CES 2023 has shown us a lot of great new TVs, but surprisingly few have featured 8K resolution. Is this the beginning of the end?
CES is not only a great event for checking out all the latest tech — it’s also a barometer. You can tell when a new development is picking up steam as each year more and more players jump on the bandwagon. Conversely, you sometimes can see when a given technology is falling out of favor, as fewer and fewer products and services mention it in their marketing.
At CES 2023, a sudden drop in the number of new 8K products has me wondering about the future of this format.
CES might have morphed into a car tech show in recent years, but make no mistake: it’s still the annual TV tech Super Bowl. If a TV brand is going to announce a new product, this is where it usually happens. So it was hard not to notice that TCL and Hisense had absolutely no 8K-capable TVs or projectors in their lineups. TCL made a pretty big splash when it introduced its first 8K 6-Series mini-LED TV in 2021, and it gave us every reason to think that an 8K model would be part of the company’s newly-named Q Series. Nope. Even though the new QM8 flagship will be available in a huge 98-inch screen size.
It was only 16 months ago that Hisense debuted its first 8K TV, the U800GR. But this year the company seemed far more interested in leveling up its 4K performance, announcing a dazzlingly bright new model, the 2,500-nit 85-inch UX.
Even brands like Panasonic and Sharp, which haven’t had much of a presence in the U.S. but remain popular in other global markets, had no 8K announcements at the show. Vizio had no CES announcements, but it has already indicated it won’t be doing 8K for 2023.
That leaves Samsung, LG, and Sony. All three have made big bets on 8K in the past, but this year, LG seemed reluctant to talk about 8K at all. Its 8K Z Series OLED merited only a footnote in the company’s press releases, which simply advised that the new Z3 would benefit from LG’s OLED evo panel technology for the first time in 2023.
Sony bucked a decades-long tradition and declined to make any TV-related announcements (though it clearly will do so in the coming weeks or months).
