You kind of forgot about OLED TVs, didn’t you? That's understandable. So far, the ones you’ve been able to buy have been prohibitively expensive. The selection has also been sparse, as LG is the only major manufacturer actively cranking out TV-sized OLED displays. Other big companies have put OLED production on hold until manufacturing processes can be perfected.
But it may be time to start thinking about OLED again. The picture quality on these sets has always been incredible, and now prices are starting to dip into more-affordable territory. LG’s new OLED TV, the 55-inch 55EC9300, will start going on sale at Best Buy on August 25. It’s priced at $3,500---expensive for any other kind of TV, but crazy cheap in the realm of OLED.
To put things in perspective, LG’s first 55-inch OLED TV (the 55EA9800) came out about a year ago, and its launch price was 15 grand. Samsung responded with its first OLED set a month later, priced at $9,000. Since then, prices on those first-gen sets have trickled downward slowly toward the $7,000 mark, and LG released another model this year that can be found online for less than $4,500.
Now OLED’s price of entry is $3,500 for a brand-new set, and the new 55EC9300 looks like it has many of the same features as its $15,000 predecessor. The 1080p TV is just 0.17 of an inch thick at its slimmest point, with a super-slim bezel that gives it that edge-to-edge picture look. It’s a curved-screen set, but it has a more-elegant-looking swoopy metallic stand than the last-generation TV. As you’d expect from a set in this price range, it comes with all the “Smart TV” fixins, and it uses the WebOS-based interface that was introduced at CES this past year.
The price is the big deal. This is the first OLED TV at about the same price as a huge 1080p LCD or a slightly bigger 4K TV. This is the first OLED TV you might see in a few peoples’ homes.
