LG and Samsung are set to battle it out for your hard earned dollars this summer with a wave of curved OLED HDTVs that have already started to find their way to US shores. LG recently announced US availability for their pricey set while Samsung is expected to do the same sometime this week.
LG's 55-inch model is already on sale at one Best Buy retail location (the company's flagship store in Minneapolis) but you'll need some pretty deep pockets if you plan to take one home with you. Expect to pay around $15,000 for the state-of-the-art set that weighs just 38 pounds and measures 0.17 inches at the edges.
The television will go on sale at other keys locations including Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Antonio, San Francisco and Seattle over the coming weeks before finding its way to all retail stores by the end of the summer.
Meanwhile, Samsung's 55-inch curved OLED TV will be available at select retailers this week for, you guessed it, $15,000. According to CNET, a high-end dealer in New York is expected to receive the first shipment of Samsung's new set. The price tag includes calibration and delivery, we're told.
OLED technology brings a number of improvements to the table over LED and Plasma sets including the ability to deliver the deepest shade of black of any television technology. Furthermore, OLED screens don't need a backlight as each pixel provides its own light source. This allows the display to be extremely thin while providing better contrast, faster response times and better viewing angles while sipping less power.
A lot of time and research has gone into the curve of these sets. LG has spent the last five years working on it in an attempt to find the perfect curvature with the goal of making the entire screen surface equidistant to the viewer's eye.