Affected by the lack of cores and the floating price of panels, the TV market in 2021 has been on a roller coaster. Some institutions have made predictions that domestic TV sales this year will be difficult to exceed 40 million units, which will hit a record low in the past decade.
However, a major industry highlight is that although the scale of domestic TV retail sales fell by 13.8% year-on-year this year, retail sales increased by 7.2% year-on-year, showing a clear trend of volume reduction and price increase.
In this context, this year, major brands at home and abroad have also launched their own unique products in order to stand out in the fierce competition. Electrical technology here to pick out a few of the most representative products, from which you can see the development of some of the industry and the upgrading of user needs.
A new face in the high-end TV space
When the TV market as a whole entered the stock market, major brands naturally began to transform to high-end, which also promoted the development of new technologies. Dynamic compensation, wide color gamut, partition light control these technologies do not need to mention, OLED, Mini LED and other underlying display technology are also developing rapidly, bringing a new viewing experience to the audience.
OLED is one of the fastest growing categories in the TV industry today, especially in the high-end market of more than $1500, which accounts for more than 45%. The biggest advantage of OLED TV and traditional LCD TV is the use of organic light-emitting materials, which can achieve self-illumination and do not require backlighting, so the TV can be made thinner. More importantly, OLED can display real black, so as to make the contrast and quality of the picture to a higher level.
In the field of OLED TV, LG is a well-deserved hegemon, and almost all of today's TV OLED panels are from this Korean giant. The LG OLED C1, which is launched this year, is an excellent embodiment of LG OLED product strength.
LG C1 uses LG's most advanced OLED technology, and the AI audio and picture chip equipped with it is also LG's self-developed product, so it can achieve true full-blood operation. 4K, 120Hz, HDR these are naturally not a problem, 4 HDMI 2.1 interfaces also ensure rich scalability. It can be said that whether it is watching videos or playing games, LG C1 can bring a top-notch experience.
If LG C1 has any disadvantages, the first is that there are hidden dangers in the durability of OLED materials, after all, LG has a previous record of OLED TV burning screen. Another is its price: the 77-inch version is priced at 34,000 yuan, and the 83-inch version is 54,000 yuan.
LG's Compatriot Samsung, a South Korean, is not willing to put control of the high-end panel in the hands of the other side, so it began to study its own quantum dot matrix technology. This technology is an emerging Mini LED technology that can achieve precise light control, so that more detail can be displayed in both low and bright light scenes. At the same time, it can effectively improve the shortcomings of OLED TV such as short life and low brightness.
The QN90A series launched by Samsung this year is a representative product of this technology, which is equipped with Samsung's self-developed Neo quantum dot 4K processor, which can optimize viewing conditions frame by frame and improve picture quality. The peak brightness of 1850 nits, 792 backlit zones, and the wide color gamut of 95% P3 make its picture powerful enough.
As a high-end product, the price of the Samsung QN90A series is also not friendly, with a price of 65 inches reaching 19,000 yuan, which is more suitable for people with strong financial resources and more willing to try new technologies.
Domestic brands are also making great strides to impact the high-end market. In the field of Mini LED, TCL has always been the leader in China, and is also one of the few manufacturers in China that can produce Mini LED panels, occupying 90% of the global Mini LED products in 2020.
This year, TCL launched the Lingxi C12 quantum dot Mini LED smart screen is its representative product. The backlight of this product consists of 3840 micron-sized LED chips, and the peak brightness of the screen reaches 1000 nits, and the contrast ratio is 10 million to 1. Thanks to the use of more durable luminescent materials, C12 can ensure that the screen does not fade for 10 years, which is convenient for long-term use.
Another major feature of the C12 is the all-scenario AI capability. Today's TELEVISION has become not only a home entertainment center, but also a control center for smart families. C12 supports many smart home control functions, the screen can also be used as a smart speaker when the screen is off, in addition to supporting distributed whole house intelligent control, video calls, video and audio cross-screen circulation, gesture air operation and other functions, so that its use of the scene greatly broadened.
Huawei, which has always been based on research and development capabilities, has also made its own exploration in the field of Mini LED, and they launched the Huawei smart screen V75 Super this year. Compared with other Mini LED products, the biggest feature of the V75 Super is that it adopts Huawei's self-developed Honghu SuperMiniLED precision matrix backlighting solution, with a total of 46080 Mini LED lamp beads, 2880 backlight partitions, and a peak brightness of up to 3000 nits. This has greatly improved the light control fineness of this TV, and after combining with the clear light control Pro+ technology, it can realize the real-time partition brightness adjustment of the picture frame by frame, so as to make the display effect more realistic and natural.
V75 Super also accesses the Hongmeng intelligent ecosystem, which can support multi-task simultaneous processing, allowing users to watch TV while video connecting with friends and family. In addition, AI fitness, smart home control and other functions can also be implemented on this TV.
It can be said that in the field of high-end TV, Korean companies that have made early efforts still hold a lot of advanced technologies, and they still have certain advantages in terms of market share and performance. However, the excellent products launched by manufacturers such as TCL and Huawei this year let us see that Chinese brands also have outstanding strength and great potential in the high-end market. In the pursuit of high-end display technology, Chinese brands will no longer succumb to others.
Can the traditional heroes still eat?
In addition to the new materials that are competing for each other, there are also flagship products that use more "traditional" technologies, which also show excellent product power.
Sony's X90J series launched this year uses a more "outdated" DLED straight-down backlight, but other aspects of the configuration are not ambiguous: full array backlight, 32 light control partitions, 120Hz refresh rate can bring a very good viewing experience.
In addition, the X90J is also equipped with Sony's own XR chip, which can restore the rich details of the picture through cross-data analysis and understanding intelligent algorithms, while making the color more realistic, the contrast more intense, and even able to focus on the focus point like the human eye, making the picture more three-dimensional.
As one of the world's largest game console manufacturers, Sony naturally pays special attention to the game functions of the TV. X90J can be called specially built for PS5, HDR auto-mapping function allows PS5 to optimize the TV's HDR settings at the initial setting, so as to obtain a better picture, content adaptive image mode can distinguish whether the user is playing a game or watching a movie, automatically switch to game mode when playing a game, reduce input delay, switch to standard mode when the user watches a movie, and enhance the image quality performance.
Hisense will be equipped with a variety of real-world technology on the LED TV to integrate, continue to deepen the ULED technology, in addition to the optimization of the color and brightness of the picture, but also do enough articles on partition light control.
The U7G-Pro launched by Hisense this year is a representative work of ULED technology. This product is equipped with Xinxin U+ super image quality chip, which can intelligently identify and analyze the picture and improve the expression of the picture. U7G-Pro has 120 backlight partitions, which are more detailed and can achieve more accurate light control and make its picture more impactful.
In other ways, the U7G-Pro's stacking is also unambiguous: 144Hz refresh rate, 97% DCI-P3 color gamut, 1600 nits of peak brightness, WAVES Master audio, AI camera, 3GB+128GB of memory, NAS private cloud all make it a well-deserved flagship product.
It can be seen that although new materials and new technologies such as OLED and Mini LED are menacing, after the integration of some technological innovations, the most traditional LED TVs can still show the product power of not falling behind in 2021. In the next few years, the status of LED TVs will not be easily replaced.
Use cost performance to let more people experience the new technology
Cost performance is a long-term brand on domestic TV manufacturers. In the past, when it came to cost performance, people thought of buying a 2999 configuration at the price of 1999. But in this year's TV market, there has been a different way of playing.
Xiaomi, known as the "price butcher", has also not let go of the TV field, and this year will focus on the OLED TV, the Xiaomi TV 6 OLED version launched this year is only 4999 yuan, which is particularly eye-catching in the OLED TV that starts at 10,000 yuan.
This TV has a contrast ratio of 1 million to 1, a peak brightness of 800 nits, support for 10bit color depth, MEMC motion compensation and other functions, and its viewing experience is still very good.
However, this TV is certainly not without its drawbacks, such as a refresh rate of only 60Hz and no HDMI 2.1, so it is not suitable for gamers. In addition, its chip is not the highest specification, so the fluency of use may not be guaranteed, and 32GB of memory is still a bit stretched if you want to store movies. Finally, there are the abhorrent boot ads.
But in any case, as the cheapest OLED TV on the market at present, the Xiaomi TV 6 OLED version still provides more people with the possibility of contacting OLED TVs, which is worth affirming.
Coincidentally, in the field of Mini LED, there is also a player who has lowered the entry threshold of the entire category, which is Thunderbird.
Because Thunderbird and TCL are of the same origin, the Mini LED panel from Huaxing Optoelectronics is used in the Mini LED TV Thunderbird 645C series launched this year. The peak brightness of 1100 nits, 128 backlit partitions (55 inches version), 96% DCI-P3 wide color gamut, 10bit color depth, and 120Hz refresh rate make this product particularly attractive in the price segment of 6000 or less.
In addition, Thunderbird 645C also supports far-field voice, Dolby Vision, interconnected screen projection and other functions, Thunderbird Technology developed UI 5.0 is also a leading smart TV system in China, both rich film and television, game resources, but also rich functions, can meet the needs of a variety of people.
Both Xiaomi and Thunderbird have let us see another possibility of "value for money" this year. In this era when TVs within 3,000 are everywhere, 4500 to 6,000 may not be the traditional "cost-effective" price point, but Xiaomi and Thunderbird bring more high-end technology into this price segment that can be accepted by most people without sacrificing the overall quality of the TV. Compared with the simple low price, it seems healthier to improve the cost performance of the product in this way.
Beyond the "darkest hour", only the product is self-reliant
It is widely believed that the color TV market in 2021 has come to the "darkest hour". Indeed, this year's color TV market has ushered in the freezing point of a decade, especially the industry profit margin is only 1.8%, which is almost worth mentioning compared with products such as mobile phones.
But fortunately, in such a market environment, we have seen that major brands are still insisting on exploring in different price segments, in addition to the above-mentioned brands, OPPO, Skyworth, Glory and other brands have also launched many excellent products in 2021.
In the face of a very challenging market environment, TV manufacturers can only stimulate users' desire to change new products by continuously innovating and improving product quality.
On the one hand, TV brands should actively develop cutting-edge display technology to make their products more competitive. At the same time, TV brands should also actively broaden the use scenarios of TV products, thereby changing the status quo of TV in modern life scenes.
All in all, if you want the brand to be "alive", only the product is "self-reliant".