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First look at 2025 QD-OLED

14 Jan 2025 | Rasmus Larsen |

FlatpanelsHD visited Samsung Display, Samsung Electronics, Asus and MSI at CES 2025 to take a closer look at the 2025 QD-OLED TVs and monitors, and to get more technical details.

Just as CES was about to begin, Samsung Display – the maker of all QD-OLED panels used in TVs and monitors – announced that the 2025 QD-OLED TV panel is specified to reach peak brightness of 4000 nits in a 3% window (3% of the screen is white, the rest black).

It is a pretty incredible figure considering that just a few years ago OLED TVs struggled to reach 1000 nits – a result of the increased competition between WOLED and QD-OLED.


2025 QD-OLED

The three key advancements for QD-OLED in 2025. Photo: FlatpanelsHD

400 nits fullscreen

But that's not the full story: During a closed-door session with FlatpanelsHD, Samsung Display revealed that the panel can reach 2200 nits in a 10% window and 440 nits at full-screen (100%). If true, these are significant advancements over the 2024 QD-OLED TV panel.

QD-OLED TV panel advancement

Peak brightness (3%)Full-screen brightness (100%)
2022 QD-OLED TV panel1500 nits200 nits
2023 QD-OLED TV panel2000 nits260 nits
2024 QD-OLED TV panel3000 nits300 nits
2025 QD-OLED TV panel4000 nits440 nits
FlatpanelsHD
These luminance numbers are related to the panel, so actual luminance may vary with calibrated picture settings in the TVs released this year, including the S95F from Samsung Electronics. In another closed-door session, Samsung Electronics – the consumer brand – stated that S95F can sustain 2000 nits in a 10% window, deliver close to 400 nits in fullscreen, and "maybe up to 4000 nits" in smaller windows. Also read: Why 24fps is not enough for HDR movies As a reminder, while these figures relate to peak white, QD-OLED offers true RGB luminance, with no white subpixel, meaning colors also maintain full saturation even at high luminance.
Left: 2024 QD-OLED TV panel. Right: 2025 QD-OLED TV panel. Video: FlatpanelsHD

It's not PHOLED

2025 QD-OLED
The key to 400 nits is a new EL structure. Photo: FlatpanelsHD
How is this possible? Samsung Display confirmed to FlatpanelsHD that it is not blue PHOLED, but rather new EL 3.0 (electroluminescent layer) materials in the stack that help improve efficiency by more than 30%, resulting in no increase to power consumption over the 2023 panel and no additional heat generation. As you know, energy efficiency is today a key factor in improving picture quality. Just imagine how it will perform when blue PHOLED is added in the future. - "LG and Samsung each announced brighter OLED TVs for CES. How did they do it? By adding more OLED emitting layers to the OLED stack and by increasing the utilization of deuterium hosts. LG now has a 4-stack OLED structure without MLA to achieve 4000 nits peak brightness with deuterium used for green and blue. Samsung adopted a 5-stack OLED structure with 3 blue and 2 green layers to achieve 4000 nits with deuterium used for each color. Enjoy your brighter OLED TVs and monitors," explained Ross Young, co-founder and CEO of display market research firm DSCC, in a post on X. So that's the good news. Unfortunately, there is some bad news as well: Samsung Display confirmed that it will not expand the sizes of QD-OLED TV panels this year, not even in the second half. In other words, there will be no 83-inch QD-OLED TVs in 2025. The 83-inch Samsung S95F will use a WOLED panel.

First look at the Samsung S95F

In Samsung Electronics' invitation-only Innovation Room, we saw the 2024 S95D QD-OLED compared to the 2025 S95F QD-OLED, with Samsung wanting to highlight two main improvements:
  • The higher brightness
  • Improved glare-free coating We have already discussed the higher brightness, but I should mention that it was a very visible difference when viewed side-by-side, with S95F delivering brighter, more realistic peaks, particularly in outdoor scenes. Now we just need the 4000 nits HDR content...

    Samsung S95F QD-OLED

    Left: 2024 Samsung S95D QD-OLED. Right: 2025 Samsung S95F QD-OLED. Photo: FlatpanelsHD

    As for the improved glare-free coating, you may have already noticed how last year's S95D more or less eliminated reflections. One downside was that blacks were raised in bright environments, as detailed in our Samsung S95D review here. For 2025, Samsung Electronics (so, S95F, not the panel) said it has managed to lower Specular Component Elimination (SCE), a measure for specular reflections, from 1.5 to 0.9, a 40% improvement. The company demonstrated this in a moderately bright room, measuring black depth on an ANSI pattern on a black box near the edge of a white box, to 0.002 nits on last year's S95D and 0.0002 nits on S95F. Additionally, Samsung mentioned that its new video processor has improved banding reduction and a new Auto HDR Gamut feature that uses the light sensor to enhance shadow details in bright viewing environments. It was effective in our demo. The feature is enabled by default in Movie mode but not in Filmmaker Mode.

    2025 QD-OLED monitors

    QD-OLED monitors are already some of the best and fastest on the market, far surpassing the best LCD monitors. In the first half of 2025, two additional monitor panels will go into mass production: 27-inch 4K 240Hz and 27-inch 1440p 500Hz panels. This is no surprise, as we have already seen Asus, Dell, MSI, Samsung and others announce 27-inch 4K 240Hz QD-OLED monitors and some of the same companies announce 500Hz QD-OLED monitors. The panels use a 4th generation QD-OLED panel, although Samsung Display did not specifically call it that, with a 5-layer OLED structure that improves luminance efficiency by 30%. Peak brightness remains around 1000 nits for the monitors, and full-screen brightness is about 250 nits. As highlighted by Samsung Display, this is actually an improvement, as higher refresh rates tend to inherently reduce luminance output. Currently, only the two new 27-inch QD-OLED panels will feature this new panel structure, not the existing monitor panels, according to Samsung Display.

    Asus 27 4K 240Hz QD-OLED

    Asus' first 27-inch 4K 240Hz QD-OLED monitor. Photo: FlatpanelsHD

    MSI 27 4K 240Hz QD-OLED

    MSI' first 27-inch 4K 240Hz QD-OLED monitor .Photo: FlatpanelsHD

    OLED monitors to move beyond gaming

    Samsung Display is also supplying the panel for the new 32-inch Dell S3225QC with a 4K 120Hz QD-OLED panel, marking the first time QD-OLED are being used beyond gaming. When asked by FlatpanelsHD, Samsung Display said that it is confident that its QD-OLED panels are now resistant enough to burn-in to be used for more general-use applications, including media and even office work. This shift will begin in 2025 with non-gaming QD-OLED monitors from Dell and Samsung. Meanwhile, LG also seems confident, as it will introduce the first non-gaming LG 39GX90SA, a 39-inch WOLED smart monitor featuring built-in webOS.

    Dell Plus QD-OLED

    QD-OLED is ready to move beyond gaming monitors. This Dell is one of the first. Photo: FlatpanelsHD

    Next step: 27" 5K QD-OLED

    Behind closed doors, Samsung Display teased the next step for QD-OLED monitors: a 27-inch 4K QD-OLED panel with a pixel density of 220ppi (pixels per inch), up from 160ppi in the new 27-inch 4K QD-OLED coming in 2025. Samsung Display did not confirm a launch timeframe, but given that the 27-inch 4K QD-OLED was teased at CES 2024, it is probably reasonable to expect 27-inch 5K QD-OLED monitors in 2026. An interesting effect that we observed with the 27-inch 5K QD-OLED was that, despite having the same brightness as the 27-inch 4K model, according to Samsung Display, specular highlights in the picture appeared noticeably brighter – likely due to the higher pixel density. The display looked really, really good.

    27 5K QD-OLED

    Samsung Display teased a 27-inch 5K QD-OLED. Photo: FlatpanelsHD

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