Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Samsung’s 85-inch 8K QLED TV is now up for pre-order for a cool $15K

IFA 2024
This story is part of our coverage of IFA Berlin 2024

Signs plastered all over Berlin made it clear Samsung would show off an 8K QLED TV at IFA in Berlin this year, but Samsung’s strategic advertising tease left plenty of crucial questions unanswered. Now, with just hours left before Samsung’s press conference, details are emerging: Samsung’s huge 85-inch 8K QLED TV will be available for purchase this year, will cost less than many pundits have postulated, and will sport a blistering peak brightness of 4,000 nits.

Recommended Videos

By the specs alone, the TV has the goods to make enthusiasts squeal with delight. At the same time, many are questioning whether 8K makes any sense at this stage in the TV game.

According to Samsung, the new 85-inch Q900R will offer the company’s most advanced backlighting system to date, capable of reproducing unprecedented brightness levels to support dazzling high dynamic range (HDR) highlights. For perspective, the brightest LCD/LED TVs available today top out at about 2,000 nits, i.e., half of what this mondo screen can produce.

More important to picture quality than raw brightness muscle is its ability to produce deep black levels for contrast — easily recognizable to any viewer. Based on our experience with Samsung’s previous flagship TV the Q9FN, the Q900R TV is already in a great position to deliver impressive black levels, but it is possible the company has further refined the panel to deliver even deeper blacks. To be sure, the bigger the TV, the more challenging it is to deliver deep blacks, so we look forward to updating this post with our eyes-on impressions.

Samsung also points toward QLED’s ability to reproduce “100 percent color volume,” which, in simpler terms means the TV is quite cable of reproducing a wide range of colors and shades across a very broad range of brightness levels — another attribute we appreciated about the 4K Q9FN QLED TV.

The 8K question

Outside of contrast and color, Samsung boasts somewhat vaguely about an AI-powered 8K upscaling system paired with an 8K Quantum processor. The details around this system remain to be disclosed, but our understanding is that the more powerful processor enables a very advanced artificial intelligence system which uses complex algorithms to carefully analyze a picture at a granular level – frame by frame – in order to deliver a stunning 8K image, regardless of the quality of the incoming signal. This will be crucial, as 8K content is likely several years away from reaching even its nascent stages in the wild, let alone anything resembling the ever-widening availability of 4K content today, which took years to slowly advance to.

The idea here is that the new Q900R should present any image with enhanced levels of sharpness and detail at very large screen sizes. And since screen sizes consistently increase even though living room sizes do not, this move to the next level of TV technology makes sense. With that said, this technology is, of course, very ahead of its time.

Picture quality may be the most important consideration among the target audience for this TV (enthusiasts and straight-up wealthy folks who just want the best), but Samsung’s QLED TVs best distinguish themselves from their competitors through meaningful user-facing features. Just as with the Q9FN, the Q900R will instantly recognize most connected components and automatically label inputs, automatically program its remote to operate nearly any device, automatically switch into game mode and reduce input lag when a game console is detected, and integrate Samsung’s One Connect box with Invisible Connection cable. One Connect allows users to connect all their devices to one slim box and route video signal and power through a virtually invisible fiber optic cable, making clean installation easy – no need for cutting holes into the wall and routing multiple cables.

While no release date has been specified, we understand the Q900R will be available as soon as this fall. And while no price has been specified, we’d bet money that the cost will come in under $20,000.

The Q900R is available for pre-order right now via the Samsung website and will begin shipping on October 28. The price comes in at $15,000. That’s still a big chunk of change, but very much in line with ultra-premium TV pricing we’ve seen in the past.

We’ll be getting our eyes on the Q900R soon, so check back for an update to this article with further details and some revealing video coverage.

Updated on October 3, 2018: Edited to add pricing and availability information.

Caleb Denison
Digital Trends Editor at Large Caleb Denison is a sought-after writer, speaker, and television correspondent with unmatched…
Samsung prices 2022 4K, 8K, Neo QLED TVs, pre-orders begin
Samsung 2022 QN900B 8K Neo QLED TV.

Samsung has released its official pricing for its 2022 line-up of 4K and 8K Neo QLED TVs and pre-ordering for these new models is now available via Samsung's website. The TVs include the 8K Neo QLED QN800B and QN900B, 4K Neo QLED models, an update to The Frame 4K TVs, and the somewhat surprising inclusion of Samsung's first QD-OLED TV, which Samsung is simply calling "Samsung OLED (S95B)."

Editor's note: Shortly after announcing that pre-order had begun on these TVs, Samsung reached out to Digital Trends to let us know that the prices provided for the Samsung OLED TV were incorrect. This article now reflects the new, lower prices.

Read more
Hisense debuts its first 8K Roku TV, the 75-inch U800GR
Hisense U800GR 8k Roku TV.

We're still several weeks away from CES 2022, but don't tell Hisense that. The company has decided it doesn't need a big, splashy Las Vegas show to show off its big, splashy new Roku TV, which also happens to be its first Roku TV to offer 8K resolution: The Hisense U800GR, which is available December 8 from Best Buy and Amazon for $2,700.

The U800GR packs Hisense's ULED display technology, which in this case means a quantum dot LED panel with a native 120Hz refresh rate and up to 1,000 nits of brightness. Gamers will appreciate the extra smoothness this brings to their fast-action games, as well as the TV's support of auto low-latency mode (ALLM) and variable refresh rate (VRR). You get Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support, in addition to HDR10 and HLG. Hisense says there are 180 local dimming zones for better contrast and black levels.

Read more
TCL’s 8K 6-Series mini-LED TVs are shockingly affordable
A TCL 8K 6-Series TV showing THX's Certified Game Mode.

TCL has been teasing us for months, making us wait to hear how much the company will charge for its 8K resolution 6-Series mini-LED QLED TVs. Now we know, and boy, was it worth the wait. The 75-inch model is just $3,000, while the smaller, 65-inch version rings in at $2,200. They both go on sale today with limited availability at major retailers.

To put those prices in perspective, LG and Samsung -- the only other companies that have mini-LED-based 8K TVs in 2021 -- charge $3,500 for their most affordable 65-inch models and $4,800 for their 75-inch models.

Read more