual production issues. The same is happening in the TV market.
What is unfolding in 2023 is the bitter rivalry of the past as LG moves to defend their OLED offering.
Journalist John Archer, who has conducted TV reviews that have appeared in SmartHouse in the past, wrote about one part of the shootout. “What caused some quizzical and confused looks among some of the journalists and me, who had also attended similar Philips, Sony and Samsung events over the previous days and weeks, Samsung’s in particular, is that they made great play out of comparing the colour volume of its S95C QD OLED TVs against the colour volume of LG’s (older)…G2 TVs, albeit in the HDR domain, talking about how QD OLED suffers significantly less ‘colour volume distortion’ than the WOLED technology in the G2 does.”
At this point something hit me more strongly than ever before in 25-plus years of covering these sorts of events. Namely, that the always slightly frustrating fact that brands inevitably show off their new, pre-launch products against rivals that were launched the year before.
“This has in 2023 escalated to a point where it’s rendered such demonstrations all but redundant – at least as a means of being able to say with any real certainty if one brand’s TV offerings are going to be significantly superior to another’s.”
He adds, “ While this doesn’t make it easy for tech journalists to be as sage in our pronouncements and predictions as usual, and probably won’t happen again for many years to come, seeing the base line level of TV performance enjoy such a sudden leap, particularly in the world of mainstream self-emissive displays, is fantastic news for TV consumers. Especially as history suggests that while the full impact of this technological leap will initially only be directly available to consumers able to afford premium TVs, it should accelerate the advancement of cheaper TVs too in the years to come.”
See John Archers full story here.
