why on Earth would anyone buy a 55 in TV
for $20,000 when they can get one for 250
bucks it doesn't even have features no
high refresh rate no variable refresh rate there's branding and buttons
everywhere and these bezels look straight out of my grandma's basement it
doesn't even have any God dang HDMI ports or a remote control but what it
does have is features and cap abilities that are coveted by creators and not
this kind no offense this kind One does
not simply see Lord of the Rings or Star
Wars until they've watched it on a display like this one from Flanders
scientific who happened to be in the neighborhood and were nice enough to
swing by with their latest and greatest
so we could take a gander it boasts near
Perfect Color accuracy tetrahedral interpolation 12bit 444 signaling zero
image processing nonsense meaning that for the first time in my
life I will finally see content the way
the colorist saw it the way the director saw it what content you might ask well
to start with we're going to be checking out the remastered segue Trilogy to our
sponsor hetner if I know you you're
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and use code lt24 at the link below to get €0 off the XMP 550 mastering monitor
is likely the most accurate display I have ever laid my two eyes on it's QD
OLED so we've got incredible viewing angles and color that pops it's rated
for 2,000 nits Peak brightness in a 4%
window and well 55 in might seem small
by today's t TV standards it's actually big for what it is with most of the
predecessors to this product being in the 30in range now I'm going to tell you
a lot more about it with some help from the Labs team but first I've got to
experience it now we didn't do a TV Roundup for
2023 so for comparison we've got two outstanding TVs from 2022 one with a
first generation QD OLED panel from Samsung and the other with the competing
W OLED panel from LG now neither these is going to do 2,000 nits more like half
of that but they still might hold their own okay because that often boasted
about number that's Peak brightness in a tiny window once we get to bigger window
sizes the Gap should narrow and in
filmmaker mode hey theoretically these displays are super color accurate too
but maybe I just don't know what I'm missing to find out I've asked Brandon
from the lab to join me and he's going to be taking us on a little tour of some
some content that might either tell us well this Flanders thing is amazing or
uh hey don't bother don't worry about it
which will be awkward with the Flanders guys there but what can I say whoa you
guys are going to notice that the LG G2 looks wildly different from the two QD
OLED displays that is due to the different spectral power distribution on
the G2 and the way that cameras capture TV output now in some scenes it's going
to be a subtle difference but in others this difference is going to stand out a
lot but I can assure you that in person the G2 was relatively accurate to our
human eyes it was a lot more subtle also
please note there are some really dark scenes here that our cameras didn't
capture very well so for the best experience you're going to want to watch
in HDR man the other displays almost look like they have cheesecloth over
them is that right do we King in that
makes sense consumer displays have AVL
or auto brightness limiting which is to protect them so that they're not issuing
warranty Replacements every six Flippin months also because I guess they would
have to comply with energy standards that a professional display wouldn't so
they're just dimmer for now for now it
should be noted that for a brief period of time a is not going to be nearly as
much of a factor we just unplugged and replugged these TVs and you can see now
they're a lot closer even if you can tell already Shadow detail
I actually find the green saturation is a little bit better than the W OLED it's
not much even the trees themselves are popping a bit more here yeah they kind
of blend into the background there on that one but to get a better idea we're
going to cut the lights and we're going to have a look at some test footage
we're going to start off with this house scene here right away look at the
Samsung it's close dude it's purple yeah
I know that what HDR is supposed to do is it's supposed to make things look
more true to life but what blows me away is that I feel feel like I'm looking at
a dollhouse with an actual light in an actual window on the Flander scientific
yeah I think it's like just the consistency of the color it just makes things look way more realistic it's not
white it's light this is going to ruin
everything for me and look at the oh my god I didn't even notice the Samsung
doesn't have a fence nope the burglar could get right into the backyard you
know LG is doing a much better job at retaining detail in the shadow compared
to Samsung I think the LG is still raising the blacks a little bit though
do you see where the garage is to the right of it there's like some dark
detail but it's pretty dark look at the LG it's raised a bit right like even the
sky behind it so they're retaining that detail in the shadow but they're
cheating a little yes where Samsung's going the opposite way they're giving
them like that punchier look but you're losing you're clipping all your black
Detail no question I would take the Flanders then I would take the LG
actually and then the Samsung for this the Samsung is not handling skin tones
the way that I'd like yeah I'll try to pause it when it goes back to her face
um particularly the Asian skin tone yeah Samsung tends to oversaturate even in
its filmmaker mode we've noticed that things look a bit Rosier more saturated
on people even the dirt like look at the dirt compared to Orange yeah dirt's not
orange LG doesn't look too bad no no to
their credit it's it's more accurate even if the capability is not quite as
good look at his hair he's red yeah and his skin he's red and back to what we
said about realism right true to life
what color is a late night Street Lamp it's yellow it's not orange that's what
it's supposed to look like and that seat is a blue leather not whatever that
color is it's got pink in it yeah I can't believe how bad the Samsung looks
this is the TV I have at home and I'm sh well right and guys you got to remember
Brandon test displays for a living like how long you been doing it now uh four
over four years yeah and that's how easily like even we're Bamboozled
there's no way that that was the director's intent looking at this we're
supposed to be able to see everything that's going on like she here look look
at that she's wearing a purple shirt yeah she's wearing a black shirt with
purple I don't know something along here this scene doesn't look too bad no none
of this bothers me and that reminds me part of why I had a hard time differentiating there was cuz I was kind
of busy looking at the content and no matter which of these TVs you have
that's what you're going to be doing most of the time so these are still Hair
S splitting differences that we're picking at it's just fun if you're a
giant nerd these strawberries look really good they look super eat those
yes they look pretty washed out on the LG yep they don't they don't look they
look okay on the Samsung but it's still not as red it's not no it's not it's not
as accurate oh and look at the shadow detail on the uh reflection it's like
all gone on the Samsung oh yeah so on
the LG but you're de saturated but it's yeah it looks like a ghost of what a
strawberry is supposed to look like in the reflection the top looks all right
but those are those don't look as delicious those are more sour and those
are super sweet as long as it's not a super
saturated color the LG does okay and I believe the Mario movie the mastering
display primaries are P3 which all these displays should be able to do now my
understanding is the Mario movie was mastered for a peak of 800 nits correct
according to the metadata so theoretically any one of these displays
can reach it the brightness that we need to see even though Samsung it's
oversaturating Bowser's eyes a little bit there see they're a bit too orange
it looks nice like my eyes like that but that's what it should look like so LG
pretty close honestly the LG is very color accurate I'm really glad we're
looking at real content now though because looking at test patterns or the
ASC footage made the difference seem a
lot differenter mhm looking at a real movie which is going to be mastered with
Home displays in mind a little bit more I guess I don't find the difference
nearly as noticeable no can you pause it right here I can I want to say what a
great still Mario's hat does look a bit
oversaturated or a bit like maybe pink or purplish compared to here the true
version looks almost right in between the almost too orangey Samsung and the
almost to I don't know blue purple yeah blue purplish that's going on on the LG
I think especially with uh animated content you have less like memory colors
to reference right like you don't have realistic skin tones and all those kind
of things so it's I think it's just a lot easier to be fooled than thinking this looks that's true and like back to
that night scene where I was like oh yeah no I know what an ugly yellow
Street Lamp is supposed to look like well this rainbow burning fire could be
anything he looks almost palad and dead
on the Flanders which he's Rosy on the S was clearly the intent they're not
supposed to look life
full Brown uniform green uniform this is
probably the starkest difference I've seen between the right color and
completely the wrong color that looks like it could have be made out of
leather also you can tell that this is
daylight lit because on the Flanders there's a bit of a Bluey cast to
everything whereas we're losing that with the oversaturation of the greens on
the other displays mhm here's what I want to know maybe this is my first
question for the Flanders folks is the problem that it's more work to just not
do any processing yeah
fundamentally I always tell people it's it's more about what we don't do almost
rather than what we do is that really hard to not do that the problem is most
of the chips they use are off the shelf chips from companies like mediatech so
we don't do that we do everything on fpg that's why they cost so
much so it's cost savings thing slash an
willingness to build your own processor from the ground up to not do any of this
BS there another dark scene with oranges
oh my gosh the Samsung is doing so bad
yeah and not that Brandon has a horse in this race or anything but uh that's his
TV incredible o okay dang it I want I
mean even here that's an orange fire those are red fires y oh that looks so
very metallic according to httv test the
scene coming up should be 2,000 nits coming off of Gandalf so the maximum
capability of our Flanders and well beyond the maximum capabilities of our
consumer TVs here yes although it is a bright scene very high APL not sure how
much that's going to come into play
here oo pause it everyone's handling this
pretty well there's clip going on the Samsung though I don't know if it's
because of the color stuff but you can't make out nearly we're losing the trees
in the uh whatever the light source
that's behind gandal mhm it be pretty
good oh yeah yeah yeah you can barely make out the form of his body through
the robes on the Samsung mhm and it's also just not as bright I think the
Samsung is uh tone mapping a lot here I'm also losing the folds in legal's
Cloak uh yeah so these two are about the
same they're both hitting around 1,000 nits off of this little beam yeah the
Samsung's down to about 700 okay and I
guess that's probably because of tone mapping one thing we didn't focus on
last time around is an undesirable behavior of the Flanders if you were
using it for consuming content and that is that if there is a signal that is
outside of its maximum brightness range rather than just tone mapping it down
and trying to smooth out the transition it it'll just Peak which is to say it
will completely lose any detail That was supposed to be there and you can really
see it on the bird's left cheek here on
the right side of the frame here there's nothing left of the feather detail there
whereas actually the LG doesn't do a very good job not doing great Samsung
though retains some of the texture that's supposed to be there oh yeah LG
actually manages to Peak even worse than Flanders yeah LG does have Dynamic tone
mapping on right now but that is the default behavior in filmmaker mode yeah
yeah and it's just not working very well
huh oh yeah W this one's really interesting um hey look there's green
there yeah first off the colors are completely different yeah but here this
is a great quantization uh banding test pattern so just look at the Samsung you
can clearly see that white circle just ends right there and then another Circle
yeah and then look at the LG the LG is much worse you can really see it's like
looking at the rings of Saturn around the Outer Perimeter yeah whereas the
Flanders I guess that's what uh you know know 5D l or whatever the crap it is
that they're using is going to do for you how did how did how do you guys
describe the L we use tet a tetrahedral
interpolation it looks so smooth here it's falling apart so yucky on the rest
of them this is not a bit rate issue this is the ability of the processor to
interpret all the different little microsteps of color that might exist and
you can see the consumer displays are falling flat on their faces there's more
to this thing than just a pretty face though build quality is solid with an
aluminum chassis and a graphite heat sink and it operates fanless in spite of
the fact that 2,000 nits even in a small area can generate some serious heat and
this is cool check this out part of why this display is so expensive is because
it can offer up information that might not be relevant to you but is relevant
to filmmakers like showing false color
or a live read out of luminance and waveforms so you can make make sure that
what you're looking at is as you intended and that's the reason why you
or I budget aside might not actually
want to use this as a home display also
the lack of HDMI etc etc the XMP 550 is
a tool for professionals and it offers no post-processing whatsoever that
includes or rather doesn't include tone
mapping this TV or more accurately
display shows the footage in its unpr processed form with only a custom 3D l
or a lookup table to make sure the colors are displayed accurately and
because of that when we show content that was mastered at a higher brightness
value rather than roll off pleasingly and retain detail it'll simply clip
that's intended because a colorist doesn't want to be fooled into thinking
this is what a 4,000 nit scene looks like so it's kind of a safety mechanism
to ensure that they know hey you've gone beyond the capabilities of this display
and you can do that but you're kind of grading blind at this point but wait
hold on a second grading blind isn't this thing the be all and end all all
right we're working on a Techquickie that's going to help further explain color spaces and terms like chromaticity
in the not too distant future but when it comes to HDR and Rec 2020 that's a
volumetric color space that can go all the way to 10,000 nits beyond the
capabilities of even this display I mean QD OED has gotten Us close in terms of
color saturation but the brightness just
isn't there yet now the primary competitor to the XMP 550 is Sony's new
BVM HX 3110 a dual layer LCD mastering
monitor that uses a technology similar to the high sense 9dg that we covered
almost 2 years ago it can reach a whopping 4,000 nits but the color
saturation is narrower to hit 100% of
the entire volume you'd need basically Pure Color wave lengths like freaking
lasers displaying your image and that's going to be a while also despite the
Sony unit offering extra brightness there are a few reasons why you might
prefer the Flander scientific display first and foremost they're really nice
people who are entirely nonthreatening no I'm kidding but but
seriously the near-perfect viewing angles thanks to the quantum do OLED
panel mean that you can use a single display for both working and showing
references to your client or boss someone who's likely to be a big deal
like a studio head or a creative director to illustrate why this matters
we had an older dual layer LCD mastering
display at LTX and Brandon was constantly instructing people to no no
you have to stand directly in front of it or it really doesn't look right
second OLED's Lightning Fast self aiss of pixels give us zero rise or fall time
motion blur not to mention Inky blacks without any halation or blooming right
and also the price yeah I know right at only
$220,000 it's really well positioned for a brand new mastering monitor our quote
for the BBM HX 3110 was almost
$30,000 and it's under a third of the size of course though your choice might
be dictated by creative requirements rather than budgets if your film
contains scenes like this for example the a or auto brightness limiter that
protects our QD OLED panel might preclude its use even if it's doesn't
operate as aggressively as a consumer display however if I was working on
something like the Mario movie I'd be a fool to go dual layer LCD at any price
just like I'd be a fool if I didn't sign up for a notification for our new
Precision screwdriver the Flanders is also finally a viable alternative to the
venerable BVM X300 which is still sought
after today despite being discontinued
that one used a true RGB stripe OLED panel which avoids washing ing out color
with a white sub pixel but being older
It could only reach 1,000 nits in a 10% window they're also not getting any
younger so Burnin is becoming a concern with these displays there are other
options that are still in production with the BBM e251 and 171 but those are
1080p at 24 1/2 and 16 1/2 in
respectively if anyone watching this video actually needs any of this stuff
hey we'll have links in the description below for now I want to throw over to
Brandon from the lab to talk about our measured results from the Flander
scientific model due to our limited time with the XMP 550 we are only able to
test its color accuracy with HDR signals for our testing we use the Delta e ITP
metric for our color error evaluation since it's designed for high luminous
values and a wide color gamut two integral parts of HDR as we saw earlier
the S 95b is skewing a bit red and on top of that it overs saturates but it's
still reasonably accurate as is the G2
however the XMP P 550 is a clear winner hitting a Delta e ITP average of less
than two and a Max of less than five this is by far the best color accuracy
I've ever measured what's even more impressive is the lack of any major
change when adding luminance error to the equation see how the values are
nearly identical the same can't be said for our other ass sets especially the G2
that's because the XMP outputs light and color basically perfectly to give us
accurate HDR content its PQ eotf curve
is tracking nearly identically to the HDR standard meanwhile the G2 and s95 B
both have minor inaccuracies as well as a worse white balance by comparison and
even with the XMP 550 capped out at 18800 nits with a d65 white it still
handily beats our two other TVs overall a very impressive piece of technology
for the people who need it even if it does also kind of highlight that there's
still room for these displays to improve there's no such thing as a perfect
solution right now now you might have noticed we've been toying with HDR
recently and you're probably wondering hey lonus I'm watching this video in HDR
right now do you guys need one of those and depending who you ask production
team's not here that's good I don't think we need one no I don't think we
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if you guys enjoyed this video why don't you go watch the one where we checked out alienware's monitors that are also
using Samsung QD OLED technology they look
incredible