Black Friday Samsung TV shopping? Forget QLED and demand OLED

Samsung S95B BF Banner graphic with blue background

(Image credit: Future)

There are plenty of great Black Friday TV deals to find, but the brands and the technology names that TV makers use can make it difficult to determine if you’re getting the best. Should you go for a QLED TV, or do you need the power of OLED, and what do those even mean? With an OLED Samsung S95B on sale at Amazon for $1797.99, should you jump at this huge discount? It’s very confusing.

We blame Samsung directly. The company launched QLED technology with an acronym that is hardly a letter away from OLED. The confusion seems like deliberate branding. Though the technologies are both used in television, we recommend breezing right past QLED and grabbing a Black Friday Samsung deal on an OLED set.

At the top of Samsung’s TV range are the OLED Samsung S95B and the QLED Samsung QN95B. Right now, today's Black Friday deals event has the OLED TV at a lower price than the QLED model for both the 55-inch and the 65-inch sizes. The OLED TV only comes in those two diagonals.

What’s better is that the 65-inch Samsung OLED is on sale at a huge discount right now. The Samsung S95B (65-inch) is down 40% to $1797.99. It’s only $350 more than the 55-inch TV set. That 10-inch extra diagonal gives you almost 50% more screen size, so that’s a huge upgrade. The same size QN95 QLED TV is $600 more right now, at $2397.99. That makes OLED an easy decision over QLED.

Black Friday Samsung OLED TV deal

Why is OLED better than QLED?

Your television set needs to make light and it needs to make colors. With OLED technology, the same parts, called pixels, make the light as well as the color. There are tiny blue, red, and green pixels that glow and make your picture. When part of the image is black, these little pixels simply turn themselves off.

On a TV set that does not use OLED, there will be two separate components – one that controls the color and one that controls the lighting. The QLED part of Samsung QLED TV is a component that controls the color. It uses a special property of microscopic particles called “quantum dots” that help it create near-perfect color accuracy. Unfortunately, this is only one part of the picture equation.

The other part is lighting those quantum dots, and here Samsung has a range of tech options. The latest advance in backlighting a television involves using very tiny LED lights behind the QLED color layer. Similar to an OLED display, these mini-LED lights also turn off when they are not in use.

When it comes to picking a TV for a Black Friday Samsung deal, "OLED" tells us a lot while "QLED" doesn’t tell us much at all

This is a great technology, and an improvement over previous generations of LED backlighting, but it may not be good enough to beat OLED technology. Manufacturing issues had kept Samsung from making OLED panels large enough for a TV, even though it is a leader in OLED panels for smartphone and tablet screens.

Recently, Samsung has started to compete with its major rival LG and also Sony, whose LG C2 and Sony X90J OLED sets regularly top our list of the best TVs you can buy.

The Samsung S95B OLED TV has incredibly vibrant colors — A Samsung S95B OLED TV (Image credit: Jeremy Kaplan / TechRadar)

When it comes to picking a TV for a Black Friday Samsung deal, "OLED" tells us a lot while "QLED" doesn’t tell us much at all. Samsung uses QLED technology in TV sets that range from $800 up to many thousands of dollars. What makes the real difference is the lighting.

Comparing 55-inch Samsung models, the cheaper TV uses just QLED. For a bit more you can upgrade to Neo QLED, which uses mini-LED backlighting. For even more, you can upgrade to OLED. That tells you everything you need to know about OLED. Everything else is just catching up to superior technology.

More Black Friday TV deals

No matter where you live, you'll find all the lowest prices for Samsung TVs from around the web right here, with offers available in your region. If you're interested in more big-screen TVs, you can see our Black Friday 70-inch TV deals and more cheap offers with our TV deals roundup and premium displays with today's best OLED TV sales.

More US Black Friday deals

Amazon: 50% off TVs, AirPods, clothing & toys
Apple AirPods Pro 2: down to $199 at Amazon
Best Buy: up to $700 off TVs, laptops & iPads
Cheap TVs: $79.99 smart TVs from Best Buy
Christmas trees: prices starting at $38.99
Dell: laptops from $299.99
Dyson vacuums: $150 off cordless vacs
Gifts ideas: 40% off holiday gifts from Amazon
Home Depot: 50% off tools & appliances
Lowe's: $750 off appliances, decor & tools
Macy's: coats, sweaters & boots from $10
Overstock: 70% off decor and furniture
Nectar: up to $500 off mattresses + free gifts
Nordstrom: 50% off UGG, Nike & North Face
Samsung: $2,500 off TVs & appliances
Sephora: 50% off makeup, perfume & gifts
Target: 45% off toys, TVs, Keurig & more
Toys: 50% off best-selling toys at Walmart
Ulta: up to 50% off makeup, hair & perfume
Verizon: get the iPhone 14 Pro for free
Walmart: 60% off toys, TVs, vacuums & laptops
Wayfair: up to 80% off sitewide, + free shipping

See more Television Deals

Phil Berne is a preeminent voice in consumer electronics reviews, starting more than 20 years ago at eTown.com. Phil has written for Engadget, The Verge, PC Mag, Digital Trends, Slashgear, TechRadar, AndroidCentral, and was Editor-in-Chief of the sadly-defunct infoSync. Phil holds an entirely useful M.A. in Cultural Theory from Carnegie Mellon University. He sang in numerous college a cappella groups.

Phil did a stint at Samsung Mobile, leading reviews for the PR team and writing crisis communications until he left in 2017. He worked at an Apple Store near Boston, MA, at the height of iPod popularity. Phil is certified in Google AI Essentials. He has a High School English teaching license (and years of teaching experience) and is a Red Cross certified Lifeguard. His passion is the democratizing power of mobile technology. Before AI came along he was totally sure the next big thing would be something we wear on our faces.